Slow Roamers

07/11/2024

One might say, we’ve been around…

Since it’s Thursday and we’re back in the US of A, here’s a of our time spent in the states over two years. It’s a pretty randomized collection of photos, but they’re some of our favourites for one reason or another.

We’ve only got a few weeks of driving through the US before we cross into Mexico and leave familiar territory. Then, we won’t roam the United States for another two or more years…crazy.

Hope all y’all are wonderful. It’s another beautiful day, cherish it.

Thanks for reading. Keep on roamin’!✌🏼

02/11/2024

Fixing Our Rolling Death Trap | Pan American Highway Preparations

After four months of traipsing around the great white north, we're back at home on Quadra Island for some final fixes to our van. Good ol' Betty felt like a ...

01/11/2024

Friends, Roamers…it’s a big day. We hit 20K subscribers! Holy moly! Thank you to all of you who follow along and choose to watch our videos every day.

01/11/2024

Our van tour with Bob Wells of CheapRVliving just went live, give it a listen watch!

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/, we meet Meg and Alex, the adventurous couple behind the Slow Roamers YouTube channel! Originally fro...

27/10/2024

Can confirm: angry beaver noises

26/10/2024

2 Years in a Van: What We’ve Learned, Loved & Struggled With

So it's been bugging you! That van life stuff looks so amazing, maybe a tad unreal, in fact. Can it be as awesome as it's made to look? What's overlanding RE...

22/10/2024

Just boppin around the world one slow mile at a time.

Here’s a random collection of screen grabs from our northern summer travels over the past few months. You never know what to expect when you set out on a stretch of travel that has no itinerary and all you know for certain is that you’ll be back roughly during this week a few months from when you leave. I’d say that we did a pretty decent job of exploring through the North this summer; although I’d like to think that with the gained confidence and knowledge of the massive swath of land we loosely refer to as “the North”, when we return we’ll be better equipped to focus our efforts and truly strike out into the wild.

When I picture travel through Yukon, Alaska and Northern BC I always picture images I collected in my mind from the Ultimate Truck Challenge Show. Mud holes, tight tree tunnels, river crossings, hill climbs and the like, really epic off-road kinda stuff. For the most part we stuck to known and well-trodden roads this summer and that’s just because we had a lot to see…and we were driving a 2WD contractor van. I think our next visit we’ll have a smaller list of things to do and view and probably something with bigger tires and a transfer case.

Nonetheless, we’re stoked to have done as much as we did. In a week we’ll be leaving Canada in search of our next border crossing into Mexico…that’s where this adventure will really pick up again.

Thanks for reading, keep on roamin’!✌🏼

19/10/2024

Well, this is a first for us, a test if you will. Please enjoy.

Taking a Break from the Road | Camp Life ASMR

Van life, it's an amazing life. Surprisingly perhaps, it can also be a hectic life, anything but the "slow roaming" life we aspire to. Despite the beauty tha...

18/10/2024

Final images from our BC Roadtrip.

Driving through the Fraser canyon is always a treat. There’s a little section just south of Litton where the road is in a state of constant repair due to the unstable section of hillside. As you approach it from the north end it looks quite imposing. I quickly pulled over on the side of the road and told Meg we were flying the drone over that. Very glad I did, it turned out to be a really cool shot. Sometimes the desire to shoot anything is low, especially after long drive days with lots of shooting, but I’m always happy when I get out and grab a shot.

We’re nearing our final days here on Quadra, soon we’ll be back on the road. Stoked.

Thanks for reading, keep on roamin’!✌🏼

16/10/2024

Fall colours in Monkman Provincial Park, yes please.

Our final act during our time in Tumbler Ridge was to hike the Stone Corral Loop, a series of small crystal clear ponds a shallow cave and overlook. Turns out the hike is little more strenuous than the sign let on and near the end you find yourself climbing up a steep grade to reach the final pond, cave and overlook. The area is quiet and peaceful and you feel entrenched in wild solitude. 10/10 recommend.

Our time in Monkman Provincial Park finished we once again hit the road, continuing southward to Prince George. The journey to the north that we had embarked on back in June was quickly coming to an end. It’s crazy to think back on all that has happened this summer and now it’s all just memory.

Thanks for reading, keep on roamin’!✌🏼

15/10/2024

As far as waterfalls, Kinuseo Falls was the biggest that I’d ever seen in British Columbia.

After hiking Shipyard Titanic and a night spent by a river and large coal mine, we wandered over to Monkman Provincial Park. Our aim was to see Kinuseo Falls. It’s an easy drive in and short hike to the falls; however, finding the viewing platform closed, we wandered a little more and found ourselves at the base of the falls.

