March 12, 2108 Country meets City

March 12
Woke up to a beautiful, sunny day. The breakfast at the Best Western was excellent for a self-serve freebie. They had everything we needed: fresh fruit, oatmeal, waffles, eggs, bacon, sausage and juice. Margaret agrees the sausages were great! We were on the road shortly after 9am. 

The Coquihalla, aka Highway Through Hell, is notorious for sudden winter storms, ice and terrible accidents. We had been following the weather and road conditions closely and were happy to see clear skies and a great forecast. The roads were quite wet and a littles slick in a couple places but not bad at all.

Stunning scenery and not much traffic which was great as the road was quite wet and we used a fair bit of windshield washer fluid. They had had a huge dump of snow recently and the banks left by the plow was higher than the truck (we estimate around 8 feet).

Being in between the banks almost felt like a tunnel but wait!! There are actual tunnels lol.

Going into the tunnel

Inside! Sorry not great picture quality

The rest of the drive was good, downhill all the way of course but the truck works great through the mountains. We pulled off at a Chevron cardlock station to double check our plan into Vancouver. The weather is amazing! Forecast high for today is 19C, with all the snow melt and muck on the roads from Alberta the rig looks terrible beside all the shiny BC vehicles.

Even one of the truckers at the cardlock asked us where we came from, what a mess!

beauty day!

We made a quick stop in Chilliwack at a Co-op cardlock for fuel and a sandwich. Dave called his cousin Michael who lives here in Chilliwack to see what his schedule was like. Michael was working and didn't have time to meet us but we made arrangements to meet up towards the end of April. We'll stay a couple of days and get a good visit in. The Co-op has a huge trucker parking area behind it so if anyone is going through it's easy access to a big parking area. Not sure if they allow overnight.

So here comes the drive into Vancouver! The traffic on the freeway was moderate as it's Monday afternoon so not the worst time to travel. We followed the GPS directions but I had read on the email from Capilano RV Park to take exit 14 from trans Canada Hwy #1 not exit 13 like the GPS was telling us. They should know right, they live there. Well everything was going great and Dave recognized the exit from streetview mapping earlier. Great stuff, oh look there's a sign for the RV park over there!! Why is the GPS saying turn right? We're in the right turn lane already and traffic is forcing our turn so I hope the GPS can turn us around. We're both getting a little anxious now and OMG it happened. We are in the lane to enter on the Lions Gate Bridge to Stanley Park and downtown VANCOUVER!!! This is not good. 

Dave is looking for height signs and I'm trying to look ahead and find a place to turn off this road before downtown. Of course the GPS is "recalculating" and telling us to turn into Stanley Park. Yeah that's not happening with a 60 foot rig that is 13'6"/4.1M tall. We're committed now... we are going into downtown Vancouver with the filthy dirty rig from Alberta.

The one and only picture we had time to take in the panic!

It seemed really warm in the cab, way warmer than 19C so we put the windows down, and we moved slowly forward desperately searching for a way out. GPS wanted us to go all the way through downtown to get back on Hwy #1 but we wanted to go back over Lions Gate so we looked for a right turn. Long story shortened but we managed 3 right turns and a left back on West Georgia to go back across Lions Gate Bridge. Wish we could have measured heart rates doing that maneuver, we're still sweating! We got back across the bridge and found the right road to the RV park and pulled in. They have an arch at the entrance marked 13'6" high! We're 13'6" to the a/c, man what next!! Their arch is actually higher than that, we fit with a couple inches to spare, thank you.

The park had a cement pad with a hose bib so our first stop was there to knock off a few pounds of road dirt. It took about an hour with Dave on the brush and me hosing her down. Finally it was time to park. As we have found with all campsites in cities, the sites are very small but we managed to get situated.

Good thing we didn't want to put our awning out! Lol At least we are in a great location to visit family in North Vancouver. We had a couple well deserved drinks and went to bed early. Welcome to the big city!!