Grungle's Australian Canadian American Delica roadtrip

Grungle · Post by **Grungle** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 11:17 pm

Ok, quick pictorial update...

In historical order:

Canmore, Alberta:

love the 4wd

hiking the double-black diamonds at sunshine

on the way to work

at work

hiking ha-ling peak.

magic, joker and tundra

the summer team - we built that buggy in 3 weeks to take summer tours with the dogs. its crazy fun :busted:

on the road:

icefields parkway

wells grey prov. park

lake annette - jasper

the cockpit. note: GPS, satellite radio, ipod, 400w inverter. behind the passenger is 2 laptops and $2500 worth of photography gear. yeah - we're doin' it tough...

brandywine falls

vancouver

so we've just got a week on the island then we start the big drive east. we should jump into the states (east coast) around Oct, then take 3 months to get all the way around. NY, Miami, San Diego, Seattle.
7 months down, 5 to go.

new BFG T/A KOs are on too - looks great.

oh, yeah - and i got engaged!

Jaz · Post by **Jaz** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 8:11 am

Congratulations on the engagement! Must be exciting :)

THanks for sharing your photos too, looks like you have certainly been roughing it over the last few months

I think that second last photo may be a waterfall that is halfway between Vancouver and Whistler maybe? Did you come down that way? If not, it certainly looks like it!

Good luck with the rest of your travels.

konadog · Post by **konadog** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 8:28 am

AWESOME shots! Just love the dogs - What fun it must be to get pulled by a pack of em like that - Very, very cool. Mine lives to run and comes cycling with us everyday. He has a coat that picks up a pills all the snow so would be a lousy sled dog, but he sure would like that summer buggy you've got there! The Mtn. shots are great too. Keep em coming!! (Btw, Wells Grey is a "Provincial", not Nat. park.)

Grungle · Post by **Grungle** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 9:57 am

Jaz wrote:
I think that second last photo may be a waterfall that is halfway between Vancouver and Whistler maybe? Did you come down that way? If not, it certainly looks like it!

yep, brandywine falls. it was late last night, and i couldnt remember where everything was...the wide-angle lens makes it all look a bit strange - i'm impressed you still recognized it!

konadog wrote:(Btw, Wells Grey is a "Provincial", not Nat. park.)

haha, sorry - fixed now. yeah, the dogs were awesome. we had 220 in the kennels, it was hard leaving them after 7 months. that buggy takes at least 10 dogs to pull it...possibly 16 on hot days with with a large load. on the snow we only run 6.

: with the new rubber (and badly in need of a good wash!); July 9 16.jpg (130.7 KiB) Viewed 4244 times

skysix · Post by **skysix** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 4:22 pm

Where are you now / heading next?

With your background re sled dogs I would highly recommend the forestry trunk road through Grande Cache to Grand prairie and work your way up the Alaska highway to Whitehorse, then continue to Inuvik, and on the way back take the eastern route to rejoin the Alaska highway again at Watson lake.

Go east to Ft Nelson (nice free wild hot springs) then north through Ft Liard (side trip to Wrigley is the north end of the summer accessible portion of the winter ice road that follows the McKenzie back up to Inuvik) to Yellowknife (side trip to Tibbet lake is the east end of the summer accessible portion of the winter ice road to the barrenlands Diamond Mines - think BHP).

I push Yellowknife because there are 5 or 6 kennels there (Becks is the biggest) in case you are looking at staying next winter...

South through Hay River to Peace River, then to Edmonton and take the Yellowhead accross Canada from there.

PM me for more details of what to expect on the roads - lots of Gravel...

Grungle · Post by **Grungle** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 5:10 am

wow, the delica population really thins out as you head east. we're in London Ontario now, and haven't seen another deli for about a week.
Funnily enough the last one we saw parked next to us at at ferry terminal!

its tough doing oil changes in car parks and campsites, but its getting done. Fuel is getting cheaper as we go east and the speed limits are a bit lower too, so that helps with the economy.

we're getting lots of strange looks from people now too - the most common thing lately is people asking if it's a "military" vehicle! (i guess because it's green?)

So we're off to niagra falls today, then quebec for a week or so, then around the east coast until mid-sept when we drop into the States.

anyway, some photos from the middle:

Erebus · Post by **Erebus** » Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:46 pm

Wow, I'm jealous, and I just finished a 33-day trip north. Enjoy Quebec City. Too bad you didn't make it in time for their 400th birthday.

If you can, the road along Cape Breton is spectacular.

Get to Newfoundland if you can. The ferry is expensive, and I think you have to do reservations. But get to the very east end of Nfld. Their tourism department uses the slogan "the far east of the western world" and "where the sun first rises on the New World." It's got to be great. It is the only province or territory I haven't seen yet. But some day...

All the New England states are great. Have lobster in Canada or US.

Further south, New Orleans is incredible, even after hurricane Katrina, especially if you are musically inclined. And if musical, Memphis and Nashville Tennessee are musts.

The Smoky Mountains (Tennessee and North Carolina) are spectacular in a different way from the Rockies.

When you hit the west coast of the US, come north on Hwy 1 on the Pacific Coast. It is regularly listed as one of the top 10 drives in the world. I've don't only a hundred km or so near San Francisco, and enjoyed that small part.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Keep up the postings, gotta get my travel fix somehow!

deLOOKA · Post by **deLOOKA** » Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:14 am

CURIOUS!

Where are all the other 4x4s?

Isaac

Grungle · Post by **Grungle** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 4:22 am

Erebus wrote:Wow, I'm jealous, and I just finished a 33-day trip north. Enjoy Quebec City. Too bad you didn't make it in time for their 400th birthday.

If you can, the road along Cape Breton is spectacular.

Get to Newfoundland if you can. The ferry is expensive, and I think you have to do reservations. But get to the very east end of Nfld. Their tourism department uses the slogan "the far east of the western world" and "where the sun first rises on the New World." It's got to be great. It is the only province or territory I haven't seen yet. But some day...

All the New England states are great. Have lobster in Canada or US.

Further south, New Orleans is incredible, even after hurricane Katrina, especially if you are musically inclined. And if musical, Memphis and Nashville Tennessee are musts.

The Smoky Mountains (Tennessee and North Carolina) are spectacular in a different way from the Rockies.

When you hit the west coast of the US, come north on Hwy 1 on the Pacific Coast. It is regularly listed as one of the top 10 drives in the world. I've don't only a hundred km or so near San Francisco, and enjoyed that small part.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Keep up the postings, gotta get my travel fix somehow!

We made it to Quebec city for the last weekend of their 400th celebrations...there was a big military parade and thousands of people around - we had a great time.

The road along Cape Breton is a definite, we've been looking forward to that since we started planning this thing. Unfortunately we won't make it to Labrador (running out of time) but we'll be getting into the seafood pretty soon - it's been a while!

Thanks for all the ideas too, there's a few there that we'll have to look into a bit further. I'll keep putting up photos when I can...the Delica is proving to pull a bit of attention over this side!

Grungle · Post by **Grungle** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:19 am

We're in Boston!
Made it over the border into Maine last week and have spent the last 6 days in various state forests and national parks throughout New England. We get about 2 people each day coming and talking to us about the Van - we've met some really interesting people with it. We actually met a guy who said he had one of 100 locally-delivered L300 (2wd) vans... He loved it.