Junior Rangers and Cadets return home after training in Whitehorse
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Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Epic RV Road Trip Through Canada Includes Creative Campground Cooking
An ambitious itinerary through British Columbia covered nearly 1,200 miles in 10 days, a journey filled with astonishing scenery, excellent hiking and biking and some fun meals cooked at the campground. Here are a few suggestions on how to make outdoor dinners extra special this summer. Manning Provincial Park in British Columbia offers an excellent place to camp with electrical ... More hookups available in the new Skyview campground. Smart provisioning When prepping for a big trip, it's nearly impossible to hit that perfect target of 'just right', avoiding bringing too much or not enough. I'm fortunate to have a well-stocked pantry in my 23-foot Thor Gemini, so I could throw together a last-minute meal that doesn't come off as a punt. But when it comes to packing up perishables, that's a little trickier. Especially when the fridge goes on the fritz on Day 2. Yup, since buying a 23-foot motorhome at Camping World nearly seven years ago, the motorhome has been in the shop countless times. That's one thing you rarely hear about when contemplating #vanlife. Stuff breaks, especially if the rig gets regular use, and we recently hit 70,000 miles. But we've also become pretty adept at rolling with it, so the fridge turned into a cooler, restocked daily with ice. No big deal, though it also added a sense of urgency to using any ingredients that might go bad. First up, smash burgers. Pimento cheese adds a lot of gooey flavor to a smash burger cooked at a scenic campground in British ... More Columbia. Essential tools Over the years on the road, there have been many attempts to cook over a campfire. In the beginning, there was some success with the Lodge Cast Iron Cook It All – mmm, bacon – but it was just too bulky for the tight quarters. We then shifted to a George Foreman Smokeless Grill and that was a champ for a long time, even worked to make pizza. But eventually it fizzled out and they're not making them anymore, so… the outdoor kitchen has now embraced a two-burner hot plate. It's not glam, but it works. And a big part of the success can be credited to an upgrade in the cooking equipment. Last summer, I upgraded to a Scanpan skillet I found on sale at Sur La Table and it's been a game changer. A few more important outdoor kitchen tools: Now, let's get after those burgers. Meal prep There's been much written about the trendiest burgers on the planet, but did you know those now famous sandwiches have a humble origin story? Created in Oklahoma during the Great Depression, the first smash burgers included loads of thinly sliced onions used to stretch the ground beef. My method is to season the ground beef – I picked up some organic ground beef at Costco and froze it – before shaping it into balls, slightly smaller than a tennis ball. The go-to flavor maker on the road is a mix of the basics that taste Next Level. I'm a huge fan of Nick's Salt + Pepper from Rendezvous in Memphis, a tribute to the late Nick Vergos, who was known for his homemade version of this straightforward seasoning. Simple and very satisfying. Crank up the heat and set those meaty softballs in the skillet, letting them sizzle for a minute before smashing. Turn the patty a few times to build that brown crust, known as the Maillard reaction. For this round of smash burgers at the beautiful Manning Provincial Park, I took a decidedly Southern turn by smearing pimento cheese on top of the patty in the final minutes of cooking. So good. The only other topping I added was a few Grillo's hot pickle chips. On the side, we had a potato chip tasting and the Old Dutch Masala Chips were a clear winner, the Ridgies style delivering extra crunch. Manning Provincial Park in British Columbia offers many scenic hiking trails including a 5-mile loop ... More around Lightening Lake. Leftovers anyone? The bit of ground beef that didn't go into the burgers was turned into a Bolognese with a small 'b', sauteed and finished with a jar of pizza sauce. Yes, of course, slow-simmered San Marzano tomatoes cooked Marcella Hazan-style is best. But this is bare-bones campground cooking and the thicker pizza sauce works just fine, especially if you serve it with some interesting pasta. (I brought Trader Joe's Cacio e Pepe ravioli and that proved to be a good match.) While we camped at the City Park in Nelson – close to the historic downtown and a short walk from the massive Kootenay Lake, there was a picnic table that served as a platform for the best kind of casual cookout. Seafood boils are typically a group activity, but it's also cool for just two. I simmered wild-caught