Tag Archives: Airstream

North to Alaska (again) – Part 3

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We bypassed the Top of the World (TOTW) highway due to weather concerns but while in Tok we all took a day trip to Chicken so we could see it, and say we went there, in case we could not take the TOTW on the way out of Alaska. It was interesting to see the small town:

We drove past Chicken toward the Canadian border but stopped short of actually crossing since it would have been difficult for us at that time.

But we got a nice view from a viewpoint.

On the way back we saw our first moose on the road.

The next day was the 4th of July. Since we were in the US there was a minor celebration. Tok shut down the ALCAN highway for a cute little parade.

Most of the participants in the parade threw out candy to the viewers. There was a lot of candy strewn about.

At Tok, travelers need to decide on which way they want to go. Head south toward the Anchorage area or continue the northern track onto Fairbanks. We opted for Fairbanks so we could head out on the Dalton highway toward Prudhoe Bay.

We stopped at Delta Junction, the professed end of the Alaska highway. However, I have seen other places that say they are the end.

We continued to Fairbanks and stayed at a not-very-nice RV park. We all had to do some laundry and also stopped by an Alaska Pipeline information stop.

It was time to get on the Dalton Highway. The Dalton goes from near Fairbanks to the Arctic Ocean for a total of about 415 miles, pretty much all gravel. Like the roads our family traveled in 1964:

The Dalton highway was pretty similar to this. We crossed the only bridge on the Yukon River in Alaska. We ran into road construction and lost the lead vehicle, going down the wrong road in a construction zone with me leading the group, naturally. I rounded a corner and found a large tractor in our lane. I got out and started telling everyone behind that we had to backup and get on the correct lane. Luckily the pilot driver came back and the tractor moved.

The road is pretty rough, especially for our trailers. I wanted to get to the Arctic Circle so we only went to Coldfoot, we didn’t have a desire to drive all the way, on those rough roads, to the ocean. We stayed at Coldfoot for 3 nights, George and Marcia left their trailer in our care and took their truck only up to the Arctic Ocean. We had 50amp electric hookups in Coldfoot so we had Starlink working and the AT&T service was very good. We were set.

Coldfoot is primarily a truck stop, with some tourists coming through. Pricing on things, like fuel, is pretty high. Part of the cost for staying overnight in their ‘RV Park’ is they include a shower. The shower is inside one of the rooms that they rent, for $250/night!

The Chens made it back from the Arctic Ocean and we determined it was a very good idea to NOT take any trailers up that stretch of the road. They had some dicey issues with just the truck.

We were already having some issues with our trailer wheel on the road up the Dalton. I noticed the tire pressure increasing on one wheel, and it was getting hot. I initially thought it was a dragging brake heating it up. I tried to break the brake loose with a mallet, I even cut the brake line to stop it from possibly locking.

On the road back, about 90 miles from Fairbanks, I checked it again and found the entire wheel was loose! We raised the trailer off the bad wheel and were able to pull the complete wheel off of the trailer without removing the lugnuts. That should not happen. Our bearings had failed on that wheel.

My father had an issue with an Airstream many years ago as I was a kid and I remember him towing it for a short distance on only three wheels. The axles that Airstream uses, Dexter, allow this to happen, most RVs don’t have this capability. Off we went on three wheels, monitoring the tire pressures on those, which are overloaded now. We would drive until the pressures got too high and then pull off and wait for them to cool down. It was only a 220-mile drive from Coldfoot to Fairbanks but it took us almost 12 hours to accomplish it, the last 90 miles at 30mph. George and Marcia stayed right with us the entire way, many thanks to them. We finally made it to our RV park and ended up eating dinner around 10:30 pm that night (and it was still light). The next day was starting the process of finding out how to repair the trailer.

We had initially planned to only spend a few nights in Fairbanks and then on to Mt McKinley (Denali) National Park. We knew this would take more than that so the Chens went on to Denali and used the reservations we had, we had been to Denali in 2019 so the trailer did take priority.

My mind went through all kinds of permutations about the repair. Dexter axles are not tremendously common and somewhat specialized so I didn’t hold out hope of replacing it, if needed. If we had to get a replacement, we would have to have the trailer shipped back to the lower 48 or store it locally to get fixed later. There was a place in Fairbanks that was a Dexter dealer, which surprised me. I talked to them but they did not have a shop there, only in Anchorage. That was better, we would only have to go to Anchorage (360 miles). I called Anchorage and they weren’t confident in repairing it. They, however, did know of a place in Fairbanks I could try, Bulletproof Trailers.

