We took it easy this morning because we had gotten such great images of the stone sheep yesterday. As we were preparing the RV to leave, the RV slide mechanism failed with about 6-8 inches of the slide still out. :( The error code on the controller unit said that there was no current to the front motor, so we got out the manual cranks and put the slide all the way in by hand. It was the first time we had had to do that, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but putting the slide in and out by hand is not something I'd like to do on a regular basis. Hooked up the Jeep and departed at 10:05.

We headed west and there wasn't a cloud in the sky! It was a real change from all of the cloudy, rainy days we had been having. It was also not very good for photography. We went by a road-kill young black bear just off the road not too far from our boondocking site. A couple of minutes further down the road we went past a young black bear feeding by the road that was probably the road-kill bear's sibling.

We stopped at 10:15 to photograph a group of wood bison near the road. It was J's first encounter with them, and the three calves were really cute still in their light brown coats. The light wasn't really good for photography, but I just couldn't resist capturing them. J stopped photographing them before I did because the mosquitoes there were ferocious.

Maybe a 1/4 mi down the road we came across another group of wood bison but didn't stop. We went by a young black bear and didn't stop either because the light was particularly bad for photographing black bears.

We stopped for lunch at the Liard River Lodge at 11:00. J usually doesn't have much for breakfast and likes to have brunch, so it was perfect timing for her. I would have been happier going down the road for another 40 minutes or so to the next lodge. I had a bacon cheeseburger, and we both enjoyed watching the woodpecker on a tree just outside the window.

We left and continued heading west. It was still bright and sunny, so we continued driving past the black bear, a black bear with cub, and another black bear cub before reaching the turnoff to Smith River Falls. We also continued driving past the falls, in part because it was sunny, and also because it was in the middle of a recent burn area. We went by Coal River at 12:22 and got out of the recent burn area. We were under a solid cloud layer by 12:50. I started to listen to an episode of Car Talk on my iPod.

We stopped at Contact Creek at 1:15 to get gas in the RV. We had been tipped off by the manager of the fiber-optic project (You may read more about him on July 12, 2009.) that gas would be cheaper here than in Watson Lake, the next town down the road.

We stopped to photograph an uncooperative black bear and went by some more wood bison.

We stopped at the Watson Lake visitor center, the home of the signpost forest, to find out exactly where the free sanistation is located in town.

We got to the Wye Lake Park to use the sanistation at 3:00. After dumping, I started filling up the fresh water tank. After a while, I noticed water leaking out from the RV in the area of the slide. Because the tank was taking longer than usual to fill up, I started to investigate the water leak and discovered that it was leaking into the RV somewhere around the filling port! I quickly turned off the water and we moved the RV over ...

To the public library where we had been planning to go online. J went in to go online and I started to take things out of my wardrobe closet to get access to the back side of the water filling port. The area was wet and I could see where a lot of the water that I had hoped would be going into the water tank had ended up going right into the wall of the RV. :( Our problem is that with the custom rework of the back bedroom to make it into an office, the hose from the water filling port has a very gentle slope immediately inside the RV for about 2 ft before it takes a short turn down to the top of the tank. So, if we're parked so that the RV leans towards the driver's side, which is the preferred orientation for dumping, the water in the almost-level section of hose can back up and escape through the loose fitting at the filling port. The hose had a loose hose clamp which I tightened, but the hose was still loose. I had to find a better solution. It turned out that the library doesn't have wireless internet access, so we left to find another access point. Along the way, we swung back by Wye Lake park to top off the water tank. I was careful not to park the RV with much of a lean, and the tank filled up quickly with only a little water leaking out through the poorly-fitting hose joint.

We went to Campground Services on the east end of Watson Lake to try their wireless internet and see if they could provide an O-ring or two that I could install between the water fill port and the hose. They didn't have any wireless, but the guy in the shop gave me, as in "free," two O-rings. I installed the O-rings while J went online using my USB stick and our Kyocera wireless router. When I finished, I also did some work online before we left around 6:25.

We stopped at a rest area around 6:55 for dinner. While J prepared dinner of black bean burritos, I took a look at our cell phone amp. It's "conveniently located" in a compartment below the floor of my wardrobe, in the same area as the water hose. The cell amp hasn't appeared to be doing anything for a while, so I took this opportunity to look at it while it was accessible. The fuse to the special DC-to-DC power supply for it was blown so I replaced it. That brought the cell amp back to life for a bit (the indicator LEDs lit up for a bit), but then the LEDs went off again. There was still power to the cell amp, so I don't know what's up with the cell amp. The burritos were delicious and I also enjoyed J's fresh guacamole sauce.

We drove through dense pockets of fireweed, one of J's favorite flowers.

After we got into a stiff headwind, I pulled off at a rest area so we could conserve some fuel. The aeronautical engineers and pilots out there will remember that the fluid dynamic drag of a bluff body increases with the square of the velocity, so if we were traveling at the same ground speed but with a really big headwind, then our drag would go up and our fuel efficiency would go down. After I put all of my stuff back in my wardrobe that had been up on the bed, the wind had died down so we moved on.

We stopped at a really nice boondocking spot just west of Rancheria Falls at 9:40. I unhooked the Jeep and left by myself to go explore.
I went to nearby Rancheria Falls and took the short hike out to the falls. Along the way, I must have fed a dozen mosquitos. :( When I got to the falls, there was a tree leaning over into the water, so I first did some "gardening" to clean up the scene before starting to photograph the falls. The falls are not very high, but they are somewhat interesting as the water goes over the dark rock. Because it was so late, the sun had effectively set over the nearby mountains, and it was easy to get a nice long exposure. I used a polarizer to maximize the reflection in the water.