Kinuseo Falls is an impressive display of Mother Nature’s might. The sound was thunderous and the water tumultuous, a perpetual show of power lost to the open wilderness save for when an observant eye comes to watch for a few minutes. This rolling cascade of life had us thoroughly impressed.

I’ve added some supplemental photos of Shipyard Titanic and our journey into Tumbler Ridge as well. Beyond Tumbler Ridge our pace quickened even more and we were soon boarding a ferry to the island. It’s almost been three weeks since we arrived home and it’s been a whirlwind of family visits, van fixes and organizing for our departure.

Thanks for watching, keep on roamin’!✌🏼

14/10/2024

After the Canol Road we still had a remaining 3000km to get home so we made quick work of getting out of Yukon.

We still wanted to explore BC as much as possible but had a stop off in Prince George to make, so instead of heading directly down the Stewart Cassiar, we drove all the way southeast to Fort St.John on the Alaska highway before turning south and back west to pass through Tumbler Ridge. Our pace was fairly quick and our drive days longer than we like, but the drive was made ever more enjoyable with the persistent fall colours assaulting our visual sense at every turn.

Leaving the Rockies we drove right into the path and aftermath of a fierce storm and watched as clouds roiled overhead. The contrasting colours of brilliant fall leaves backlit by the sun and an imposing dark grey sky impressed us for a solid hour as we drove towards Fort Nelson.

Stopping off in charming little Tumbler Ridge we gathered some info at the visitor centre and then set out for the trails. Our first hike was Shipyard Titanic, Bismarck rock and Titanic’s Prow. This hike offers some super neat rock formations and a perfect opportunity to stretch your legs and get some cool views after only a short hike.

We stayed near Tumbler Ridge for a night so we could visit Monkman Provincial Park the next day. I’d never been to this area of BC and it struck me as fascinating that all this existed here all along. I’d often looked at the north central area of BC on maps, but never really paid close attention to the towns. If you get a chance to go, check out Tumbler Ridge it’s a super cool place.

Thanks for reading, keep on roamin’!✌🏼

12/10/2024

We have switched up our release time to 4PM, just fyi, in case you were wondering where this mornings release was. Please enjoy today’s video!😁

The Roadtrip to End All Roadtrips | We WON'T Be Coming Back

It's happening; our southbound PanAm expedition is unfolding before our eyes. The Northwest Territories and, likewise, the Yukon Territories, are in the rear...

11/10/2024

Then it was time to go, to suffer through the return journey. We’d need to go the full distance, again.

The crumby part about doing an out and back is that if it sucked going out, it’ll suck coming back. After only one night spent in Northwest Territories we all agreed that it would a better idea to start back immediately and stretch the trip out over three days, just doing 3-4 hours of driving a day. Great idea! Well, that didn’t happen.

The rain had rolled in, it was cold and quite miserable. We rolled up on a few different camp spots we’d eyeballed on the way up and in those moments chose to keep on going. With the rain and cold persisting further south, it simply didn’t seem like an enjoyable time to stay a night.

This kept up…all the way back. 10hrs of driving later, we pulled into a gravel pit only 15km from the Pelly barge. One van had nearly run out of fuel on the way back, the front end of our van felt like it was falling apart, we had a knock sensor code on our dash and all of us were exhausted. We’d just driven the entire North Canol Road in 10hrs…not something we were stoked to have done.

It’s all over now and I think I can speak for the four of us that we’re happy for that. Will we go back? Probably. There’s so much to explore out there and it’s so isolated that even in the peak season (hunting season, while we were there) we barely saw anyone. It would have been cool to go explore the Machtung mine and actually go to where the road turns into trail. But, that won’t be for another few years at the very least. Who knows what the state of the road will be when we return, hopefully deteriorated enough to present a challenge more than just a struggle for sanity.

Thanks for reading! Keep on roamin’!✌🏼

10/10/2024

Todays throwback Thursday brought to you by a delivery van that had no idea she was about to put on oversized shoes, saddled up with more weight than she’s supposed to carry and forced to mercilessly romp around the planet carrying two humans with a bunch of that stuff they call “wanderlust”.

Really, who knew? Can you imagine some assembly line technician slapping the hood of Betty before she left the plant saying, “Yep, this one’s destined for a life of Tom foolery! She gonna have a hard life.” Yeah, didn’t happen. This old contractor van was randomly distributed onto a car lot that was literally a sea of white. She was rolled off a truck along with her androgynous brothers and sisters and no one looked twice at her and said, “oh this one is unique.” Nope, that sure didn’t happen. But then, much like us humans, shortly after being popped out of the womb/factory, she was put into a life of hard labour, zipping around the city from job to job all day, used hard and put away wet. No one cared about this van, it was just like all the other white jalopies carting around tools and materials in the city.

