Empty building in the Empty town of Hazelton
My dash south from Calgary was beginning for the fall. I’d do my usual wait in SE BC hoping things didn’t get too cold before I could continue south into the USA. I also hoped all the new border crossing rules wouldn’t mess with me. I further hoped that my furnace would be working properly now. Guess which one I was disapointed on.
Child hand print
My time in Calgary was short. I didn’t have anything on my list really other than to vote. I had one last visit with friends, then headed south to find the warmest possible weather in BC while I was waiting to be able to return to the USA. I was returning to Koocanusa Lake. While I might do slightly better for weather on the coast, that would be a much longer drive and require me to stay in campgrounds. As you saw in my previous post, there is lots of free camping at Koocanusa, and the weather has a higher probability of remaining warm in the fall in this part of Canada.
I came right back to my previous spot, having not done a week there previously. It was a spot with as much sun as I could get in the area, and the road out to it was not too bad. I didn’t feel like dealing with the further out spots. The larches had changed colors, giving a nice contrast to look at with the spruce and cedar trees in the area. The warm weather was over, but it was still fairly pleasant for that time of year with temperatures just below freezing at night and climbing into the mid-teens in the day. My concentration was fixed on what the new requirements were to visit the United States as a Canadian snowbird.
The US federal government of 2025 is certainly not very communicative about any changes in border crossing rules. After some considerable digging I determined that the main change is that land travelers staying more than 30 days are now issued an I-94, at a cost of US$30. With that comes photographing and fingerprinting you. Yep, us sneaky Canadians now need to be tracked traveling in the USA because all visitors to the USA are treated with suspicion. But I’m trying stick to facts, so on that front one other fact you as a nomad traveler will need to be aware of is that you need to have a destination you are traveling to, with a proper address. Bureaucrats filling out forms need to fill out all of the “must fill in” fields just like you do on some websites; they will be grumpy if you can’t provide them an address. I advise planning on visiting a friend, a hotel, an RV park, anything with a fixed address. If you want to be super safe, book a stay in advance just in case customs decides to follow up on your destination details. I have not heard of any follow up yet, but paranoia is the new norm so it can’t hurt to be extra cautious. Obviously, if you are a snowbird that just travels down to a property or RV park for the winter, you just need to have that address at hand.
Grasmere General store pumps. They only sell diesel now since a large new gas station opened up on the Reserve down close to the border
Being prepared with this information quelled my fears a bit. It seemed most people were being let in normally just with extra paper work and money spending. I decided for my last week in Canada that I would move a little closer to my border crossing spot, so I returned to an old favorite spot of mine: Edwards Lake. The weather had deteriorated to cloudy with occasional bits of rain, but the snow was staying higher up in the hills. I was good with that! I’d never walked into Grasmere to visit the general store, so I did that one day. It was interesting talking to the shop owner, who was having their own issues with the USA, that being the tariffs leaving certain items suddenly costing much more to bring in. I was just there for garbage bags that I had forgotten on my resupply – but I brought some Cheezies too since I’d not have access to those for the next six months.
Edwards Spot seen from the road going to the cabins
I contented myself with walks everyday, it was really too cold to go exploring with the motorcycle. There are so many backroads there that I still found a few I had not walked yet. The weather never really got quite nice enough to break out the fishing rod, especially since to really do well there I’d have had to break out the kayak as well. That was fine, at this point I am happy if the temperature stays above freezing most of the time and no snow stays on the ground. This is the Remembrance Day week in Canada – I am definitely pushing the chances on hitting snow even down here. But as I had come back into Canada late in the spring, I had to wait until after the 11th to return to the USA.
Leaving Edwards
The day of my planned entry to the USA arrived. I started early in the day, with my final destination unknown. If things went quickly at the border crossing, I’d stop a bit further south, otherwise I could even camp just south of Eureka if I was delayed to the end of the day. Everything went smoothly, other than the added time and $ of having to go in and fill out an I-94. I did have one question I had not been able to get an answer to: would I have to fingerprint / photograph again next year for an I-94? The agent processing my request had no idea, he was one of the senior people and even he admitted that communication from the government was lacking. Everyone was friendly, and even if they are not, I advise you keep to maximum civil behavior at all times. Remember, these people have the power to deny your entry to the USA, then where are you going to over-winter with your rig?
