What a difference a day (or week) makes!

Well, after that sunny update we gave you from Valdez, the trip changed course drastically. The following day we drove to Tok and almost toward the end of the trip, an oncoming semitruck threw a good-sized rock at our windshield. It looks like a huge chip, but it blew shards of glass into the motorhome, covering Dean's clothes and the hallway all the way back through the living room, galley and to the bedroom in the far back. Amazingly, he was unhurt which was a miracle. The hit was just above his forehead and he wasn't wearing sunglasses or anything that would shield him. Needless to say, we spent the next hour carefully vacuuming up the glass. For a few days afterward, I would crawl around with packing tape picking up some tiny pieces that had escaped the clean up process. Molly was sitting behind me on the couch, so she didn't get hit either. We called in a guy to see if he could fix it but he simply sealed it with silicon and taped over the spider lines with clear packing tape. The windshield will have to be replaced, but we will wait until we get home.

The following day the road deteriorated even more. We only had about 100 miles to drive to Beaver Creek, Yukon but most of it was full of unmarked frostheaves, gravel patches and construction where we had to be escorted. Three rigs broke down that day. Two were fifth-wheel rigs; one had two broken springs and the other, the frame started coming apart. The third: you guessed it - US. Seems like the engine was stressing out from all the work and the problem we had in Rugby, ND started all over again. We thought we'd let the engine cool overnight, then take out directly to Whitehorse the next morning, but the plan failed. It did start ok, but about 3 miles down the road we knew we were in trouble. We quickly detached the toad (that's the towed car) and turned the rig around in the middle of the highway and headed back to the only mechanic shop in Beaver Creek. Long story sorta short, we were stuck there for two days while the wrecker made it's way to us. The closest place for both wreckers and mechanics who would work on it was Whitehorse - 301 miles from nowhere. Sooo, that poor motorhome got picked up at 6:00 pm on Wednesday night and towed (very slowly), arriving at about 3:00 a.m. on Thursday morning. After following the wrecker to Destruction Bay (I can't imagine why they call it that), we went ahead of them to the RV Park where our tour group was staying. When we arrived at 12:30 am, none of them were awake, and we couldn't find any hotels still open, so we slept in the car. YEP, we did that!

The prognosis wasn't good, the parts were ordered and we were headed into a 3-day weekend in Canada so we decided to drive our car to the next stop on our tour which was Skagway, Alaska, only about 2 hours away. Another couple insisted that we stay with them and fixed us a wonderful dinner that night after we arrived. Sleeping horizontally was a special treat that night, as we were exhausted. Even Molly didn't mind (too much) staying with her 115-lb new-found friend, the bull mastiff, Brenda.

On Friday, we took the White Pass and Yukon Railway trip and the clouds parted, the sun came out and the day was beautiful. I'll attach a couple of photos as proof. We said goodbye to all of our tour friends right after the trip (as we were certain that our repairs would not be made until after the 3-day holiday) and drove back to Whitehorse. The tour ends on Tuesday so we felt we had made the best of a bad situation and were resolved to leave a little early. When we got back to the motorhome, we had a typed note from the guy who owns NEW NORTH TRUCK & EQUIPMENT. He said we were fixed and ready to head south! They jerry-rigged and by-passed the air compressor with a shorter fan belt (I'm sure Dean will be glad to give you the real technical solution) but you get the idea! We spent the night in his shop yard (with electricity), settled up with him this morning and started to take out for Watson Lake to rejoin our group. Dean had to work on the automatic jacks and found out that all the transmission fluid had leaked out during the tow experience, but fixed all that so we were finally underway by noon.

I'm sure this is all more than you ever wanted to know, but it would be hard to boil it down to a paragraph or two. Wait . . . I did that, didn't I? Stay tuned as we wrap up the tour-part of the trip which is this Tuesday. As we start the next leg of our trip (a long way home), some of us have decided to stick together for a few days, so that will be fun. We will update as often as we can!