What can I say about today? It began swell, we got out of the park about 8:00, got gas and were on our way north towards Beaver Creek, the last Canadian town before the border. We were tooling along down a beautiful valley between two mountain ranges. Crazy how this valley made such a nice level journey between the mountain ranges. The first town we found was Haines Junction where we stopped and got a picture of the town statue alternately called the ‘muffin’ or the ‘cupcake’. I vote for ‘cupcake’ since it looks like a giant cupcake with frosting mounded on it and sprinkles topping that.
Who do you vote for? The cupcake?
or the muffin?
I don’t know what the artist thought about his life’s work being labeled as a cupcake or a muffin but it makes for a nice story. The town has a long bike trail around it which also heads out of town. Very nice long trail for such a small town.
When you drive throuh an area with a lot of wildlife and you see several cars stopped on the road, you know you should stop because there’s something to see. This is a grizzly jam. A mother with her two cubs just munching along the roadway, playing and them ambling on.
As hikers we’ve always heard that you should carry bear bells, or talk loudly or sing or whatever so that the bears will know that you are in the area and will peel away. We’ve heard that bears don't want to be around humans any more than humans want to be around them.
Well, then, how do you explain this? This grizzly just munched along, looked up at us and them ambled over the highway and into the grasses on the other side. Not intimidated at all and certainly not scurrying out or our paths. Let me think about this - next time we hike.
Again, we had nice views for our journey today. Sometimes sunshine, sometimes showers, and sometimes rain.
Look at this cloud over Lake Kluane.
We also hit the worst stretch of highway on the road up, notorious for its condition. It’s the permafrost and it’s throughout this section of the drive up. construction workers are always working on it and sometimes it lasts for several years, sometimes they redo a stretch the next year. Gary talked to one of the workers and he said he worked on this same stretch last year. On the other hand, he’s worked on some stretches that lasted 4 years.
We are waiting for the pilot car to take us through the construction. When we came up, we stopped at the red light but we saw the group just right up ahead. Oh, shucks, we wanted to join them rather than wait 20 minutes or so but, we had a red light so stopped like good doobies. Note that automation is putting flaggers out of of job. Even flaggers.
At another stretch of the highway, a truck came at us on the other side but was coming so fast in so much sand, that this was our view.
We thought we had it bad - what about those biking the route?
And, then about 5:00 when we have an hour to go, we get an engine light, a beeper and our RV comes to a dead halt.
UNPRINTABLE
UNPRINTABLE
UNPRINTABLE
Gary got under the RV again to check it. This is one of the scariest things I can imagine: he’s under the RV and what if a car doesn’t see us?
Same problem that we had several days ago in Houston, BC. What is going on? And we get out to check it. Gary gets under the machine to check it out and, sure enough, 2 out of the 4 bolts needed to hold the fan motor onto the engine block are gone and our fan is now cocked again.
We unhook the Jeep, but since the road is so rocky, when we see cars coming, we run to the other side of the car and cover our faces so the cars don’t fling a stone or rock at us. When all is clear, we get back to work. I know that there is a nice RV park just a few miles down the road and take the Jeep to check it our. Yes, very nice, and they have a space for us: nice long pull-through close to the entry so we can make it.
I get into the Jeep, get to the top of driveway and see Gary just a ways down. I park the Jeep and begin to walk towards him. I haven’t had a chance to walk today and here it is. I walk bit and then realize: BEAR COUNTRY, I HAVE NO PROTECTION, I’M ALONE. DUMB, DUMB, DUMB. And I head back to the Jeep, get in and drive down. Gary’s just waiting for the motor to cool enough for him to drive some more. It does and he drives into our site, helped by the little slope at the top of the campground driveway.
And, here we are. Now what? We are in the middle of nowhere, how are we going to get this fixed? How are we going to get it to a repair shop? And, where in the world is the closest repair shop?
Of course I can’t get over shutting our blinds at 10:30 to go to bed when it’s bright daylight out.
Others can’t either, they’re out taking a walk.
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