RV Camping at Skagit Valley Provincial Park, BC in a Roadtrek Zion Campervan!

Hi everyone! It's Saturday, June 15th and we're just here at the rest stop near Hope. And we're going to be heading up to the Skagit Valley Provincial Park today. We're going to turn off Highway 1 to Silver Skagit Road. And apparently it's over 50 kilometers and most of it is unpaved. So we're going to see how our camper van does and if it doesn't do well, we might turn around and go somewhere else. Anyway, hope you enjoy the adventure with us! Background music playing. Lots of bottles. Background music playing. Silver Lake Provincial Park is across the river and it might be 100% reservable. I'll have to double check on that. Actually, Silver Lake is not reservable. First campers serve only 25 campsites but I guess it's full. It looks like the campground is on the other side of the lake and we can kind of see why it's full today. It's a beautiful lake. Background music playing. This road has a lot of potholes and when you're in the shadows of the trees sometimes you can't see how big they are. So Gordon is driving very slowly. I've been swearing often. It's a long way and it's going to take even longer because of the road conditions. We're driving somewhere usually between 20 and 25 kilometers an hour so fairly slowly. If you're in a camper, truck camper or something, you go much faster. Yeah. We just prefer that our rig isn't shaking up too much. Background music playing. We just passed the park gate and it looks like we're guesstimating about another 4 kilometers to the first campground, the Silver Tip campground. Nerves are getting a little bit frayed because the driving is challenging. Gordon's back is getting sore. So hopefully we can get there fairly soon. It's nice if you had a Jeep for a 4 wheel drive. Although you don't really need it. We've seen cars come up here. You probably can't see from this camera but last year there was a really bad fire here at the park. And they actually had it closed for most of the summer season. So we can see up on the mountain up there. There's a lot of burnt trees. Yeah, even down here. So you can see how the fire has moved through the forest here. And I think it's worse back where the Silver Tip campground, which is closed, would be. Right now I wish we'd actually had a truck with a camper on it. The road's quite fine. It's just in the van we have to drive quite slowly and a lot of washboard. It's a long road in. It's a beautiful area. Well, beautiful except for the part that had fire. Even then that's just part of the cycle. The mosquitoes, on the other hand, seem to be welcoming us. I don't think they get too many people coming through here right now. I think I've lost about a pint of blood in the last 5 minutes. We were planning to stay at the Silver Tip campground. We found the gate closed. It was closed, I think, because of the fires last year. The sign said that Silver Lake was full. Lake and Silver Tip were open. Yeah, so we just assumed it would be safe to go and stay there. But now we're going to have to go all the way to Ross Lake. I think the concern we have is that the water levels are apparently really low. And it's a reservoir. And the park page says that on the Canadian side, Ross Lake is dry. We're just wondering if there's any point in making the effort to go all the way over there just to see an empty lake bed. But we will just go and check it out and see what it's really like. And then we'll know for future. And for you guys, if you want to head out here. If you want to bring your horse to camp, this is the spot. Skyline 2 trail. We just passed the sign that said 60 kilometers an hour speed limit. And we're actually going 20. And slowing down at times. It's a slow crawl in our camper van. That's the Tittenden Bridge. We're finally here. Let's see how busy this place is. 19 to 88. We had some luck over here. Oh, there's one spot. 19. Oh, beautiful though. Very nice. ♪♪♪ Nice and water. $18 per party. So we're right there. There's a washroom close by. You can see there's a big gap though in the space between there and there. That's the spots. And these are all doubles. And they're out in the grass open area. And 70, 67, 64. I think those were all filled during the trees. Washington State, B.C. Probably a 10 minute walk from where we are. And we can cross the U.S. border. ♪♪♪ Beautiful scenery here. Reminds us of Strathcona Park actually on Vancouver Island. A little bit, yeah. Similar. Just gorgeous. Some of the mountain peaks are just great. Still some snow. Fantastic view. Pretty nice. We're going to head down to the main part of the lake. So these sites backing onto the scenic open area of the river are all observable. This is the open area where the children's playground is. These are all double sites. Almost all of them. Yeah. Look at those mountains. They're gorgeous. ♪♪♪♪ So that walk through the lake brought us across the U.S. border. And down here to this nice campsite. The Hozamin Campground. Some gorgeous spots if you are... There's a nice RV around... There's an RV around the corner. Still you can see the water is so low. We bypassed the border checkpoint. Shh! Don't tell anybody. I'm not sure that they actually mind since they don't actually mark where the border transition is. We're on just the road going back. We thought we'd walk this way and hopefully get to go past a border point. Well, what I heard was that there's just park rangers there. Pit toilet here on the U.S. side. Much nicer than the one on the Canadian side. So, thumbs up. They look like little houses. They are. Tiny homes. They're built very nicely. I don't know. We think this might be the border checkpoint because there's nobody here. There we go. Ross Lake on one side. National Recreation Area, North Cascades. National Park Service. And on the other... Skagit Valley Recreation Area, BC Provincial Parks. So here we are at the boundary. Yeah, this side Canada. Kilometers per hour, not miles per hour. Milk, cheese, and gas are much more expensive outside the United States. An international