Alaskan Roadtrip! Day 3 June 25th, 2012

The plan for Monday was to get into Canada, then cover some good ground towards Alaska. Chopaka Lake is located just a few miles from the Nighthawk border crossing so it was an easy choice to cross there. Additionally I had hopes of the crossing going quickly since it is the quietest border crossing in Washington.

Unfortunately, the guards see it a different way. Namely, since it’s a quiet crossing, they have more time to be thorough. Apparently two brothers (with short hair) on an adventure together is suspicious enough to warrant a search of our persons, the Jeep and the trailer. After 45 minutes and, of course, them not finding anything, we were allowed to repack our gear and go on our way.

The first stop in BC would be Merritt, where we would first hit up an ATM (ATB in Canada) for some Canadian money then a gas station. Before we went in to use the ATB, I decided to fire up my laptop to take advantage of the Wi-Fi from the Starbucks next door. In the middle of a Google Voice call with my mom, the screen went white. After tinkering with the computer some, I came to the conclusion that there was some sort of physical defect causing the issued with my laptop, something I wouldn’t be able to take care of on the road.

Great. All the planning I’d done, all on my computer. At least I’d be able to access my email on phone to review our reservations. We would later pick up a calling card and call home to request the delivery of Keegan’s laptop to us in Seward. The very laptop I’d determined unnecessary before we’d hit the road, "because we'll have mine."

 The next issue, we headed into the gas station to get cash from the ATB only to discover that it was out of order due to a power spike earlier in the day. Unfortunately, this meant a nearly 40 mile detour to another ATB in Kamloops, putting us even further behind schedule.

After running around southern BC for several hours, and seeing our first moose, a calf running along the highway, we eventually pulled into 100 Mile House to look for a campground. We found a pleasant municipal campground but decided we could just keep going as it was still fairly early (7pm) We opened the trusty milepost and settled on Lac La Hache Provincial Park, another half hours drive north.

As we got into the area, we noticed lightning to the west. We found a camp site in the campground, dropped the trailer then headed for the day use area alongside the lake to watch the storm and enjoy dinner. Rain soon moved into the area but died down for the night by the time we got around to setting up camp.