A Series of Unfortunate (and a few fortunate) Events

Exit Glacier descending from the Harding Ice Field

Hopefully we won’t see the bill for damaging Canadian government property.

As the saying goes, “bad things come in threes,” so we’ve got our fingers crossed that number three is past us and that the universe chooses to entertain herself elsewhere. We haven’t lost our perspective; we know our saga is told in the context of wandering around the beautiful state of Alaska, but lest our three and a half readers think our travels are devoid of problems, we thought we’d share a bit of the challenging side of hauling your house from place to place every two or three days over thousands of not-so-good roads. But, to get to unfortunate event, or “oops,” number one, we need to backtrack a bit. It’s not quite a Greek tragedy, but you may as well grab an adult beverage and settle in for our saga. It has certainly inspired us to increase our Class Six consumption!

Back in May, at the border crossing into Canada, we had a bit of a scrape with the law. Well, to be slightly more precise, the YOFOhome sustained a scrape down the left side. Here’re the gory details. After getting our passports back from the Canadian border agent, we returned our focus to navigating the road ahead, but there was a low concrete abutment just beyond the nose of our truck that the shorter of the two YOFO drivers could not see. The YOFOtruck snuck past it, but the YOFOhome was not as fortunate. If you’ve never heard the agonizing screech and crunch of metal being torn and bent then I do not wish it on anyone. “Welcome to Canada” indeed. Sigh. After attracting the attention of every single border agent, including the supervisor, and holding up traffic in our lane for about 15 minutes, we finally unstuck the YOFOhome from the concrete by unhooking the truck, driving over the curb, and rehooking in order to pull it away at an angle. On the plus side, the benevolent Canadians kindly told Dawn that they probably weren’t going to ticket her for damaging their Government property (we might have chipped their concrete). So, we had that going for us, which was nice. Luckily we only sustained cosmetic body damage, so the YOFOhome was still fully functional. Fast forward over 2000 miles of beautiful Canadian highways and we finally met an insurance adjuster outside Anchorage. He was helpful with getting things inspected and getting funds to the shop to get parts on order. Now over eight weeks after the inspection, estimate, and parts ordering, we are still waiting on the new body parts to show up so that we can get the repairs done. It’s meant that we’ve had to alter our travel plans a few times as we get told “the parts should be in by such-and-such day” only to find out they still haven’t arrived for unknown reasons, putting us on hold for yet another week…and then another, and so on. All things considered, if you must have an accident while pulling a trailer, we highly recommend the 5 mph version where the only injuries are of the mental anguish sort. Bonus points if you can give some super nice Canadian border agents something to talk about for a day or two (till someone else does the same thing since they told us “don’t worry about it, folks hit these things all the time…”). Perspective is everything: we’re still enjoying the heck out of Alaska, and we know much worse things happen to good people every day. Whew! Telling that story sucked.

View of Riley Creek from the ridge on the Triple Lakes Trail.

Backpacking the Triple Lakes Trail in Denali NP.

Back to our current adventures in Alaska, after rolling out of Fairbanks, we thought we were heading toward repairs at a body shop in Wasilla. On the way, we decided to do a trial run for a possible WOFO backpack in Denali Natl Park. So, we scooped up a bear resistant food canister at the Visitors Center, got our backcountry permit, rucked-up and headed out. Just inside the park boundary and accessible from the visitor center parking lot (no $40 bus ticket required), was Unit 1 and the Triple Lakes Area. We figured we had about 8-9 miles to get to the lakes and find a campsite. The trail followed Riley Creek for a mile or so then went up and over a ridge, and came back down to three pretty lakes nestled into a valley. Unfortunately, the Alaska national birds (mosquitoes) were out in force and the park’s description of plentiful semi-developed campsites around the lakes didn’t really pan out. After taking a break to watch a close-up show of some beavers for a bit (not a euphemism, literally four well-tailed rodents), we decided that rather than camp in the squishy wet ground that we’d head BACK up the ridge and camp up top, turning our planned 8 mile day into 12. We eventually found a nice spot, tucked in and slept like logs after those shenanigans! We even found a brief cell signal and chatted with a friend over coffee the next morning! It was a good test run for us and if you’re planning a WOFO with us this summer - we’ve decided this particular route is not one we’re keen to repeat so you’ll get a different adventure. Sorry to disappoint.

One positive from our first Seward trip - the kind neighbors who let us fish some salmon out of their cooler!