prawns with Zatarain's seasoning mix, corn and tiny new potatoes and, as Emeril used to say: Bam! Dinner is served, please pass the pepper sauce. The classic shrimp boil is a surprisingly easy meal to prepare while camping. Looking locally for inspiration Our travels took us through some verdant ag-producing country and the mission is always to stop at as many farm stands as possible. Bonus points if it's got a parking lot big enough to accommodate an RV. This trip, we gorged on Rainier cherries, sweet apricots and tender green beans. Also picked up some oyster mushrooms that were the foundation of one of the best dinners of the journey. Those meaty 'shrooms partnered nicely with a grass-fed ribeye from Alberta, a sprinkle of Knorr demi-glace mix creating a sauce that was surprisingly sophisticated. I'm not the kind of cook that typically goes for the packets, but in this case, it was proved to be an excellent short cut. Leftover smash burgers morphed into a quick-fix Bolognese, served with Trader Joe's Cacio e Pepe ... More ravioli. Not your typical campground cooking, but very satisfying. The big finish By the time we reached Revelstoke, road fatigue had started to set in after seven hours behind the wheel, it was time for something easy. Plus, it was hot and who wants to cook, so let's use the rest of that farm-fresh produce haul for a salad. And, yes, there's a new wooden salad bowl in the cupboard to class up our tiny home on wheels. When it comes to delivering some quality protein to the greens, canned wild salmon gets a quick pickle treatment with the addition of seasoned shallots and plays well with the sweet summer tomatoes and crunchy cukes, which was enjoyed under a canopy of towering evergreens in the busy RV park where we were staying. The Lamplighter was a short ride from the town center and after eating, we headed into Revy to catch the nightly summer concert in the town center. Peak experience, especially the thrilling portion of that two-wheel trip over a bridge high above the Columbia River. On the final few days of the epic road trip, I skipped cooking and used the well-deserved break to take a deep dive into the outstanding culinary landscape of Whistler Blackcomb Resort. You can read my report here. If you go… Before we took the plunge into RV ownership, we rented various rigs including a deluxe motorhome from CanaDream. There are other options for giving van life a test drive including Peace Vans based in Seattle and Outdoorsy, which is considered the Airbnb equivalent of the RV rental world. Before signing up, it's always good to ask what kind of cooking gear is included.
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
What I'm hearing about the Canucks' free-agent bargain bin plans and more
It may be the dog days of the NHL offseason, but the Vancouver Canucks are hardly satisfied with the state of their roster. Based on what I'm hearing from senior club sources, in fact, despite trading goaltender Artūrs Šilovs over the weekend and inking first-round pick Braeden Cootes and second-round pick Alexei Medvedev to entry-level contracts last week, the club is eyeing further reinforcements over the balance of the offseason. Advertisement There are multiple players still available on the unrestricted free-agent market that the club is considering and tracking with varying levels of interest. Players that Canucks brass believes are capable of helping them win, at the right price point. The problem? Vancouver is basically capped out. In order to make a competitive bid, and dip back into a market — UFAs that have fallen through the cracks in the first wave of the free-agent frenzy — from which the club has successfully identified key contributors like Pius Suter and Kevin Lankinen out of over the past two seasons, the Canucks will first have to send money out and off their cap sheet. Now this isn't to say that there's another shoe that's set to drop imminently, but from what The Athletic understands about the club's priorities here in mid-July, Canucks brass is actively exploring avenues to free up cap space. The club would love to enter next season with some additional flexibility, but is also motivated to turn around and sign a value late-summer free agent target if it were able to clear up the space to do so. We've had our eyes on veteran centre Teddy Blueger ($1.85 million cap hit on an expiring contract) and hard-nosed winger Dakota Joshua ($3.25 million cap hit with three years remaining) as potential candidates to be dealt for the purpose of freeing up cap space throughout this offseason. A late summer cap-shedding trade of that variety could give Vancouver the requisite space to add one of the remaining forwards on the open market, and at the very least, it seems that the club is exploring its options this