There was hope! I talked to Brett, describing the problem, and he immediately knew it was a Dexter Nev-R-Lube axle. He was very confident that they could fix it. We set up a time in a couple of days and I got with it ordering a new hub overnight from Toscanos in California (not cheap). The repair was scheduled to start after the weekend so we tried to put it behind us and become tourists again.

As most of you know, my family traveled to Alaska in 1964. Here is what Fairbanks was then (the most recent population is 32,000):

I was able to recreate a 1964 photo again in Fairbanks:

We had a few more things to do in Fairbanks, I needed an oil change, we had to get our windshield replaced (a small crack) and one of my crowns came off. We got those three items checked off and finally took the trailer in for repair:

Not knowing how long the repair would take we headed to the library. After we were there for about 20 minutes we got a call that the trailer was done:

Bulletproof trailers came through for us in Fairbanks and it was very reasonably priced. We ended up staying just over a week in Fairbanks for all of this and finally headed down to Denali for one night. On the drive down we were able to see Mt Denali from the road (I hear not many people get to see it):

Hopefully, all of our angst is now behind us.

North to Alaska (again) – Part 1

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We went to Alaska in 2019. It was a kind of ‘spur of the moment’ thing. We saw the RV’ing to Alaska group was having a 4th of July get-together near Anchorage. We signed up and made that a target for our initial travels.

Our friends, the Chen’s wanted to go to Alaska so we decided to go with them this year. We made a decision on a specific date to be at Denali National Park and used that as our target for this trip.

We left our place in Arizona on May 26 and had scheduled to leave Great Falls, MT with the Chen’s on June 19. This gave us time to head to California to visit family. The first stop was to see our youngest grandchild and her family (we also got to see our oldest grandchild here also). Here is Roxie taking Charlee out for a walk in her trike.

The next stop was the middle grandchild, Atlas, and his family. When Hannah and Roxie were doing something, we boys (me, Lukas, and Atlas) went to a park to wait and could overlook San Francisco.

As our whirlwind tour continued, we saw Roxie’s sister (Desiree) and her daughter (Tiarah). We were there for Tiarah’s high school graduation. She graduated from Central Valley High School which, ironically, is the same high school I graduated from 45 years previously. It was still held in the same venue.

After all this California ‘love’ we headed north. The first stop was Collier State Park in Oregon. It was by a beautiful creek.

We headed to Washington and stayed at Charbonneau Park, an Army Corp of Engineers campground. We spent a couple of nights there and did the ubiquitous laundry loads. Here is Roxie telling me something.

We turned east to get into Montana and eventually to Great Falls. We also stopped a few nights to see a family friend and his family, Jared.

Unfortunately, Jared’s family had to leave before we got there to attend to an ill relative. We are sorry we missed them but are glad they were able to go. Jared lives next to Post Falls, so we went to see the falls.

One more travel night and we made it to Great Falls and met up with the Chen’s. They had an extra passenger, their daughter Maya. We knew she was coming along on the trip for half of it. She would fly back home midway through the trip. Great Falls also has many waterfalls around the area.

George is king of the selfies.

We were off the try to get into Canada. I took a shotgun with me the last time and decided to do so again this time. You should declare, on the US side, that you are the owner of the shotgun and use a form that states such. This took a bit of time as the border agent came out to our trailer and verified it, but the longest time was waiting until an agent asked us what we needed.

Now the Canadian side. The initial questioning went easy. The agent did ask about guns and I had already said I needed to get a permit for the shotgun so she never asked about any other guns, which I did not have. Pull over to the side and come into the office.

I got a great agent for my shotgun permitting. All went smoothly and it took some time also. But we were in Alberta.

There was a caribou farm of some type on the side of the road and Roxie had an interest in them as they had a curiosity with her.

We headed north to get to Dawson Creek, stayed in small campgrounds (municipal ones if we could) and avoided large towns as we could. We did make a stop in a Calgary Costco and saw something very Canadian.

We stayed for a few nights in Morinville, AB, just north of Edmonton.

We went to Edmonton for a few days to see the sights. At the University we were able to do some solar observations (sunspots, corona, etc.).

A large replica Stanley Cup.

The city skyline.

And, of course, the largest mall in North America.

Back on the road and after a few more nights we made it where all Alaska travellers want to take a photo. Mile 0.

As mentioned previously, Roxie and I were in Alaska in 2019. However, I went to Alaska with my family in 1964. It was my dad, mom, sister and me. We drove from Southern California and had a total of 9 flat tires. Some of that 1964 story is here. I tried to recreate many of the 1964 photos that I have found. Here is the Mile 0 photo from 1964 (I am the short one).