roadquill1

Greetings to the family and friends who have never deleted their subscription to Roadquill!
I hope that you have noticed that I now own my own website: roadquill.ca. As the name suggests, it exists for the purpose of writing a journal-style of travel notes. The earlier “Roadquill” notes were all within the WordPress site, and related stories of our travels in the 2006 Adventurer 8W camper, from which we finally parted company last Spring. We replaced it in May 2023 with a new “Truck House” – a 21’ 5th Wheel trailer from Escape, made in Chilliwack, BC. We have informally named it “TruckHouse Jr.”
We are thrilled with this new travel trailer, as my last blog note from June 2023 indicated.

Now…it is time to move on – again! However, I need to cover off on a few incidents that happened to us during the camping months of June to September of 2023. Our first trip after returning to Vancouver Island from our maiden voyage (Osoyoos’ Nk’Mip campground) was to Quadra Island. This is accessible via a ferry from Campbell River, BC. Loading onto the ferry was a bit in question due to the low tide, but we easily cleared the deck of the ferry. We stayed at Taku Lodge campground for a couple days, and rode our e-bikes around Herriot Bay to the Provincial Park at Rebecca Spit to enjoy the sunshine and lovely beach area.

Our plan for mid-August was to join a large Roland family reunion of close Saltspring Island friends – Dave and Moya Roland on August 12. Their son had prepared his 5 acre property near Black Creek for a number of RVs and tent campers, so we were excited to participate and show off our new TruckHouse Jr. We packed the trailer, hitched it up, checked security pins and safety chains and pulled away from the house. As we passed the house, we remembered something needed from the house, so I eased around the corner and up the hill onto Uplands Drive and circled the block.

I idled the truck in front of the house as Sandy took care of the issue in the house and once again, I turned the corner onto Uplands heading uphill, but a rapidly approaching vehicle behind me caused me to accelerate quickly. Suddenly there was a tremendous bang, the truck bounced, and I noticed, to my horror that the fifth wheel had come off the Anderson Hitch and was hanging by one safety chain while it rode on the now crushed tailgate of the truck. Since we were blocking traffic on the hill, I dragged the trailer 30 metres or so to a safe pullout. (The automatic brakes had been set when the trailer came unhitched, so we lost some rubber from our tires.)

Upon assessing the damage, we realized that the truck was drivable and the trailer undamaged, but the hitch, while usable in a short term, probably was dangerously compromised and must be replaced. I called a BCAA Tow Truck and the driver agreed with our assessment. He had no mechanism for towing us but said if I could get it hitched up again, he would follow me to a hitch place to assess the damage. The hitch guy replied that the hitch was a write-off but I managed to get TruckHouse Jr. home and safely parked while we headed off to Black Creek for a day trip instead of a camping experience. We ordered a new hitch from Trademasters in Chilliwack. I guess that the hitch failure was a failure on my part to ensure that the safety pin on the hitch had engaged!

By the end of August, the hitch had been replaced, the truck scheduled for body work (mostly tailgate issues) in December, and I had constructed, out of plywood, a new tailgate.

With TruckHouse Jr. in tow, we headed over to the Lower Mainland where we joined farming efforts at Sandy’s cousin’s Aldergrove Farm (and home of “Locality Brewing”). For several days we helped with harvesting barley, threshing, and finally hops picking.

With the harvest in, we headed east to Penticton for our annual visit to South Beach Gardens on Skaha Lake. After the Labour Day weekend, the campground quickly empties and we had many sites to choose from. We spent about 10 days in Penticton with visits to my cousin Jan Beebe, and her husband Darrell. They were the ones who first introduced us to Escape trailers, and we were once again able to enthusiastically compare notes on the many wonderful features of the 5th wheel. One day we rode our bikes around the oxbow pond to a modular home trailer park. (In May when we visited, we were at site C24, and a modular home occupant had called to us from across the water asking us if we were interested in a “5th wheel tailgate for the GMC Sierra”. At that time I replied “no” that we were okay with our own arrangement.) Now, however, after the hitch incident, I needed a new tailgate to replace my constructed plywood one.

When I knocked at the door, a small, very friendly elderly gentleman, answered and introduced himself as “Bob”. After I told him the reason for our visit, he said he still had the tailgate, but then added, “I am now a caretaker for my wife” and then invited us in to meet his wife. We were a bit concerned about whether this would be awkward, or appropriate or not, but we followed him into his unit where we met his wife, Judy, whose only disability was a badly broken arm in a cast. Her mental acuity was amazing and the two of them were wonderful hosts! I finally managed to close the deal on the tailgate for $75, and it was a perfect replacement for my wooden construction!

The other notable happening in Penticton in September was our 62 km round-trip ride up the Kettle Valley Rail Trail from Skaha Lake to several kilometers beyond the first tunnel. It was a wonderful ride and our e-bikes returned with lots of juice left in the batteries! (More than we had, I think!!)

In late September, our final stop for the season was at Kitty Coleman Provincial Park, a few kilometres beyond the Comox Ferry terminal. We were located in a beach-side site and were able to enjoy fabulous views of Georgia Strait and the mountains of Desolation Sound and behind Powell River. We enjoyed our e-bike rides, and rode in to Comox to invite Mike Harris to our site for a dinner. (Mike, and his wife Marlene, had accompanied us on two separate southern trips to Arizona a few years ago.) Mike was out, but his daughter Michelle said he would love that, so we later drove back to bring him to Kitty Coleman for supper.

The only further TruckHouse Jr. activity in 2023 was a full waxing on October 5 followed by excruciatingly painful parking process under our garage tent while we blocked traffic and onlookers (mostly the Quilter) shortened their finger nails!

And that, dear folks, brings us to the end of 2023, the end of TruckHouse 1 adventures, and the beginning of new RV experiences in our luxurious new Escape 5.0. We hope that we will be able to encounter some of you during our travels and show off our wonderful road camper – TruckHouse Jr.!

Much love and best wishes from…

Tony and Sandy

“Quill, and Quilter”