relationship at this point in time. Yes, I'm in the United States and he's in Canada. Yes. Eh? There's the marker up there on the hill. So you can see it. There's nobody really checking the border. Essentially, the only way to reach the North Cascades Park by road is from the Canada side. And that's why they're very lax with the border. I think you have to walk quite a few miles from a road on the Washington State side in order to access this park. So I think most of the people that use that campground over there are probably Canadians. Yeah, I think you drive all the way around. So thank you, U.S. National Park Service. Come up and do a little tip. It's very nice that they actually have a U.S. campground connected right to the Canadian border. That's very nice of them. Thank you. We Canadians appreciate it very much. Alright, happy camper. Summer ale. Organic summer ale from Nelson Brewing Company, the Kootenays. Excellent. Yeah. Very appropriate. Except we don't have a Westphalia. Yet. Yeah, if Roadtrek changes its name to Westphalia. Or they bring Westphalia. Or Rapido. Rapido sells Westphalia, so maybe they'll bring them in. Anyway, a very cheery looking beer. To happy campers everywhere. Cheers. Nice place, actually, for a beer. It's good. Yeah, I like it. And a nice color. Yeah, it worked out well. It was worth the long bumpy drive up here. Right? I like the camp, it's a long road. I noticed we're the only, there's a few trailers, no motorhomes, no other vans, actually. But we can make it, it's not hard, it's just gotta drive slowly. Okay, so some of you seem interested in my cooking. Which is very simple, but I got some fresh gnocchi from Whole Foods. And because one pot pasta cooking seems to be all the rage right now, so I actually just put, to save the water, I just put a little bit of water, just sort of to cover up the gnocchi. And then I threw in all the vegetables. And it's broccolini, red peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, and red onions. And then I just cooked it for a long time until the water evaporated. And then I added some pasta sauce, prepared pasta sauce, and there you go. A little bit starchy I think, but it's a nice simple way to make pasta. I also sprinkled some parmesan cheese on Gordon's with basil and soy cheese on mine. Just to finish it off. Good morning, everyone. I'm laughing because Gordon just fell over in his chair. We were just noting it's too bad the camera wasn't already running, but all that happened is I put the chair leg back and the ground was quite soft, and then I sat on it, and of course the chair leg went into the ground, and we're on a slight hill, so. Yeah, so he fell backwards and spilled his tea. So it's first thing in the morning, we just had breakfast, and now we'll get ready to pack up and leave. We've really enjoyed it here. I'd like to come back another time, and there's so much hiking here. We just did an overnight, and there's some hiking from here into Manning Park. You've seen some of our trail, our hikes from that side before. This will be coming in from the other side, so just a gorgeous area. Yeah, it's nice, and we had a really good night's sleep. It was very quiet. We're just sitting over here and enjoying the view and having our morning coffee and tea, and it's just gorgeous. It's funny, we were just saying in the camera shot, you can see the U.S. border, so we're right on the border, and so yesterday you can literally hike through the dry lake bed and cross into the United States, and of course there's no crossing or anything. So that's kind of neat. Last night I was out and scoped out where the river that's beside us goes because I was debating on going for a paddle this morning, and the big issue was just making sure I didn't go too far because the reservoir is not filled. The park person told us that they're not planning to fill the reservoir this year, so literally the lake's probably five kilometers away, and so I didn't want to get too far down the river and then have to walk all the... It's not that I mind walking all the way back, I just didn't know what the terrain would be like, but the weather's not that nice this morning. It's just getting sunny now. It was cloudy, so it'll have to be another trip, but it'll be a nice little paddle. I was just saying to Mickey, the paddle would probably be, if I just went down just a little past the border, I'd probably be going in the water for about 15 minutes max, maybe 10, but it'd probably take me 45 minutes to get back here just having to walk through all the lake bed and stuff, which is easy to do. It's just quite a bit of distance, but it'd be fun. Yeah, and another option for next time too is we could even go stay on the U.S. side and camp over there, and there's a lot of nice hiking trails in Washington State as well, part of the North Cascades National Park, I think. So yeah, great place to stay for a longer period, longer than overnight, especially after having to drive over that gravelly road for such a long way. Yeah, it's about 50 kilometers, which is certainly doable, but vans rattle when they go over all those roads, so we go a lot more slowly than we would if we were in a car or a truck. Definitely want to come back here, and it's not that far from where we live, and we've never been here before, which is kind of surprising. ♪♪♪ So we stopped at a day-use area called Rhododendron, and there is a short trail about 750 meters to the river, so we're just checking it out. Rhododendrons, but they're finished blooming already. I hope you enjoyed this trip to the Skagit Valley. It was just a one-night adventure for us. We're definitely coming back. We were just talking about wanting to have maybe at least three days here because there's so much hiking. We can get up into the mountains around us. Just great, really nice, and lots of little small trails as well, so we're keen to come back. If you enjoyed this video, please give us a thumbs up. If you haven't done so already, please don't forget to subscribe, and we'll see you next time. See you next time. ♪♪♪♪