Jul 2008

I think the pictures say it all. We made it to Alaska, one of my longtime dreams.
Unfortunately we only made it 10 miles inside the border, when the engine on the new 2008 Ford truck blew up. We were stranded on the side of the road for 5 hours waiting for the tow truck to come from Tok, the nearest town, about 90 miles away. Then it was a 3 hour ride back to Tok, in the tow truck, pulling our truck with the camper attached. 30 mph all the way except where the road was gravel and then we had to slow to 15-20 mph. We got into a campground around 11 PM just before sunset.

You really can’t appreciate the 19 hours of sunlight until you have been here. We have trouble sensing when it’s time to go to bed or get up unless we black out the bedroom. Often there are people out walking and conversing in the campgrounds until 11 pm.

As for the truck, it has some exhust cooling valves that are bad as well as needing to have the biggest part of the exhaust system replaced and will be towed to the nearest Ford dealership which is in Fairbanks, about 212 miles away. In the mean time we are in a nice campground in Tok and have the motorcycles to ride. Too bad there are only 2 roads! The one from Whitehorse to Fairbanks which we came in on, and one that intersects it, going from Chicken to Anchorage. Fortunately the town has a grocery store, good cell service and 5 cable stations. There are reportedly 1400 residents! They must be counting tourists.

We convinced our travel partners to continue to the Kenai Peninsula as planned, and we will catch up with them as soon as we get our truck back. We will have to shorten our stay most places but we had allotted 5 weeks to see Alaska. Too bad 2 weeks will be spent looking at Tok.

This really is the last frontier.

Hello again.
We have progressed from British Columbia to the Yukon Territory. There are 30,000 people who live in the YT and 23,000 of them live in the capitol of Whitehorse. Of those 1/2 are decedents of the original people (known as First Nation).
As you might imagine we found a lot of services in Whitehorse and that was a good thing. While pulling into the campground one of the 6 wheels on the camper sheared off all of it lug nuts and went rolling away. Luckily we were only 1/2 mile from a repair shop and they were able to replace the hub and bearings and put on the spare. Because we didn't want to continue without a spare we ordered a new rim which had to be shipped from Edmonton. This held us up for 4 days but that was OK since we needed to do some housekeeping and stock up on supplies. The day we were leaving our travel partners had an accident with their rig and needed to get some fiberglass work done on the tail end so it was back to the repair shop for them. Bad timing. It was Canada Day weekend and no one was open. By the time they got it fixed, we ended up spending 10 days in Whitehorse.
While we were there we connected with a gal at the local Harley shop for a Wild Women Wednesday ride and also took a day trip to Skagway, Alaska. Lots of great scenery and our second step into Alaska. Both Skagway and Hyder are located along the inland waterway that is part of Alaska that really looks like it should be Canada.

While in Whitehorse we got to experience what the locals call Yukon Summer. On a sunny afternoon we got a major sleet storm. Mind you this is JULY!!!!. Little pellets about the size of small peas covered the ground and dropped the temperature about 25 degrees in 10 minutes. Most bizarre.


These pictures are from our trip to Skagway, about 100 miles. It is a ferry stop on the Inland Passage and is full of touristy type stores

One day while I was out riding and seeing some of the local color I came across a bunch of redneck Canadians who had built their own mudrun. They were having a ball and I think I was the only person there who went home clean.