summer. Let's get into a few more Canucks items that we're hearing or thinking about as the offseason begins to drag on. The Canucks understood that selling Šilovs for a fourth-round pick and 2021 first-round pick Chase Stillman would be received emotionally by the passionate fan base in this market. We're only 15 months removed from when Šilovs recorded a shutout to seal the only playoff series victory the Canucks have managed since 2011 (aside from the bubble). We're only a month removed from Šilovs delivering an MVP performance to deliver the franchise their first professional championship, the 2025 Calder Cup, in 56 years. Advertisement Šilovs wanted an opportunity to be a full-time NHL goaltender, and he'd earned that. He was also going to get it one way or another, whether because the Canucks moved proactively to trade him or because he was claimed on waivers in September or October during training camp. The logic of Šilovs' Canucks future was sealed when the club signed both Lankinen and Thatcher Demko to multiyear extensions. There simply wasn't room for Šilovs at the NHL level, and he was no longer going to be waiver-exempt next season. The Canucks had to manage the asset, and there was some meaningful interest in his services. Now, that statement should be qualified. While we'd heard that there were teams that would've been interested in packages built around Šilovs and the No. 15 pick ahead of the NHL Draft, in mid-July, with the game of goaltender musical chairs largely settled, it's not as if Vancouver had multiple bidders driving up the price of Šilovs on the trade market. The club, however, felt that the reigning AHL playoff MVP was worth a fourth-round pick (or thereabouts) and held firm to that price. Despite a soft market for goaltenders in this tier — Cayden Primeau netted the Montreal Canadiens a seventh-round pick, and Daniil Tarasov netted the Columbus Blue Jackets a fifth-round pick despite both players having better NHL track records than Šilovs — there was enough interest in Šilovs for Vancouver to net some modest value from Pittsburgh. The full price was a fourth-round pick and a forward in Stillman, who is coming off a down season, but in whom the Canucks have some real interest in. At the very least, Stillman has a high motor, and there's a feeling that Abbotsford is likely to need some forwards, given some anticipated graduations to the NHL level and how quickly the Calder Cup championship team evaporated this offseason. Advertisement Yes, the Penguins wanted to send out a contract in paying for Šilovs, but Vancouver doesn't view Stillman as solely a standard player contract to level out the Šilovs deal. There's some interest in seeing what Stillman can be in Abbotsford's system, and with an opportunity to work with Vancouver's development staff. In the end, this is what asset management looks like. It's not always pretty, and at first blush, the return can feel underwhelming. Vancouver decided to roll with a tandem of Demko and Lankinen, however, and invested heavily in order to do so. That meant that a Šilovs trade was an inevitability. It was a trade that Vancouver was able to execute while bringing back an above-market rate return. It's not fun and it's not sexy, but this is what baseline competence looks like sometimes at the NHL level. A lot can change between now and the end of training camp, but the Canucks' roster is currently shaping up to include 11 forwards that will carry cap hits of $1.5 million or greater, five defenders that will carry cap hits of $2 million or greater and two high-priced goalies. Sometimes it's just simple math. When you look at Vancouver's projected 23-man roster, it's readily apparent that the club has 18 spots already spoken for. And we can pretty safely make that 20, given that the Canucks are planning for both Tom Willander and Elias Pettersson, the defenceman, to be on the team to open the 2025-26 season. If the club plans to roster eight defenders, which is typically the organization's preference, that means that we're looking at recent free-agent signing Pierre-Olivier Joseph (who is on a one-way contract), Victor Mancini and some dark horse candidates to battle it out at training camp for one remaining blue-line spot. Advertisement And it means we're looking at two available NHL-level forward jobs for Aatu Räty, Max Sasson, Arshdeep Bains, Nils Åman, Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Linus Karlsson, and any dark horse candidates like organizational favourite Ty Mueller or Cootes, to scramble for at training camp. Barring a deal to create more room up front, this is shaping up to be a wildly competitive battle for the final few remaining roster spots at Canucks training camp. It sounds like the club is open to slow-cooking Lekkerimäki in the AHL to begin next