April 21, 2005

April 21, 2005

Powell River to Saltery Bay Provincial Park, B.C.

DAY 308

 

Today was sunny and warm.

Fairly early this morning the shop that was working on the cruise control phoned to say that they had diagnosed the problem, and fixed it, and were on their way to pick me up. They drove me back to their shop, showed me what was wrong ( I should have found it myself ! ), I paid the bill, and returned to Willingdon Beach Campground. We prepared the trailer for departure, hooked up, paid the bill, and checked out. We drove to Powell River's one large shopping mall. While Joanne went shopping for groceries and supplies at a number of different stores within the mall, I began to work on replacing the driver's side exterior door handle on the truck. I am very frustrated that something so simple as changing a door handle was so extremely difficult, because of design. I removed the door inside panel, and began disassembling, to remove the broken door handle. I finally got it off, but was not able to get the lock cylinder removed. By this time Joanne was back from shopping, so we took her niece Amelia's birthday gift to the Post Office inside the mall, and mailed it to Winnipeg. We drove to the GM dealer and squeezed the rig into their parking lot. I took the broken door handle inside to ask for help with removing the lock cylinder. The only way to get the lock cylinder out was for them to break open the already broken door handle. It was then that we discovered that the lock cylinder wouldn't come out because of corrosion, and it wasn't suitable for replacement in the new door handle. I bought a new lock cylinder. Then we had to phone the mobile locksmith in Powell River to come to the GM dealership and rekey the new lock cylinder to my existing truck key, before I could insert the cylinder into the new door handle. < BIG SIGH > The locksmith came, rekeyed the cylinder, I installed it into the new door handle, then started to work on re-installing the door handle into the door. Repeatedly I had to go into the GM dealer to get assistance with figuring something out, or to buy small miscellaneous parts and hardware that were either broken, or that I dropped down inside the door where they will rest eternally ! I spent all afternoon in the GM dealer parking lot working on this. I could only finish by having Joanne sit down beside the door, stick her arm, which is thinner than mine, into a small, narrow, tight opening at the bottom of the door, and blindly screw in a bolt that was impossible for me to get at. It was only after she finally managed to accomplish this near impossible task that we realized her lymphedema arm was getting all scratched and bruised. Not very good ! We'll have to watch her arm closely for the next few days. It was almost 5:00 P.M by the time I finished replacing the door handle and reassembling the door and interior panel. I walked across the street to an auto parts store and bought a license plate light bulb socket that I need to replace on the truck.

We drove south out of town, rushing to get to an RV parts dealer that we had seen an ad for, before they closed, to buy some parts I need for the trailer water heater. We missed the dealer, and I didn't need the parts badly enough to turn around and back track. We continued south on Sunshine Coast Highway 101 to Saltery Bay Provincial Park, 1 km. north of the ferry terminal at Saltery Bay. When we leave here, we will have to take a ferry from Saltery Bay to Earl's Cove. This is an unserviced, wilderness campground in a Pacific Coast rainforest. The forest is thick, and there is moss hanging off the trees. It's not quite the same as the Spanish Moss we saw on trees in the bayous of Mississippi and Louisiana, so I'm don't know if it's called Spanish Moss or if it has some other name. There's only a couple of other campers in the campground. We are in a site with a creek running a few feet behind the trailer. It's quite a lovely place, although desolate. We set up in the site ( turn off the truck key, extend the trailer slides ) then hiked through the forest to the ocean shoreline. Beautiful ! Rocky shoreline, lots of tidal pools for Bo to explore, lots of rocks for him to clamber over.

It was hard to hold onto him, and get dragged all over the rocks along the shoreline he wanted to explore. We decided since we were in the middle of nowhere, with nobody else around, to take the leash off him. He behaved extremely well, exploring excitedly, but not getting too far from us. When we called or whistled, he returned. When we were all finished exploring, we began the hike back to the campsite, with Bo still off leash. As we hiked through the forest, we did our first off leash obedience training session. He did great ! Good work, Bo ... good dog ! ! !

By this time it was cooling off, and the sun was setting, so we went inside the trailer to begin preparing supper. I was too tired, and too stressed, from today's door handle replacement ordeal to want to barbecue. Maybe tomorrow. Joanne made Louisiana style gumbo for supper. I added the last of my smoked salmon to my serving of it. Then I did today's accounting and journal entry while Joanne washed dishes and did some trip planning. We are so over budget, with much of it due to the recent transmission rebuild costs, and very expensive ferry fees. We have 2 more ferries to go. A hundred and fifty dollars worth of parts to replace a broken truck door handle doesn't help much !

DSK