Part 1: Across Canada Adventure with Warren Darbyson
My wife and I have embarked on a cross-Canada adventure starting from our home in Blind Bay, BC and heading to the furthest eastern point of Cape Breton Island. Along the way we will be visiting all Northern Lite dealerships in Canada.
We are camping in our 2021 8-11 EX Special Edition Wet Bath, the truck is a 2015 GMC Denali 3500 Duramax, short box with suspension modifications of upper stable loads by Torklift.
Day one of our trip we traveled to Edmonton, Alberta via the Yellowhead highway through Jasper. We were lucky enough to see a large brown bear, big horn sheep, and deer. The drive through the Rockies is beautiful, though sadly the peak of Mt. Robson wasn’t visible.
On day two, we visited two NL dealerships: Outback RV in Edmonton and Fraserway RV in Airdrie. We then drove to Lethbridge where we spent the night in the parking lot of Eldorado RV, another Northern Lite dealership and visited them in the morning.
On days three and four, we attended a graduation in Medicine Hat where we discovered that the AC in the truck had quit, and we were enjoying 27 degree Celsius temperatures! We managed to get an appointment at Davis GMC where they installed a new AC compressor and had us back on the road in just a few hours. I want to give a big “shout out” to this dealership and to Todd Scholfield, the service writer, who made it all happen.
Day five was a longer drive as we moved from Medicine hat to Saskatoon where we stayed in a very nice little campground called Gordon Howe Regional Campground. The sites were clean and well-maintained with great public facilities.
On day six we visited Traveland RV in Martensville, which is another NL dealership about 10 minutes outside of Saskatoon. The rest of that day we drove to Rivers, Manitoba where we camped at the Rivers Provincial Park, a nice little campground on a lake with full hook ups and live music.
On day seven, June 12, we hit the road for Kenora, ON. This is a beautiful town on the shores of Lake of the Woods. The lake hosts 14,552 islands and 105,000 kms of shoreline. It rained hard the entire drive to Kenora and stopped about ½ hour after we arrived giving us the opportunity to check out some of the town and go for a walk. We plan to stop in for a day on our way back and do a lake/dinner tour. We stayed at the beautiful Anicinabe Park campground with full hook ups, showers, laundry and a lake view.
Stay tuned for more dispatches from Warren as he travels across Canada!