The turn at Howe, ID had an interesting building
It was a huge relief to be through the border crossing without issues, but I had yet another recurrence of my ongoing furnace cycling warm-cool. I had thought about going back to Cranbrook, but there are lots of options to get parts in the States. My plan was to replace the second-last possible part that could be causing issues: the ignitor. They are known to be flaky and possibly mine was not reliably sensing the flame, thus shutting off regularly. Now that I was across the border, I had time to stop and pick up one of these if possible, so I did a bit of checking in Kalispell, the largest center I’d be passing through today. It turns out that Bish’s RV is also in Kalispell, so I hopped in there on the way figuring there was a good chance they would have this common part. But no, it turns out that all Bish’s do not have parts in store, you need to order everything from their central warehouse. But at least the service guy was nice enough to suggest S&S Campers and Canopies up the road might have the part. A quick phone call confirmed they did, so a two minute drive up the road later, I had my ignitor in hand.
Ignitors old and new
I had been hoping to make it down to the Twin Falls area, but between the parts hunting and a grocery stop I had been delayed quite a bit. I drove into the dark, deciding that stopping at a previous spot I’d been at just south of Birch Creek Campground, would do. This location was at a pretty high altitude, but my furnace was working well enough to keep up with that level of cold. I was not going to stay – it was onto Wilson Lake BLM campground, beside the day use area run by the county. I wanted to be in warm enough territory that if I couldn’t get my furnace running for some reason, I would not immediately freeze everything that night.
Hello old friend
I’m an old hand at ripping apart that furnace now so getting in there and replacing the ignitor was not too bad. It turns out the high temperature gasket seal is not too hard to get through so that seemed to have worked out as compared to using that two sided foam tape sealant. When I was writing the previous blog about repairs, it had been long enough that I wasn’t sure exactly what order I did all the work in, I thought I might have done the ignitor then, but my pictures show me that nope, that was my last repair as of the date I’m writing this. The old ignitor did seem to have a loose prong, so possibly it was creating an open circuit as it heated up. But then again, as I write this in March 2026, I’ve had the furnace acting up with warm-cool air cycling again. I’ve just not been able to test it thoroughly as I’ve never been below freezing since then. The saga will continue, I either will ignore the furnace if it heats ‘good enough’ or I’ll figure out my next repair/replacement(!) when I need to.
The (former?) Legion Hall in Hazelton
Local Cinder Rock for exteriors
I stuck around the Twin Falls area for a week, as the weather was decent enough down there. It’s a common first hang out area as I travel south every year due to its lower elevation giving warmer weather to this part of Idaho. It certainly has a lot of farming, with fall seeded crops coming up while I was there. I decided to walk into Hazelton one day. It’s your typical small farm town around here, not much going on. Judging by the lack of businesses it seems to be on the cusp of fading away to nothing. The only thing saving it is that it that there is the equal sized town of Eden down the way that has managed to hang on a gas station, small grocery store and one bar/grill place. Hazelton has its own bar/grill type place, but it needs to be open when I go in for lunch in order for me to patronize it.
Even for a 100 years, not much going on in Hazelton
I think this shop was still running, but again no one around
One thing Hazelton did not lack was proselytizers. Immediately upon entering town, a couple of young guys stop at the closed mechanic’s shop up the way and start walking towards me. My spidey sense is tingling right away, it’s either the welcome wagon or I am about to have another discussion about religion. It wasn’t the welcome wagon. These two had watched me walking into town and had decided I might be convertible to the Mormon faith. I am very familiar with their faith having had friends in High School of the persuasion. I even went to a few of their ‘introductory sessions’ so I know the spiel. Since I was walking into their town, I felt a two, five, ten fifteen minute conversation about how I wasn’t for conversion was in order in the name of diplomacy. Unfortunately, these two couldn’t even offer me any insight into what I was interested in: sites, shops or interesting history in town.
Bye Hazelton. Maybe next time your Bar & Grill will be open and I can spend some money in town.
Having failed to spend any money in Hazelton, I just walked around the countryside the rest of the time. I did find some new boondocking spots to the west of the lake; might try one of those next time I’m in the area. But it was still a bit chilly down here so I decided to head further south to my favorite stopping spot along the way: Pahranagat NWR. See you next time down there!
