Prince George Harvest Host

Our journey continued up the Trans-Canada Highway on Tuesday, June 18th to just outside and south of Jasper, Alberta. The route took us up the Icefield Parkway to the Columbia Icefield RV Campground in Jasper National Park.

This is a large asphalt parking lot located on the west end of the Icefields Visitors Centre. There are 100 sites lined out on the asphalt. Unfortunately the entire parking lot is not level and gently slants towards the highway. It’s not intended for long-term use but does make for a nice rest stop or an overnight stay. If your RV is over 10ms (30ft) this site is the only option if you plan on exploring this area.

There is no water, services or firepits here but there are pit toilets. The Icefields Visitor Centre RV site has some of the nicest views you can find in the Canadian Rockies. Mount Athabasca, Mount Andromeda, Snow Dome, Mount Kitchener, Mount Wilcox and the Athabasca Glacier are all located near here. This area is absolutely beautiful but it was crowded with visitors and tour buses. We had hoped to spend the day here exploring the glacier but opted to just stop to refresh and take some photos then keep on truckin'.

Before getting to Jasper, we stopped after 209 miles and 3 plus hours of driving at the Wapiti Campground to spend the night. We were hooking up the next morning as a herd of elk grazed in the field across from our site. These handsome deer are known by many names. “Wapiti” is one. Wapi means “white” in some native Algonquian languages like the Shawnee and Cree word waapiti, which refers to the deer's large white rump patch.

On Thursday morning we turned west on Highway 16 along the Miette River and traveled past the west entrance to Jasper National Park towards the border with British Columbia. We stopped for fuel at the majestic Mount Robson Rest Area just past Moose Lake. The Mount Robson mountains looked like something out of the Swiss Alps.

Our intended stop for the day was Pruden Lake Provincial Park, about three and a half hours from Wapiti but upon our arrival we discovered the campsites were a little too tight for our RV's. We opted to continue on to the Costco in Prince George, British Columbia about 45 minutes away to consider other options available. While driving, I suggested to Karen she go to the Harvest Host website as soon as we had a cell signal and see if there were any in Prince George. She found two, but only one had three sites that would fit our size RV's.

John and Arlene have a Harvest Host called Edgar's Haven just outside Prince George on our route to Dawson Creek so we requested a two night stay when we made contact with them using the website. They got back to us via email and confirmed two spots available for the two nights we wanted to stay. In addition, they had water and electrical connections for us to use. The price was a very unbelieveable $14 a night! This leg of the trip was over four hours long and 244 miles when we finally stopped.

The two night stay from June 19th to June 21st gave us time to rest up from that long travel day. Karen was able to get in a swimming session. Both trucks got fueled up with diesel and DEF, and Sean got the oil change he was hoping to get done. I got the tires on the truck re-torqued, made a couple of additional grocery trips and made an obligatory Dairy Queen run, of course.

We departed Edgar's Haven on June 21 at 9AM with the goal of reaching Dawson Creek, British Columbia in the early afternoon. Dawson Creek is the official beginning of the Alaskan Canadian Highway, otherwise known as the ALCAN.