After leaving Chena Hot Springs Resort, the original plan
was that we would restock our cupboards at Walmart and head on to Denali
National Park. Unfortunately Winnie had
different ideas!
We discovered that we had:
- A pretty serious leak in the slide out
- A worrying loss of coolant
- A squeaking noise from the front tires
- Developed a loud clunk every time we drove over a frost heave and tiny bumps in the road felt like we had driven over a small child
We thought we had better try and get things sorted. With no internet to turn to, we resorted to
reading the owner manual (yeah, that handbook that you are supposed to read
when you first buy a vehicle!). We have
had Winnie for 4 months so it was about time to take a look.
Of course it was very little help in solving any of the
issues we actually had, nor did it provide any sort of diagram labeling the gubbins
of the engine. But it did alert us to
the fact that she was overdue a major 30k service. We had just clocked 32k and, with another 3k to
get back down to the lower 48, putting it off is probably not sensible! This major service involved many other things
than just changing the oil and filters. So
all of sudden we (I mean Adam) had a lot of jobs to do. On such a tight budget we are trying to DIY as
many problems with Winnie as possible. With
Adam having never even checked the oil with a dip stick prior to this trip (thanks
to years of blagging company cars), it has been quite a steep learning
curve! Luckily, he is a very quick
learner and self-starter in life. So we
headed back to Fairbanks to get some Wi-Fi and the Google diagnostics began.
We have hydraulic leveling jacks which, as the name
suggests, are used to help keep Winnie level when parked up, but they also come
in useful to jack her up to get
underneath and have a look - not recommended
according to the manual, but the only option we had. Once
underneath, Adam discovered that our brand new super expensive tires have worn
unevenly. We figured that this was probably
an alignment issue due to fact that both front suspension airbags, which sit inside
the spring coils, had deflated and been ripped apart.
We watched a YouTube video on how to replace the airbags
(again, just for clarification, this means I watched the video and then told
Adam he could do the work!) and it seemed fairly straightforward, if a little
awkward to squeeze the new bag through the coils. How difficult could it be though, right?!
So we rang around to try and source the parts in Fairbanks –
not such an easy task in the most northern and remote place of our whole trip. The plan was to obtain the parts, then for Adam
to fit them in a Walmart car park and finally to take Winnie to a garage to get
the alignment done and hopefully fix the clunking and the uneven wear
pattern. We were informed that the parts
weren’t stocked by the RV service centre but they could order them in at a
large cost for freight to Alaska and would take nearly a week. Not exactly what we had hoped, so we tried
another few places and finally ended up going to a garage to get the vehicle
inspected, as by now we were concerned that there would be more damage than just
the airbags after driving around with compromised suspension. They verified that the shocks were ok but advised
that the upper and lower ball joints (?!) had gone on the driver side causing our wheel
to wobble side to side. They also said
they could source the airbags a little quicker and fit them whilst the wheels
were off so we agreed.
It was going to take five days to get us in due to the long weekend
- Monday was Labor Day. We didn’t want to go too far in the RV and make
our problems even worse, so we hung around in the Walmart car park for most of
the time waiting for Tuesday to come. Adam got on with the DIY engine service,
resealing all the seams on the body/roof to prevent any further leaks and serviced
our generator. The weather was pretty
much cold, wet and windy the whole time so that was nice for him!
The parts arrived on the Tuesday but not until after lunch
time so although they started the work that day, it wasn’t enough time to get it
finished that day. They continued on
Wednesday but seemed to break off to do other work in between and took until
4.30pm – another day gone! But
eventually we were all set and Winnie had a spring in her step again!
Finally the next day we set off for Denali National Park. As
soon as we left Fairbanks we noticed the change in season. The grass and trees had all started to
transform into so many bright shades of orange, red, yellow and pinks. The landscape looked a whole lot more
interesting than the usual greens.
Denali is the home of Mount McKinley, the highest mountain
in North America, as well as the Alaskan Range. Its peak is only visible on very clear days,
and I’m sad to say that we didn’t even get a glimpse of it. However, the colours of the smaller mountains
and landscape were simply unbelievable; I have never seen anything quite like
it before! Here is your reward for getting
through my moany post….feast your eyes on these!
There was a free trip to meet the sled dogs who work on the
park all winter carrying supplies and materials to isolated areas. The dogs
were very friendly and we had a short demonstration of them running with a cart. There was a chorus of barks and howls from
the dogs waiting to be chosen: “Pick me!
Pick me!”, they pleaded. The five that
were chosen were harnessed up and their excitement could not be contained! They howled so loudly with eagerness and impatience;
it was so enjoyable to see them so excited to run.
Denali is unlike many of the other National Parks that we
have visited, in that they do not allow visitors to drive their own vehicles along
the gravel road to Mount McKinley. Instead
there are shuttle buses which are priced according to how far into the park you
travel. The fares were fairly expensive
and the trips were very long – up to 12 hours on a bus for the furthest trip. We opted for the free option of driving along the
paved section of road which is accessible in private vehicles up to approx. mile
16. From there we took many stunning photos. The mountains looked like someone had just gone mental and chucked a couple of buckets of paint around!
We had hoped for a clear night to see another
fantastic show of the Northern Lights over the mountains in Denali. That would have been fantastic (we have seen
many photos taken from there) but the autumnal weather has persisted in raining
more often than not, so it was not meant to be.
With time no longer on our side we had to leave Denali; we
have only a few weeks to travel over 3000 miles to San Francisco to meet our
visitor Marcus on the 2nd of October. Let’s hope Winnie doesn’t have different
ideas! Next stop is Anchorage, then back
to Tok to re-join the Alaskan Highway to start making our way back South.
