Denali National Park, Alaska

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 2^nd 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.