CAPTAIN’S LOG - DAY 1
North Star Date: 11/27/2012
Location or Route: Fairbanks, AK to Talbot Arm, Destruction Bay, Kluane Lake, YT.
Travel Miles: 427 (427 - Cumulative)
Weather Conditions: Cold and Clear. No Wind.
Road Conditions: Mostly bare and dry. Some snow and ice pack along with frost heaves for the last 100 miles or so.
3:11 AM (-19F/-28C)
Woke up at 2:30 AM; couldn’t sleep. Ruth asked if I wanted to go to work. “I’d rather do that than try and get that trailer down the road” I replied. In the words of the Three Amigos bartender, “This town’s getting too rough for me!”
We had coffee and planned our departure. There’s still so much stuff hanging around this apartment! What to leave behind? Isn’t there any HEAVY stuff that can stay? There’s still some space in Ruth’s car, and behind the front seat in the truck. Man that trailer felt heavy last night as we moved it from the storage lot to the fueling station and here to the apartment.
Most of the items to load out go in the camper: food, water, travel bags, emergency packs, the camp chairs and the camper foam mattress we’ve been sleeping on since we sold the real bed. I guess we better pop the camper up; really need to get the mattress and sleeping bags positioned out of the way and have to raise the roof to do that. But it’s -19F(-28C).
Still have to air-up the tires and the air-springs on the truck’s rear axle. The planned air-station last night was froze up! I can pull out my portable compressor, but it takes a spell longer. Glad we got those heavier gloves.
Ruth keeps looking at me and smiling as she says, “You’re retired”. Alright, back to task.
7:11 AM (-21F/-29C)
This is bad – airing the tires is taking forever! Not sure this is going to work. Every place we’ve checked in town has their air service froze up, or if inside, there’s no room to pull this big rig straight through. We’ll hope for success and stay on it.
The truck wouldn’t start this morning – batteries too cold. Overnight I couldn’t plug it into our head-bolt (that’s Alaskan for a personal vehicle electrical outlet that you pay for in blood or gold-dust) because I didn’t want to unhitch the trailer. Ruth’s car started fine after turning on the headlights for 30 seconds to generate the heating effects of the chemical reaction – and with no plug-in, we’re just saying (Go Jeep)! We jumped the truck.
Furnace not working in the camper. Still so much to move out of the apartment; better postpone the time of the apartment check-out once again.
1:11 PM (-17F/-27C)
Got the camper furnace working around 8 a.m.; I’m still not sure what it was, but maybe a combo between cold temperatures and some ageing electrical connections. When we get back to our Wyoming home I’ll have to do full maintenance on all the systems. Got all 13 tires aired up! Once the compressor understood just what it was I wanted, and that I wasn’t going to slack off on my expectations, it found some resolve and took care of business.
We rolled the now full, left front truck tire over the clock radio; ain’t gonna need that anymore. This is the radio a friend gave us for Christmas almost 30 years ago! Guess we got our use out of that.
We got everything packed out except the excesses: plastic hangers, laundry baskets, two plastic folding tables, waste paper baskets and other incidentals that we couldn’t find any extra space for. These we gave to the Fort Wainwright Army lad living next door and he was happy to take them.
We just dropped off the TV cable-box and modem at the GCI Store. The truck and trailer feels much better than it did last night now that there is air in the tires and air-springs, even in spite of the extra weight loaded on board this morning, and I don’t mean us.
7:45 PM (-33F/-36C)
We just crossed the Alaska/Canada border and everything went smoothly. It’s really cold out, but inside the vehicles are nice and toasty. No reason to stop, we are wide awake and there’s a full moon bathing the mountains and surrounding landscapes in the muted silvers and cobalt blues of the wintertime Arctic northlands. We could stop and get out the SLR camera for some proper photography, but we have the good-sense to keep moving. Wish the point and shoot camera worked better in such low light conditions, and while driving. I can only do so much when I shoot from the hip. The scenery was stunning – described by Ruth as a frozen York Peppermint Pattie – “get the sensation”. We kept tabs over the CBs.
The roads were clear for the most part. We decided against spending the night in Tok or Border City, as overnight temperatures were expected to be -33F/-36C. Young’s Motel in Tok looked accommodating – so we kept going. Two hours later the Border City Lodge looked tolerable – so we kept going. We should be able to reach the Talbot Arm on Destruction Bay of Kluane Lake before midnight local. It’s only -13F/-25C at Kluane, and they’re at a bit higher elevation so it’s likely we’ll be able to avoid the extremely low temperatures that are down here in the lower river valleys. Let’s hope that furnace fires up.
11:45 PM (-18F/-28C)
Just rolled into Talbot Arm Truck and RV Stop after over three hours of frost heaves, pavement sinks and graveled hard-pack – that’s Alaskan for gravel mixed in with frozen, oh so frozen, packed snow and ice. We popped up the camper. Had a little trouble getting the furnace to start, but soon had it working. It doesn’t seem to want to turn off - go figure. Let’s hope it just keeps on going and going and going like a little Energizer Bunny.
Everything in this camper is frozen and all surfaces are absorbing any and all heat the little furnace can supply. It feels like we crawled into a freezer and sat down on frozen slabs of meat. The bags of chips in the pantry are frozen – no really – the bags are like hard clumps. Now you see why we didn’t want to stay in Tok or Border City where it was -33F/-36C! No, I don’t have an explanation for why we didn’t just get a room! The mountain was there; that’s a good enough reason to climb it.
