A bit of frustration, but it ended up better than expected

Yesterday's first stop was back at the visitors center in Hazelton to use their free wifi. They also have a free RV dump station there, so we took advantage of that by using Sherman's shower and dumping the grey tank and filling the fresh water tank.

Hazelton is what we would call an RVFT. What's an RVFT, you ask...?

It's an RV Friendly Town! This is actually an Australian term used by them to describe the following...

An RVFT welcome RVers, they have a free dump and fill station, they have free or cheap camping or overnight parking available nearby, and they have a specific RV day use parking area in the old town. As we've traveled in the motorhome over the past 11 years, it's obvious that some communities are more welcoming than others when it comes to RVs.

Hazelton is one such welcoming town.

We left there and drove to the other side of town where we had been told about a hike to a waterfall.

Falls near Hazelton, British Columbia.

It was only about a 15 minute walk to the falls, and we had seen a branch of the trail marked "lookout", so we decided to do that one as well. It was a bit more strenuous, (they never put lookouts at the bottom!) so we got the blood flowing for 20 minutes or so. Still a fairly short hike though.

The trail.

And, the lookout over the town.

From there, we headed south to Smithers, British Columbia. We have tires on order at their local Kal Tire store and they are supposed to be in by Wednesday lunch time. But Sherman has a few other minor problems we need to get fixed, so arriving early should give us a chance to get those repairs done.

Scenery along the way.

We stopped at the native town of Moricetown to watch the locals do some fishing...

The natives have been fishing at this spot for hundreds of years.

They use a big pole with a net on the end. 

This guy got one!

The canyon.

We arrived in Smithers (pop 5,300) at about 3:00pm and stopped at the Kal Tire store. I knew the tires wouldn't be in yet, although two of them had showed up. The other four were being shipped in from a different location. Spoke to them about our other problems, and he said that they couldn't do any of the repairs there. They also wouldn't be able to fit Sherman onto their wheel alignment rack, but said that the store in Prince George would be able to do it later. That's fine.

Regarding the other problems, he referred us to a heavy truck repair shop.

We then went and did some grocery shopping before heading to the heavy truck place on the other side of town. Unfortunately, they weren't interested in doing Sherman's repairs... too busy with heavy diesel truck stuff, and I'm not surprised. They gave us the names of a couple of other places to try in town.

There was a possible overnight spot near the heavy truck place, but there were already two RVs there and a third would have felt crowded. So we went looking elsewhere. There's also a municipal campground here, but $26 CAD ($20 USD) for an unserviced site is too rich for our blood. We then tried a trailhead near town, but there wasn't enough room for a motorhome. We don't often have much problem finding a good free overnight spot, but this was one of those situations where it just wasn't coming together. Sure, we could have parked at the local Safeway grocery store, but Walmart style overnighting is truly a last resort for us.

We went out to the airport, but this is the first time we have found an airport parking lot that's not level! And, they wanted $5 a night for overnight parking. We probably could have made it work, but it wasn't ideal.

I had a closer look at the maps.me app on our phone, and saw a dead end road running alongside the river. Hmph. Might be worth a try. By this point, we were probably spending $10 on gas driving around looking for a spot. Good thing this doesn't happen too often!

We drove down the road, and were almost ready to head to Safeway when we saw it. A little turn off between the road and the river. We looked at each other and smiled... "this will do!"

The road was a little rough going in, but Sherman has done worse.

View out our bedroom window.

GPS 54.800129, -127.159484

The RCMP drove by once in the evening, slowed to look at us, then carried on to the dead end, and back around. No problem, and we didn't think there would be.

Another beautiful day today, and a bit cooler with a forecast high of 24C (75F).

Yesterday's drive, 73 kms (45 miles).

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Good deal on an RV Tire Pressure Gauge

And in Canada, a great deal on a refurbished HP laptop...

HP Elitebook 840 G1,Core i5,8GB RAM,320GB,Win 10 Pro(Certified Refurbished)