Hi folks. Angela and I just finished a couple week great circle trip from the okanagan valley, up to YOHO, back tracking a bit to Golden and then on to Kootenay national park and then coming home thru the Monashee summit and on thru the Slocan highway back to the Okanagan. With all the side trips it was just under 1900 kilometers, so not a ton of driving this time.
So yes, this is a good route, but you have to be okay with taking a couple ferries as there are a couple lake crossings involved.
We started off with an overnight stay in Golden to touch base with a cousin and then on to Yoho national park for the main event. There are a few campgrounds in Yoho...all unserviced so you need to be self sufficient. They have potable water in many locations and a common sani-dump. Good shower facilities from what we are told although we didn't use them as we are self contained in the trailer. Here are a few pics of the campground and a few of the hikes we did in the area. We were there for 5 days but actually should have stayed 7 as we had to skip a few hikes. Oh well, now we have a reason to go back. We chose an open field site so we could see the mountains but the majority of the sites are in thick forest.
That's us waaay off on the right.
All set up for the long haul with spare water jugs and our trusty little 2 kw propane generator to charge the trailer battery. We have solar on the trailer roof but the weather was not always sunny and we were next to the tall trees which made for a short solar day. We ran the genny for about 1/2 an hour a night starting on day 3. We missed the generator hours (5-7) on day 5 so we just plugged the trailer into the tesla and left it in camp mode for the night. The water pump was starting to sound a little sluggish down around 11.8 volts. ๐ Not ideal but it works.
This is a view from within the campground. No idea on the name of the mountain. Sorry.
This old bake oven is also in the campground. Lots of railroad and mining history here. And yes you can hear the train in the distance in the campground. Its not that loud.
This is the centennial trail head in the campground itself. Its a nice easy 3 or 4 kilometers depending where you start. Carry bear spray and make noise.
Emerald lake hike. Maybe 5 kilometers depending on where you start.
Hike into Wapta falls. I'm picking and eating thimble berries. Bears love these things so we were on the look out.
This is tatakwa falls. Easy hike in. Maybe a kilometre max.
This is Radar the wonder dog. He is 13 years old and does all the hikes with us. We named him after our old air force trade. We bring him even on 8 and 10 kilometre hikes but I carry him in a pack when he gets tired. Angela and I are in our sixties. He is technically 91 years old in dog years. I hope I'm in as good a shape as he is when I'm 91 ๐
For those towing with an electric vehicle like us there are DC fast charge facilities at the Yoho visitors centre about 5 minutes from the campground. We popped out to it the afternoon we arrived and sucked up a few electrons while we were getting trail information. The little historic town of field is right there as well and worth walking around. It took us about an hour last year when we walked the town. Mostly bed and breakfasts' now. This is also a big ski area in winter. We also stopped and charged the last night before we hit the road for Kootenay national park as we burned thru a lot of electrons driving up the yoho valley and into Lake Louise in Alberta. This is a BC hydro station so super reliable...albeit a little slower than many. They are apparently updating it this year to a faster unit. Not complaining. BC hydro is doing a great job of populating the more out of the way highways in BC.
We went on to Radium and Kootenay national park where we hiked some more but it got smoky there because of forest fires so we moved on to Fort Steele where we hung out for a few days and took in some history. I'll put those pictures up another time. This was our charge stop in Radium which was again right outside the park. BC hydro is getting better at making these accessible for small trailers.
In fort steele we planned on just renting a 30 amp site but the campground lady noticed we were towing with a Tesla so she offered to upgrade us to a 50 amp site for an extra 10 bucks per night so we could charge on site. We normally just don't plug in the trailer and charge on the 30 amp pedestal at 24 amps but it was hot and we wanted to use the AC so we said sure. We have a special adapter for this situation although we rarely use it. A 14-50 to two TT30 receptacle splitter. The car got one for its 24 amp draw and the trailer got the other leg for its higher load. Worked out great, and it saved us a stop at the supercharger in Cranbrook. We sucked up about 55 kwh that night so it probably would have been about the same cost as the supercharger anyway. ๐
After fort steele we made our way to Kaslo for a few days. Great hiking and lots of history but we again got chased out by the smoke after a few days. Nice little town though.
One welcome surprise was the Kaslo campground literally last week installed 2 x FLO networked EV charge units at the bath house. I think we were one of the first campers to use them. Handy. 2 bucks an hour. We were all charged up by bedtime on the first night. Nice to see more campgrounds doing this. Not a big deal for us with our little 82 kwh battery but will be nice for the EV trucks coming out with their bigger batteries. (thinking of you Dan ๐ )
On to crawford bay and on the ferry across Kootenay lake. We felt very small next to that logging truck. ๐
We stayed in one more campground after the monashee summit and I think this is the picture but not really sure. They all start to look the same after awhile. Anyway, it was a nice spot and we had a little down time before heading home the next day. The smoke returned as we returned to our beautiful okanagan valley but we had some rain today and its getting better now.