season. The gifted scoring winger is waiver exempt, and the club wants to be cautious about managing his development and not rushing him. Åman has previously cleared waivers, and has some real ceiling limitations despite his length, speed and penalty killing prowess. Sasson is lightning quick, but is viewed internally as more of a winger than a centre at the NHL level and is waiver exempt to begin next season. A strong summer and training camp can change this logic, but those players will open the race in the outside lanes. The club's needs down the middle will make Räty a heavy favourite to break camp with the NHL team, but don't sleep on Bains and Karlsson as real candidates to earn full-time NHL jobs this upcoming season. The battle will be fierce and closely contested, but among the club's primary contenders to earn the final few available forward spots on the 23-man roster, Räty, Karlsson and Bains will have the inside track, as it stands, at this point in the offseason. Did anyone else spend their Saturday evening reading over the NHL and the NHLPA's new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which will supplant the 2020 MOU and functionally extend the 2013 collective bargaining agreement, ensuring NHL labour peace through the balance of this decade? Just me? The landmark agreement, the second consecutive CBA extension without a labour stoppage, will have massive implications on the league as a whole. The major changes have been well reported by this point — specifically, the regular season will extend to 84 games, and the term of standard player contracts will be limited to six years (seven, if a team is extending its own player) — but there are a few Canucks-centric angles that I wanted to unpack at greater length. Advertisement The first one applies to the AHL, and the possibility that prospects will be permitted to join their NHL team's top farm team at an accelerated timeline going forward. '(The) NHL will reopen its agreement' with the CHL 'to seek to eliminate the mandatory return rule for 19-year-old Players,' reads the MOU. '(The) NHL will seek to limit NHL Clubs to Loaning no more than one (1) 19-year-old Player per year to the AHL without the requirement of first offering such Player to his junior club.' Previously, prospects drafted as first-time eligible players out of the CHL have been unable to participate in AHL games until their draft-plus-two (usually their age-20) campaign. This has meant that, sometimes, even top prospects spend an additional year absolutely dominating the CHL, in lieu of being challenged at a higher level of hockey in the professional ranks as younger players. It's also meant that these CHL-drafted players aren't readily available to be NHL call-ups, and get NHL experience. Once the new CBA kicks in, in September 2026, however, the intention is for teams to be able to get their top CHL-drafted players up and running at the professional level more quickly. And this may also accelerate how quickly they make their NHL debuts or, at least, become NHL options for their clubs. Now it's a bit complicated, of course, because players on entry-level contracts will earn far less at the AHL level than they will if they play for top NCAA programs in the NIL era. That's a complication that could limit the impact of this rule change. For the Canucks and a player like Braeden Cootes, however, it could significantly impact his future development and his estimated time of arrival at the NHL level. The second applies to the imposition of a playoff salary cap and the elimination of the paper transactions, which the Canucks heavily utilized this past season, which made it simpler for teams to toll daily cap space. In general, the MOU is trying to close various rules that, as previously written, permitted teams to step on the line of cap circumvention without really going over it in any material way. That applies to long-term injured reserve (LTI), which is going to be far more limited going forward, but it also applies to teams that were tolling cap space the good old-fashioned, and honourable way, and netting a cap benefit as a result. Advertisement Without wading too far into the minutiae on this matter, it's just very Canucks that right at the moment that Vancouver escaped LTI — and paid to do so, attaching a pick to Tucker Poolman to send the final year of his contract to Colorado — and began to take proper cap advantage of the edge that having a local AHL affiliate can provide, the rule has now changed to limit the effectiveness of doing so. Finally, and this is the big one, the new CBA — and the further term restrictions added to standard player contracts — could not come at a better time for Vancouver. This new MOU and the timing of it are an absolute gift to the franchise on the Quinn Hughes file. Next