Travels With Miranda

Hypothetically speaking, what would happen if a sleepy person got up one morning, decided it was cold, turned a heater on full blast, and got to work microwaving and toasting her breakfast?

If you said “That person would blow a breaker” you are correct!

This time, it was a shore power breaker. I can’t find the breaker box in the garage for the plug to which the rig is connected, so I haven’t had any 120V power all day. What a hardship! Not. I charged my computer through the inverter and it’s been so sunny that my batteries are fully charged.

I love not having to rely on shore power!

I pulled into the Walmart in Whitehorse and was about to unhook when ‘something’ told me not to. As it turned out, the toad would not start, something I discovered when the key fob wouldn’t lock the doors.

It seems like the battery is completely depleted. How I did that between Watson and Whitehorse is beyond me, but, then again, the car hasn’t run in a week other than when I unhooked and moved it around in Prince George and at Nugget City.

At any rate, I knew I wasn’t going to get a moment’s rest tonight unless I confirmed that the issue was a dead battery that would be solved with a boost. It made no sense to go through all the trouble of unhooking, jockeying the RV in position to boost the toad, doing a boost, and then manoeuvring the RV to rehook up when the battery wouldn’t really be recharged until I ran it a good long while. So, I flagged down a good samaritan who took five minutes out of her day to do the test and that confirmed it.

As it turns out, the campground I want to stay at is opening tomorrow (!!!) and it apparently has some pull throughs. So, I will go there, pull through a site, unhook, boost the toad, leave the toad running while I move the RV into another site, and then recharge en route to where I’m heading.

In other news, there’s a circa 1986 Royal Classic sharing the Walmart parking lot with me tonight! The owner came by to see how I like mine and asked if I had the same battery set up as him and, if so, if I had any tips for him. Unfortunately no, and no.

Since I’m here with walking access to both a Walmart and a Canadian Tire I went through my list of stuff I need to bring and realised that I was missing something vital!!! I bought a new water hose and a new water pressure regulator, but forgot to grab the third key component to my fresh water system. I ran out last week in Campbell River. This item costs all of sixty-nine cents (plus tax) and is, of course, Teflon.

While at the CDN Tire I ran into my cousin’s boyfriend, how funny is that?! We’ll be meeting up in July when I make a run back down to Whitehorse for a supply top up.

Last, but not least, I decided that, really, I hadn’t bought enough toilet paper and I went to stock up. Rationing the stuff is no fun and it is outrageously expensive in Dawson!

I spoke with a glass tech this morning and my worst fear was confirmed, Miranda needs a new windshield. Estimate is $750 to $1,000. They don’t have a windshield here in Fort St John, but there is one in Fort Nelson. All well and good, but getting that kind of money is going to take me a week, as add a week’s worth of campground fees to the estimate. He said that he’d take a chance and drive it to Dawson and back to Whitehorse in the fall for the replacement. The odds of getting another rock like that are slim, but the odds of the cracks spreading are good; one of them definitely spread over night (it went down to minus 5!). My visibility isn’t affected, so that’s one good thing.

At this point, I feel so sick I can’t even think. I know this needs to be done now, I just can’t figure out how it’s going to happen NOW.

Post edited to add:

I’ve decided to move on to Fort Nelson and re-evaluate. I will check in again soon as I can.

I pulled out at about 8:30 this morning and was able to confirm that Prince George really needs to put more money into its signage.

Last year, I used my GPS to get out of town and wound up on a road with a bridge that had too low of a clearance for Miranda. This year, I followed the signage and found myself on that exact same road! At least, this time the construction was done and I was able to squeak under the bridge. I had to circle back about ten kilometres only to discover that I hadn’t missed any signs at all. I put on my four way flashers in a busy intersection and took out the GPS. It told me to turn right and that ended up being correct while the signage clearly said to go straight for Dawson Creek. The idiots probably changed the roads in that area and ‘forgot’ to update the signage, cheap bastards.

It was stop and go all the way out of town, with several people cutting me off, and I was pretty cranky by the time I hit the open road. I stopped at the Crooked River rest area for brunch and then my mood improved considerably as I pushed north into my beloved landscape of poplar and black spruce.

climbing up to the Pine Pass Summit

climbing up to the Pine Pass Summit

approaching the Pine Pass Summit

snow!

stopped for construction; the guy in front of me was doing some impressive calisthenics!

stopped for construction

This construction stop was memorable for the route that followed. We had to go behind a pilot vehicle and there was no room for error. At one point, my wheels were literally a couple of inches from the edge of a cliff, with the side hanging out over a ravine. I made the mistake of looking down once, nearly lost my lunch, and then focused on the road!

approaching 'the other Dawson'

There were some pretty impressive downhill stretches all the way to Taylor, between Dawson Creek and Fort St John, and I didn’t remember them from last year. It just goes to show how barreling down a hill with no brakes teaches you to pay more attention to the elevation changes.

It got colder and windier the more north I drove and the snow on the ground at the Pine Pass remained all the way into Fort St John. There were actually a few icicles forming on the exterior of the loft when I pulled into the Walmart!

I completely avoided ‘the other Dawson’ this year, but I still felt that tug at my heartstrings when I turned onto the Alaska highway. Some things aren’t going to get old any time soon!

It was quite the exciting driving day, but it would have been a good day on the road had this not happened:

That’s probably going to be a total windshield replacement. The impact was such that there are shards of glass inside the cab and there are three cracks pushing out of the chip. One grew and grew and grew before my eyes and I thought I was going to have to pull over and call for help, worried that the whole windshield was going to go. So far, it doesn’t affect my visibility, so I’m holding out hope that they can just fill it with epoxy and buy me some time…. I can handle a chip repair right now, but not a windshield replacement! And before I get any comments on the subject–Yukon vehicle insurance does not cover glass claims.

Well, no sense worrying about this until tomorrow, so I’m going to turn on the furnace and then go make a nice dinner!

BRR!

We’ve had plenty of frosty nights this spring, but last night it was just plain cold. It had rained all day and then the temps dropped to just around freezing. I bundled up, slept like a log, and was woken by the feeling of being too hot as a bright sun warmed up the RV interior.

It’s chilly out there, but sunny enough to fool a less wise person into trying to fix her leak. I tried that last time we had a sunny break and wound up with a soupy mess that is going to be a nightmare to clean because there just wasn’t enough time for

the silicon to cure. I have taped a plastic bag over the leak and it’s holding back the water, but a real fix needs to happen soon. For one thing, I won’t feel comfortable sealing up that area from the inside with trim until I’m sure the leak is fixed. It’s beautiful out this morning (the sky is pure cornflower blue), but it’s supposed to cloud over and start to pour again this afternoon. Bah.