All that, until some unwitting human damsel found her in a car lot and saw all the possibilities of a friendship. Betty was purchased, outfitted with a very lightweight interior build and then blissfully pranced off into the wilds of Canada, exploring on a whim. It was beautiful. But, all good things come to an end, the spice of life is change after all. One day, the unwitting human damsel brought home a new boyfriend. He liked heavy metal and off-road trucks. This was the start of something new and uncomfortable for Betty…she didn’t really know what to think of the changes she was going through, but if she dug deep, she could feel she liked it. Suddenly, mud, gravel, rocks, dust and water crossings were something she was being abrasively exposed to and, well…she liked that too.

Fast forward a year or so and her delivery van days are a distant memory. She chews up miles and spits them out then asks,”what’s for lunch?” She has so much metal in her face that all the younger vans tremble in her presence. She is Betty reborn. Bigger, better, badder.💪🏼

09/10/2024

The second graveyard is roughly the same size but seemingly more organized and situated in a far more epic setting.

After our time spent resting near Itsi Mountain we pressed on towards Macmillan Pass. We’d been told the pass was quite beautiful and that the road was a bit better. Beautiful yes, only marginally better road conditions though, but we weren’t about to complain about only mildly more smooth. Soon the mountains began to grow up alongside us and we arrived at the second graveyard. I didn’t count, but there’s possibly more trucks at the second sight and with about the same variation in model and brand. We browsed through the trucks for a while before continuing further into the pass.

After making our way past the Macmillan Pass airstrip we came across possibly the bluest river I have ever seen. It literally looked like someone dumped a bucket of light blue paint into the water (More pics of that to come).

Once making it to Northwest Territories we quickly packed it in for the night, we were all tired and the vans were running out of fuel. The next morning we awoke to snow on the mountains and ample cold in the air. Our plans of staying a day in NT had evaporated with the warmth of the day previous and we opted to start back down the road to get the drive over with.

Thanks for reading, keep on roamin’!✌🏼

08/10/2024

Honestly, if we’re ever back up north in the summer we may just return here to go for a swim.

Dragon lake along the Canol Rd was a shining example of pristine tranquility. The water was like glass and the fierce colours rebounded off the reflection making the image of fall doubly potent. The quiet and peace served us well while we were there. The day had been 6 hours of potholes and painfully slow driving.

The next day we set out on the second half of our projected journey. A fellow traveler had informed us that the road worsened past Dragon Lake. For once my optimism flared up and I said to myself, “surely it couldn’t get any worse than yesterday! This will be a breeze.” Optimism was wrong…very wrong. It was worse. This is why I’m a hopefully pessimist, only.

We didn’t make it to the end that day, we made it within 50km’s or so of the end. After an additional 6 hours of driving we were all spent and by spent I mean blisteringly, “sick and tired of this damn road!”

However, a quick tour of the first truck graveyard was cool and served to break up the drive a little. Wandering around the old wrecks gave us a momentary glimpse into the old days of leaf spring 6x6 trucks, no power steering and men with stronger back bones than we’ll ever grow.

Our spot for the night, a suggestion from two subscribers (John & Nick) was a welcome reprieve and we stayed for two nights. Kyle of and I went romping into the forest and felled a dead tree so we could have a fire. There’s nothing quite like a fire that you know you have unlimited wood for. You don’t need to save wood, you just keep on chucking it on, letting it get bigger and more fiery…it was a good fire.

Thanks for reading, keep on roamin’!✌🏼

07/10/2024

The start of the Canol Road, or as we affectionately called it, the road of Misery.

I can’t remember who told us or how I learned about the Canol road, but I remember it was shortly after we arrived in Yukon. After looking at it on the map we learned it fit perfectly into our roughly planned route through Yukon, so we tacked it onto the end of our trip. Then, I basically forgot about it. I just knew it was a road that led back into Northwest Territories and it had an army truck graveyard somewhere along it.

When we arrived at its start with in tow, we pretty much had no idea what we were in for. We crossed on the ferry, aired down the tires and commenced. The first 20km of the road was beautiful (the rest was beautiful too, but soon the beauty had to compete for our attention), the road was “relatively” smooth.

Arriving at Dragon Lake, our first camp, it had been 6 hours…to drive 100km. It’s hard to imagine 100 kilometres (60 miles) taking that long nowadays and even when I thought ahead to the next 100+ km’s I thought, “surely it won’t take us that long.” Spoiler: it did.

Thanks for reading! Keep on roamin’!✌🏼