Back on the road and en route to the bodyshop, we found out that the parts weren’t in and they waved us off. No problem - Gumby is YOFOAdventures middle name, so we just kept heading south to the Seward area to explore the Kenai Peninsula a bit. Just our luck, what should have been a jaw-droppingly gorgeous drive was obscured by smoke from a growing wildfire on the peninsula dubbed the Swan Lake Fire. Upon arriving at one of the municipal campgrounds in Seward, we noticed that the camper was tilted. A quick inspection revealed a busted leaf spring (unfortunate event #2). Having just replaced and upgraded the springs prior to leaving PA last summer, the word miffed comes to mind. The only shop in Seward capable of doing the work was booked for the next ten days. since we did not want to wait around Seward for ten days (and expected the YOFOhome to be in for body work soon) we went to plan B. Plan B involved getting the trailer towed back to Anchorage on a flatbed, since driving 125 miles over rough roads with a broken leaf spring would’ve chewed through a couple tires assuming we didn’t do worse damage. Dean did great backing our 8’ wide trailer onto the 8’6” flatbed.

Views were good - would’ve been great on a non-smoky day. Note: Smokey the Bear turns 75 this year - prevent forest fires, eh?

Pucker factor was pretty high. Backing a trailer onto another trailer is a good test of backing skills and teamwork.

When the flatbed with our home showed up at Alaskan Spring and Performance, everyone’s jaws hit the ground again. At some point in transit, things had shifted around and buckled both front landing legs (yep, 3s a charm) rendering them (and the trailer) inoperable since they could not be retracted. We managed to get it offloaded and positioned so that the shop could fix the springs, and they were kind enough to say that they would allow us to stay there over the weekend while we tried to sort out the landing legs. We began a frenzied mission of calling every rv parts and repair shop in Anchorage (not exaggerating - there’re maybe 5) trying to find landing legs - most places did not have them in stock and said we’d have to buy the full kit (2 legs, motor, and drive arm) and that it would be about 10 days for delivery. Yikes. At 4:55pm, Dawn found a shop that had one set of landing legs in stock held over from the November earthquake (apparently quite a few trailers in Alaska had been damaged). We arranged to pick them up Monday morning, and we settled in for a weekend of “camping” in the Alaska Springs and Performance parking lot. Monday, we were able to get the legs swapped out - a sawsall was needed - and we were back on the road with 4 brand new, upgraded (again) springs. While we were sidelined in Anchorage, we did a fun hike in the Chugach Mountains - it was a two bear day! We surprised one of the bears after rounding a corner on the trail; he was as startled as we were and quickly lumbered off into the brush. But the best part of the weekend was reconnecting with Carlisle friends Sue and Kevin and meeting some of their family. They’re both big into fishing and we got to hear fun stories about their fishing adventures on the Russian River.

You just never know who you’ll run into in the produce section! We loved catching up and meeting Kevin and Sue’s family later at a cookout they hosted.

This is not how any of this works. Bowlegged YOFOhome is no bueno.

Since the body shop still did not have all the parts assembled, we headed back south again but this time we veered toward Homer for the week of July 4th. We wanted to get on the upwind side of the fire; the drive was smoky, but things were clear at the southwestern tip of the Kenai peninsula. We took a water taxi over to Katchemak Bay State Park for some backpacking and backcountry tent camping. Getting off the boat involved a 6 foot step ladder at the bow of the boat that was loosely beached on the shore. Fun! The trail included a hand tram across a river, so that was definitely a new experience. The only wildlife we saw were a few spruce grouse, but those are fun birds to see because they are so well camouflaged. We found an absolutely perfect tent campsite along the edge of a glacial lake. We went to sleep to the sounds of icebergs shifting and popping and the glacier creaking and groaning with the occasional explosive calving. The next day the trail climbed above treeline and gave us expansive views back across the bay and down onto the glacier. We made our water taxi rendezvous on time and were happy to enjoy smoke free views, especially since the next day the winds shifted just enough to allow some smoke into the area.

This pic has not been modified - color is from smoke and was taken along the Sterling Highway.

We made our way back up past Anchorage in order to reconnect with one of Dawn’s classmates who grew up in Alaska. Andrea was visiting her family with her kids and her Dad and Stepmom, Gary and Sylvia were super kind to let us crash their lake cabin’s driveway and the join the kids joint birthday party. We learned the term moochdocking (mooching a driveway campsite, basically) and had a great time talking and eating. The kids absolutely smoked us in the second half of a gorgeous hike by basically running down the mountain! Y mucho gracias a Sylvia y Gary para la comida y los clases en español!

Andrea picked out a great hike and her kids crushed it!

We expected to finally drop the YOFOhome at the bodyshop after 3 delays, but as you can tell we have a consistent theme going here. A major part was somehow significantly delayed and we were now looking at having to wait till late August to complete the job. You’d think we were attempting to get our trailer repaired in Afghanistan! But as we keep telling ourselves, it could be worse…it could be raining. Which brings us to our next blog, coming to an interweb near you soon!

This was not take in the jungles of Amazon. The landscape near much of the southern the coast of Alaska is rain forest. But only a couple of thousand feet up and you find Alpine tundra and glaciers.