The last four Monson travel days North to AK have been very "interesting times" as the Chinese say..... The 1390 mile Alcan Alaska highway is not to be underestimated, nor taken under prepared, and we did both. :(
Nervously shoveling money into a mechanical fire is a good description of how we have moved forward day by day north west through our trailer bearing and axle problems on our RV.
We had to totally replace our trailer axle twice, and swap 3 new tires while traveling through 4 provinces of Canada. This was all during a 3 day Canada Day holiday, and most of the time out of cell phone range to boot. Unfortunately we did not think to give ourselves some reasonable multi day travel margin, and that amped it up even more. Many lessons learned.
We had just one road travel day to spare before expensive reservations and deadlines will hit us at our Alaska destination, including picking up our oldest son at the airport and a high dollar booked charter fishing trip.. 😥😒
But thankfully we did overcome and persevere with the emergency help of 2 Canadian welders. The first one's poor skills left us with a quickly bent axle and necessitated the second shop in Whitehorse, 2 nerv racking travel days later....
After Whitehorse that NW road from Destruction Bay to Toke has to be the roughest 10-hour driving day for me EVER! Teeth rattling still doesn't describe it close enough. Lilly was feeding me ice cream and wiping my brow to get me through the 200 miles of potholes and swells :-(
Heres a pick of our bent axle before Tamarack replaced it (again) in Whitehorse :(
Finally last night we did an easy US border crossing, followed by passing into our long awaited Alaska!
Anchorage arrival today to meet up with son Matt, and all of the Whites before we go salmon fishing down in Homer. I think we all can mark the Alcan off of our bucket list, and I see no need to ever repeat this excitement again! Nope...
We're all super ready for our next and better Alaska chapter! :-)
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