summer, for example, when Hughes becomes extension eligible, initial contract talks between the club and his camp will be governed by the previous (current) CBA. Until mid-September 2026, effectively, Vancouver will be able to offer Hughes an eight-year extension. Once that deadline passes, however, Hughes' next deal will be governed by the rules of the next CBA, limiting him to just a seven-year max term. When you're talking about a player of Hughes' calibre, right off the bat, we should understand that we're probably talking about a $13-$15 million difference. That's additional leverage that the club will be able to wield in Hughes extension talks next summer, which didn't previously exist. The edge that Vancouver has been given, however, by the new MOU is even sharper than that. Now, even if Hughes were dead set on testing the market in 2027, he'd be looking at entering an environment where a six-year max-term deal is all that would be available to him on July 1, 2027, when he hits unrestricted free agency. Now we're talking about a $26-$30 million difference. That's big money. The timing of this new pact between the NHL and the NHLPA, and the contents therein, effectively, have significantly enhanced the quality of the cards in Vancouver's hand. Both in terms of giving the Canucks more levers to appeal to their player, but also, in terms of giving the club more leverage. Advertisement Before I read the MOU, for example, and really processed the implications of it, I could see the argument for why, for example, the New Jersey Devils would be reluctant to part with significant assets in order to acquire the third Hughes brother in a trade. 'Why pay a significant price when we think we'll have the inside track to sign him anyway,' and all that. Now, however, given the leverage dynamics of how much more Vancouver can offer next summer, versus what a rival club would be able to offer in the summer of 2027 were Hughes to hit the market, the case for a team like the Devils being far more aggressive in seeking to trade for Hughes is far more compelling. 'We have to pay a retail price because otherwise we're at risk of not landing a transformative piece to our lineup, given that they can offer him $30 million more today than we'll be able to in 12 months.' So what's the biggest short-term impact of the new MOU on Vancouver, then? It's that the club has additional levers to pull in attempting to retain its franchise player next summer, and, even if that fails, the contents of the new MOU and the business logic that it's likely to create should give the Canucks significant additional trade leverage. (Photo of Artūrs Šilovs: Derek Cain / Getty Images)
Travel Weekly
2 hours ago
- Travel Weekly
J.D. Power: Prices are high, but so is guest satisfaction
Despite hotel room rates climbing to a near-record high of $158.67 in 2024, hotel guests across all price segments report feeling they're getting better value for their money, according to J.D. Power's 2025 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index. The study found that guest perceptions of value increased across every segment, with upscale, midscale and economy properties showing the most significant year-over-year gains. This marks a notable change from the year prior, when satisfaction scores fell in the midscale and economy tiers. A key driver behind improved satisfaction appears to be hotels' investments in guestroom technology. When asked about which hotel amenities they consider a "need to have," 40% of guests selected smart TV streaming capabilities, up from 21% in 2019. Nearly three-quarters of guests indicated their room included a smart TV, with 60% reporting they used it during their stay. The study also revealed that capital investments in room furnishings, bathroom fixtures and bed comfort significantly boosted guest satisfaction scores year-over-year. Hotel mobile apps emerged as another satisfaction driver. Guests who downloaded their hotel's mobile app reported overall satisfaction scores 68 points higher than those who didn't use the app. Several repeat winners For 2025, Marriott International's Ritz-Carlton flag topped the luxury segment with a guest satisfaction score of 779, while Omni led upper-upscale properties at 731. Drury Hotels ranked highest in the upscale category with 738 points. Tru by Hilton dominated the midscale sector for the third straight year, and Microtel by Wyndham led the economy segment for the third consecutive year. In the extended-stay categories, Hyatt House continued its four-year winning streak in upscale extended stay, while Home2 Suites by Hilton claimed the top spot in upper-midscale/midscale extended-stay for the third consecutive year. Choice Hotels' WoodSpring Suites brand topped economy extended stay for the third year running.
