At the beginning of the week, some residents of 100 Mile House may have noticed an unusual amount of classic Ford Model A's on the road.
They belonged to the Model A Touring Club and were taking part in their club's 2024 USCAN Tour. Bob Krause, president of the club and its tour coordinator, said they had 17 vehicles taking in an 18-day tour of Washington state, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia and Alberta.
"We're kind of an old relic group of people who are endeared in these Fords that Henry produced from 1928 to 1931," Krause remarked.
Krause observed wryly it's strange he's president of a club based out of California despite being a Canadian. He first joined the club in 2007 after reading about them in the Model A Ford Club of America's Restorer Magazine. They were advertising a tour of the Maritimes and he and his wife decided to join as an excuse to see Eastern Canada and visit Ottawa for the first time. Since then they have gone on 10 trips with the touring club throughout North America and Europe.
"The nice thing about touring in a Model A is generally you're touring on either the backroads of the country or the secondary highways. Occasionally we have to get out on the main highway but we prefer to keep our routing on the backroads. The sweet spot for a Model A is travelling somewhere between 45 to 55 miles an hour (72 to 88 km/hr), Krause said. "You actually get to see where you're going along the way as opposed to zipping down the highway at 70 miles an hour or whatever the highway's posted speed is."
One of the club members taking part in this year's tour was Ryck Johnson, a retired electrical engineer from Grass Valley, California. Johnson enjoys working on and restoring vintage cars, when he's not sailing down in Mexico, and has restored a 1928 Ford Model A Fayton. For the tour, he drove his 1930 Model A Sedan which he acquired from a friend a few years ago.
"We bought this from a friend who could no longer drive it but he's driven this from Sacramento to Texas and back, to South Dakota and back and Vancouver and back," Johnson said. "It knows its way around and we took this on a Northwest tour in 2022."
Johnson said he built his first Model A when he was 14 years old and used to drive it around his family's ranch. He has since sold that car to a fellow club member who still drives it to this day, decades later.
"We'd use to go around gathering parts up and spend the summers in the mountains at a cow camp. We'd use pieces (people) would give us and put cars together," Johnson recalled. "It's a lot of fun."
For Krause his love for Ford Model A's began at 17 when he received one of the vehicles as his first car. For the last 62 years, he's always owned at least one Ford Model A, whether it was running or not.
When asked what he enjoys about the Model A's the most, he replied that it is because you can work on them without a laptop computer. Krause said that unless you end up with a "substantial problem internally within the engine or transmission," with a little knowledge and the right parts you can fix any issue with the car yourself.
"As long as you're carrying the parts with you or the people who are all travelling (with you) have the appropriate parts, we can usually repair the vehicle within a day," Krause explained. "It's a team effort."
Indeed, while the tour started out with 17 vehicles in Leavenworth, Washington, by the time they got to 100 Mile House eight days later on Sept. 15 they were down to 15 vehicles, with another being left in the South Cariboo while its owners went to retrieve their travel trailer. Krause remarked there is always one or two vehicles that have issues on the road, especially on long arduous trips.
"It was advertised in our local quarterly magazine it was going to be an arduous trip throughout the Canadian Rockies, so prepare your vehicles accordingly," Krause said. "That doesn't mean that you can't have unexpected issues come up along the way especially when you're using 93 to 96-year-old vehicles around the countryside. Somebody's car goes down and it's like bees to honey, they're all around there and it becomes a team effort to do whatever is necessary to get that person back on the road."
Johnson said he's enjoyed the trip up to this point and that the B.C. Interior has surprised him with its diverse beauty. In addition to the lakes and forests, he remarked he was surprised by the arid conditions of Ashcroft and Cache Creek.
"It's different than what I anticipated in a lot of areas, but very nice. I expected a lot of pine trees and (BC) definitely has that, but then in other areas, it's like a high desert which is very different," Johnson said.
