“USA 🇺🇸 ~Through Canada 🇨🇦 ~Fifth and Final Leg / Returning to the Lower 48 from Alaska via Hope, British Columbia to Washington State USA 🇺🇸”

• August 27, 2023
• By Pen
• 0 Comment

Heading Back to The Lower 48 From Alaska

The Route:
From Hope, British Columbia to Yakima, Washington USA! 

Why Yakima?

As luck would have it, we discovered our passenger-side, front tire airbag suspension was not working, properly.

There was no point in hanging around Hope, British Columbia because the air quality continued to get worse, making the two things we wanted to do there, a bad idea: There was a hike through old train tunnels, plus an art-walk of chainsaw cut art in the old town. Bummer, but just taking the garbage to the dumpster made my throat hurt. So a hard-pass on outside activities. Plus, we need to address the airbag situation. The Whale is drivable, but don’t want to push our luck or anything.

I gotta say, we made our best effort to see what Canada had to offer, as far as spending more time, visiting some places, instead of just driving straight through back down from Alaska; like we did driving up to Alaska.

While we loved Stewart, BC, I’m pretty sure that had a lot to do with being on the border with Alaska. After we left Stewart, there was nothing memorable about our trip. It wasn’t just the fires; as those are certainly not Canadas fault… but the campgrounds were all a bit run down, old and not much to do, nearby that appealed to us. 

So, like at Prince Rupert, we left early and lost money doing so, but we have no idea what we are looking at for a timeframe on a fix for The Whale, so we got underway, after we found a place in Washington, that could get us in.

The day was long and hard; 8.5 hours. In that time, we crossed the border, fueled-up (we waited for USA pricing, which is a little cheaper) and stopped to warm-up some dinner.
The border-crossing took an hour and that was very frustrating, because they had us pull over for a search. They pretty much pulled all RVs over. They took fruit and potatoes.. oh well. The fruit would have been gone by Wednesday, but leaving early and all…..

We did break out into some sunshine, eventually on this day, making for a pretty drive in one area on I-5 and 405, over the summit.

Mostly, it was a relief to get over the USA border and have my phone working again. I still don’t have “messenger” access without internet, but I have everything else working.  While my phone is operational, my brain is not! Super tired. We both are, so gonna hit the rack early tonight, so we are ready to face tomorrow.

We also want to see if we get our “in-home” wifi service un-paused, by midnight tonight, so it’s ready in the morning. Let’s hope our service provider; T-Mobile got our request right and we will be fully operational with internet again! (our Gateway program with T-Mobile did not work in Canada or Alaska, though they told us it would) so we paused the service till we got back to the USA) FINGERS CROSSED!

We ended our very long day, following a very long road detour after Suma, Washington, as we tried to make our way to Interstate 5, South. Then we hit up Interstate 405, since I-5 going through Seattle was NOT going to happen for us, at rush-hour! It was plenty traffic-y, but we didn’t get stuck or anything.

We ended up in Yakima, Washington, and are parked overnight at the Cabelas store. The RV repair is three minutes away, so we will be there by 8AM.

We are only about 1.5 hours from our friends “6 Dogs” place, so it would be nice to get an easy fix for The Whale, so we don’t have to stay in a hotel, and get to move on with our plans in Washington and Oregon. This is the hard part about living in an RV full-time. It’s our home, so being displaced is a drag, with a mechanical issue and all. Will we have to order a part? That’s always worrisome this day and age…But, we are trying to think positive!

So that’s about it. I’m ending this blog series, since we are officially back in the USA, after driving down from the USA in Alaska, through Canada. We are glad it’s done and we never want to RV to Alaska ever again! We will fly or cruise in, again, for sure, but the roads are so ridiculously beat up, and I do not see a fix for them, anytime soon.
We love Alaska, and we had many moments of memorable highs, that we will never forget, but just don’t want to drive there, via our RV. It ain’t for whimps. Ain’t no joke!
One and done, for Team Saunders!!

Photo Dump 

Goodbye Hope, BC

Heading for the Sumas Crossing 

Many of us, leaving Canada 

Driving through Sumas after border. Don’t blink, or you will miss it!

Sunshine? Wow!!!!

Love to see safe wildlife crossings provided 

British Columbia 

USA