Getting Off the Grid in Ontario /// EFRT S5•EP26

Welcome to another episode of the epic family road trip In last week's episode of the epic family road trip after three grueling days and two cold nights stranded in the snowy mountains of british columbia canada we finally made it out but not in the direction we had initially planned check out episodes 23 24 and 25 to see how this adventure unfolded once we made it to safety we refueled both jeeps which were running dangerously low on fuel after refueling and resting up we began our trek 2 000 miles east to our off the grid cabin in ontario before jumping on the trans canada highway we did a bit of maintenance and repairs on the jeeps and matthew from the canadian tire auto center took good care of us and got us back in tip-top shape for the long journey ahead when the jeeps are ready to go we hit the road our first camp for the trip was in crow's nest pass alberta we now felt like we were making some headway because we had crossed the border and were one step closer to our destination this was a nice good night's sleep very quiet nobody came by we'll mark it as usual on gaia gps and make sure we upload the gpx files so this is a scene of what they call the frank slide and it's really if you look over here um a big mountain that used to peak way up here collapsed because they were doing uh mining underneath it and it gave way at four o'clock in the morning and buried a town killed about 70 people but all the the remains are here today to this day and they've made the highway go right through the slide there's um a museum up there but of course everything's closed right now all the way across canada so we're going to be able to look at some sites but not go in just because the the covid thing but um pretty uh scary to know that an entire mountain could collapse and just spread out you can see how far the rock slide is gone it's crazy there were some miners that were actually working uh at the time at four o'clock in the morning when it collapsed and it buried the entrance to the mine but they were they had equipment with them and they were able to get out of the uh the rubble and live so pretty neat story this is how it looked in 1903 a little piece of canadian history the town used to be called frank it's now called frank slide i read a book as a kid i think it was called northwest mounted police or something like that or fort mcleod i think it was but there's a lot of history with the police force that used to be called the northwest mounted police they joined up and became the royal canadian mounted police but here's the original old barracks here in fort mcleod that looks like a bit of a fortress just getting down some water but uh we've been on the road all day making our way trying to make our way back to ontario but the government shut down everything so we can't camp at campgrounds apparently it's the second stop we've made when hit a hit a gate plus hotels are closed motels everything so i don't know what they expect people to do but we'll try to find something there's not a lot of blm or uh crown land around here that you can camp on so we still got fresh mountain water from bc so that's a bonus after finding several gates locked we continued our search and drove about a half an hour farther down the road and found a dimly lit hotel which looked closed we knocked on the door a few times rang the bell and after a while an attendant came out and actually sold us a room we were so relieved we had a great sleep in the hotel everybody got a shower and the next morning we hit the road after driving all day from saskatchewan across manitoba and into ontario we stopped for a bathroom break and mom made an exciting discovery look at that crazy i was going right there it was just sitting in the ground you have no idea how long carol's been looking and just scanning the sides of the roads everywhere we go across america looking for a moose probably probably two years now but then i can't believe you found that mother's day yeah that's perfect congratulations happy mother's day that is a nice find that is a perfect shape this is huge look at that it weighs a lot oh i can't believe one that's insane beautiful i can't believe it yeah that's crazy you just were like oh my goodness i heard mom yell i was like oh no what is it three and a half days dusk till dawn long days but we've crossed the entire country road weary and tired but super super excited to be back four feet down at the cabin for a while we're gonna make some really awesome videos for you show you what life is like good morning it is may 12th and we just had an incredible sleep last night after three and a half days of hard driving crossed all the way from bc to ontario we made it safe and sound we're at the lake this is um our favorite place on earth we say that about a lot of places but this little cabin here on a on an off-grid island surrounded by pristine waters and there's nobody up here especially this year when we got to the marina it was weird everything was chained off and blocked off um you can't put a boat there we have uh we're part of an association that has a piece of land on the mainland so we're okay but um yeah i don't know what's gonna happen but we're here and uh yeah we're so excited there's all kinds of little projects we have to open the water today so hopefully we'll get that done and then offload our food out of the uh jeeps we'll do a couple loads in the boat hauling the gear from the jeeps out to the island we then worked on getting the water system going so that we could take a hot shower and fill up our wood burning hot tub we had been dreaming of relaxing in that tub ever since those cold days up in the mountains all right we seem to have gotten the water going um it was easier than i thought we had to prime it a couple of times and then up it went now we're just going through the cabin making sure that nothing's leaking we've got a water heater there uh seems to have good pressure in the kitchen in the bathroom just checking the shower and then i'm going to turn on the water heater which is propane based so it's all no electricity and man if it's that easy we'll be thankful we figured out last year you know typically up here because everything freezes over the winter so but we figured out a solution for it i drained all the water from the entire system and then we actually filled a garbage container with antifreeze uh rv antifreeze and then sucked it into the pump into the tanks into the entire system so um into the water heater and so on and left it over wintered with the antifreeze throughout and that seems to have done the trick so we're very happy about that so we've got an antique washer and wringer made by the beady company out of aloran ontario back in the 50s this thing probably hasn't run since then but we're determined to get it going because i think this would be an awesome solution for doing laundry up here so probably what it needs is just take it apart and grease and oil all any moving parts there's some gears down in there and uh we'll just open them up and get them greased up but we got to be very careful because there's probably impossible to get parts for these now if we don't break anything i think we're good to go because we have something happening down there so that's a good sign that'd be so cool so here's all the inner workings and we've got the motor the switch is covered in plastic still so everything's really quite good shape you've got a drain switch and the engage for the washer when i turn on the motor it works the electric motor is good we just have to see if it'll spin the other side now yeah that's so cool all right let's try to put the washer back in it we might have ourselves a working 1950s washer there we go we just fill it up with water clean it up this thing worked after the chores were done and the hot tub was filled it was finally time to start warming it up the salty breeze how's the water boy all right so what we're making here is just a charcoal can't kill them um we just have been collecting sticks setting them up right in the shape that we want our account to be um and earlier we just dug like a half half a foot to the ground and we found a whole bunch of really good clay we had seen it last year when we were digging for two years ago and we're digging the foundation of our cabin and we just remembered that and are now going to kind of plaster the hole build a wall and then kind of plaster it up all these sticks and create um the kiln itself and light a fire from the top down let it burn till about the bottom of holes in the bottom of the clay and once we see the fire getting to the point we want we'll close it all up let it just smolder and it will turn into charcoal in the end at least that's the end results we hope to get so right now we're just going to build this just watching it burn down through all the air holes we're starting to see a lot of coals drop and light once we see the coals getting down that far close it up all the air holes will be closed top will be closed and we'll leave it overnight and then in the morning check it out so we got a bit of charcoal from our charcoal kiln here um that little pile there's all should be all good charcoal we're gonna try lighting it in a minute but uh this time i think what we did wrong because like good portion of the wood is still actual wood and didn't even burn at all i think we closed it off too early um so we're just going to look into seeing what the best time would be by trying it again and again what the best time to close it all up and stop the oxygen flow and the fire would be to get the most uh yield of charcoal that's really cool we still have our structure so we'll probably just pull out some of the dead sticks and then rebuild up a stick thing still have all the clay and really reshape the walls and start burning some more make sure you stay tuned we're going to bring you a whole new series featuring cabin life lake life and we're going to be overlanding and exploring the back roads of our own backyard here in beautiful ontario canada stay tuned and in the meantime we'll see you down the road