Hope you enjoyed the pics...and i hope I didn't screw up the order of the pics.
Safe camping all.
J and A
So yes, this is a good route, but you have to be okay with taking a couple ferries as there are a couple lake crossings involved.
We started off with an overnight stay in Golden to touch base with a cousin and then on to Yoho national park for the main event. There are a few campgrounds in Yoho...all unserviced so you need to be self sufficient. They have potable water in many locations and a common sani-dump. Good shower facilities from what we are told although we didn't use them as we are self contained in the trailer. Here are a few pics of the campground and a few of the hikes we did in the area. We were there for 5 days but actually should have stayed 7 as we had to skip a few hikes. Oh well, now we have a reason to go back. We chose an open field site so we could see the mountains but the majority of the sites are in thick forest.
That's us waaay off on the right.
All set up for the long haul with spare water jugs and our trusty little 2 kw propane generator to charge the trailer battery. We have solar on the trailer roof but the weather was not always sunny and we were next to the tall trees which made for a short solar day. We ran the genny for about 1/2 an hour a night starting on day 3. We missed the generator hours (5-7) on day 5 so we just plugged the trailer into the tesla and left it in camp mode for the night. The water pump was starting to sound a little sluggish down around 11.8 volts. ๐ Not ideal but it works.
This is a view from within the campground. No idea on the name of the mountain. Sorry.
This old bake oven is also in the campground. Lots of railroad and mining history here. And yes you can hear the train in the distance in the campground. Its not that loud.
This is the centennial trail head in the campground itself. Its a nice easy 3 or 4 kilometers depending where you start. Carry bear spray and make noise.
Emerald lake hike. Maybe 5 kilometers depending on where you start.
Hike into Wapta falls. I'm picking and eating thimble berries. Bears love these things so we were on the look out.
This is tatakwa falls. Easy hike in. Maybe a kilometre max.
This is Radar the wonder dog. He is 13 years old and does all the hikes with us. We named him after our old air force trade. We bring him even on 8 and 10 kilometre hikes but I carry him in a pack when he gets tired. Angela and I are in our sixties. He is technically 91 years old in dog years. I hope I'm in as good a shape as he is when I'm 91 ๐
For those towing with an electric vehicle like us there are DC fast charge facilities at the Yoho visitors centre about 5 minutes from the campground. We popped out to it the afternoon we arrived and sucked up a few electrons while we were getting trail information. The little historic town of field is right there as well and worth walking around. It took us about an hour last year when we walked the town. Mostly bed and breakfasts' now. This is also a big ski area in winter. We also stopped and charged the last night before we hit the road for Kootenay national park as we burned thru a lot of electrons driving up the yoho valley and into Lake Louise in Alberta. This is a BC hydro station so super reliable...albeit a little slower than many. They are apparently updating it this year to a faster unit. Not complaining. BC hydro is doing a great job of populating the more out of the way highways in BC.
We went on to Radium and Kootenay national park where we hiked some more but it got smoky there because of forest fires so we moved on to Fort Steele where we hung out for a few days and took in some history. I'll put those pictures up another time. This was our charge stop in Radium which was again right outside the park. BC hydro is getting better at making these accessible for small trailers.
In fort steele we planned on just renting a 30 amp site but the campground lady noticed we were towing with a Tesla so she offered to upgrade us to a 50 amp site for an extra 10 bucks per night so we could charge on site. We normally just don't plug in the trailer and charge on the 30 amp pedestal at 24 amps but it was hot and we wanted to use the AC so we said sure. We have a special adapter for this situation although we rarely use it. A 14-50 to two TT30 receptacle splitter. The car got one for its 24 amp draw and the trailer got the other leg for its higher load. Worked out great, and it saved us a stop at the supercharger in Cranbrook. We sucked up about 55 kwh that night so it probably would have been about the same cost as the supercharger anyway. ๐
After fort steele we made our way to Kaslo for a few days. Great hiking and lots of history but we again got chased out by the smoke after a few days. Nice little town though.
One welcome surprise was the Kaslo campground literally last week installed 2 x FLO networked EV charge units at the bath house. I think we were one of the first campers to use them. Handy. 2 bucks an hour. We were all charged up by bedtime on the first night. Nice to see more campgrounds doing this. Not a big deal for us with our little 82 kwh battery but will be nice for the EV trucks coming out with their bigger batteries. (thinking of you Dan ๐ )
On to crawford bay and on the ferry across Kootenay lake. We felt very small next to that logging truck. ๐
We stayed in one more campground after the monashee summit and I think this is the picture but not really sure. They all start to look the same after awhile. Anyway, it was a nice spot and we had a little down time before heading home the next day. The smoke returned as we returned to our beautiful okanagan valley but we had some rain today and its getting better now.
Hope you enjoyed the pics...and i hope I didn't screw up the order of the pics.
Safe camping all.
J and A
