Enough adventure already

Well, the outdoor adventure part has been great. More national parks than I can count, l lost track at around 8. Plenty of mountains. So much wildlife we stop taking pictures. But geez, enough with the breakdowns already. Here we are in Billings Montana after the van broke down again. That rebuilt transmission we had done in Fairbanks gave out as we neared Billings. We were just driving along and we heard a loud squealing sound. Then there was no power. Called our towing club, they checked around Billings and found a company that has tow trucks and specializes in repairing transmissions. They do a lot of work on RVs. The driver usually drives the big wrecker, the kind that tows semis. He was filling in for a guy who was sick and was running the midsized truck that day. In the last month he towed in two big class A RVs that had less than 10,000 miles. They apparently work on so many RVs that they have installed AC outlets on one end of one of their lots. We stayed in the van that night, yesterday I guess. I am starting to loose track of time here. They got the van in this morning, found out the overdrive planetary gears went out. This time they are going to "remanufacture" the tranny not just "rebuild" it. They say they are installing heavy duty this and steel rather than aluminium that. Yada, yada. They even showed me the nice heavy duty torque converter plate they were putting on. He took me back in the shop and showed me how they test all the valves and if any leak at all, they re-machine the body, put in over size valves, more yada yada. All of this really means a lot more money. But he tells me this will make sure the tranny will not break down again and it will be strong enough to pull Mt McKinley over a couple feet.

We are sitting in a nice little hotel in Billlings. Drove around in a rented car today ($29.95/day), shopped for about 3 hours at the largest "antique" store I have ever seen. Even Kim said she was done with antiquing for a while. The hotel has a pool, hot tub and sauna. Went out to eat and now we are just sitting here watching TV in the room. Tomorrow they are supposed to be done with the van. We will be sitting in the waiting room at the repair shop all day. We should be back to Winona Friday....... maybe

Banff and Jasper again

Continuing on our way back south and east we went through Banff and Jasper parks again. Along the road we came across several mountain goats walking along. They were grazing along the side of the road and next to the river. Cute young ones

Stewart road

Here is the road I was telling you about

Stewart BC and Hyder AK

On our way down the Cassiar Highway we took a side trip to Stewart BC and Hyder AK. These two cities are on the coast. Neither town has much going on. Each has many houses for sale and Hyder is actually pretty dumpy. But the drive there is beautiful. High mountains on each side of the road. In one place the road is about 30 feet wide and 15 feet farther out are the sheer rock walls making for about a 60 foot wide space between them. Waterfalls everywhere. There was so many we quit taking pictures. On our way back out we saw a mother grizzly and her one year old cub. They hung out along side the road and we got a bunch of pics. They then got up on the road and walked along in front of us. We got some video too. Here is the sow checking around to see where Jr is.

Lynx

Monday June 22
Stayed near Whitehorse last night and drove to near Wartson Lake. Then headed south on the Cassiar Highway in British Columbia. Beautiful country with mountain, pine forest and many rivers and lakes. While driving I spotted a lynx sitting on a concrete barricade used as a guard rail. I pulled over about 75 feet from it and it jumped over the side. I grabbed the camera and quietly walked up to where I thought it had been. I looked over the side and it was there, within about 15 feet of me. It saw me and went down the bank about 10 feet and stopped. It was stalking something and wasn't really paying much attention to me. I snapped a picture of it on its hounces looking at the prey. It heard the camera click and I shoot a few more times as it moved a little farther down the hill. The camera wasn't focusing right but I got a couple shots anyway. Then, the camera came into focus and I got a great shot. It leaped after the prey which I never did see. It stopped after just 25 feet of the chase and slowly moved into the brush to where we couldn't see it any more.

The Yukon

The last few posts have been made from a campground at Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. We are heading into British Columbia down the Cassiar Highway to Prince George. Who knows if we will have internet available in the next few days. Thanks for reading and we will post again as soon as we can. There is so much more to tell about Alaska but thats all for now. The video is of a moose foraging the bottom of a small river on our way down the Dalton, just outside Fairbanks. the camera is shaking because, try as hard as I could, I was having trouble standing still while dozens of mosquitoes were on each arm, my neck, head and face. I wanted to get more but had to run for my life. Kim saw information that said a moose typically loses about a pint of blood per day to them.

The oil field

We made it to Deadhorse at just about midnight. Looked for the one and only gas station. Drove around the town but couldn't find it even using the map of the town in our guide book. Finally located it - there was a sign but the building looked like an industrial truck shop. The gas pump is a hose that comes from the building into a steel box mounted on the wall of the building. You go inside an entrance area, pay by credit card there and then go back out to pump your gas. The whole town is industrial without one single house. In fact, the population is actually zero, there are no permanent residents. Everyone is there for a shift consisting of 1 or 2 weeks, then flies out of the airport there back to either Fairbanks or Anchorage for days off. During the summer there are about 2000 people, in the winter 6000 to 10000. Most of the oil work is done in the winter to prevent damage to the environment. Almost all wildlife, birds, water fowl etc migrate out. The tundra becomes frozen so movement of machines and equipment is on the ice and snow. They actually creat roads using large water truck to lay donw 8 to 18 feet of ice to drive on.

After we arrived, we "slept" in the SUV from about 1:00am to 6:00am and then took a bus tour of the oil field and went to the ocean. It was about 32 degrees out with a steady wind of about 20 miles per hour making for a windchill around 10 degrees. The water was much warmer than the air. After the tour, we headed back. We made more stops along the way to see the sights. Tooks tons of great scenic pics. I intended to camp on the way back but Kim didn't want to sleep in a tent so we continued back to the mechanics lot and slept in the van. That was Friday night. And he had the van finished already even though I had told him he had until Sat afternoon. I do love our little van camper - we can sleep anywhere, wayside rest stops, Walmart parking lots, on wreckers and in mechanics yards.

The photo is of musk ox on the oil fields