Robert, Tuesday, May 27
We drove into Prince Rupert Today. It is clearly not a tourist town. I would describe it as "gritty." There are saw mills just on the other side of town. Although it is on the water I didn’t see fishing boats so I don’t know if there is a fishing industry here or not. We did eat dinner in town tonight. It was good but not great. We went to the ferry terminal to check it out before we show up Thursday morning with the trailer attached. The schedule we got when we made reservation said the ferry left at 9:00 am. Turns out that the time is 8:30 am. The schedule we got said we needed to be at the terminal 2 hours before departure. At the terminal they said it was 3 hours prior. That means we need to pull out of the campground at 5:20 am! I guess we will be hooked up and ready to roll Wednesday night. We will need to check that we have an alarm clock that works for Thursday!
We got fuel and paid the most ever–$5.44 per gallon! Takes your breath away, doesn’t it? I did compute milage and fuel consumption so far on this trip. We have driven just a little over 2,500 miles since we left home. Of that, 2,315 miles were towing and 190 miles not towing. We are getting 9.25 miles per gallon. We normally get about 10.5 miles per gallon when towing and 18 mpg when not towing but that is when we are on fairly level ground. So far we have towed quite a bit in the mountains and over mountain passes and that reduces the mpg a lot.
Prince Rupert is the first town we have stayed in with absolutely no cell phone service. Just before we entered Canada we added Canada to our calling plan. If we had not it would have cost a bundle to make calls in Canada. We have had pretty good cell phone service while along the major highways and in the cities here. The cell phone coverage has been spotty along the less than major highways and in the mountains. I do know that there is cell phone coverage in Prince Rupert as the manager of the campground has and uses his cell phone. I guess that Verizon just hasn’t signed an agreement with whoever is the cell phone provider here. We expect to have cell phone coverage when we get to Ketchikan.
Just before we left on this trip, we drove back east to see Leslie’s parents and to try to time it so that we could see newest grandchild. Unfortunately, grandson Henry was born while we were in Kansas driving back home. We left Cody and Molly with Leslie’s parents while we when to see friends in the Washington, DC area and to see John and Emily who were on the verge of Henry being born. While Cody and Molly were staying with Leslie’s parents, Ann, Leslie’s mother, taught Cody to try to catch the end of his leash while she swung it back and forth. Cody really liked the game and he would howl for Ann (or anyone else for that matter) to play the game with him. Well, he now has a new game and he has forgotten (almost) the leash game. I brought along a laser point that I had had for a long time to use when giving presentations. Now Cody howls to have someone shine the pointer on the ground while he chases it. Even Molly, who normally sleeps a lot, will get up and chase the red dot on the floor. As the space in the trailer is nowhere as large as the three story house they can and do run in when they are home, we use it to help them get some exercise.