Greetings from the North Pole. We are camped at Riverview RV park among many very LARGE rigs at North Pole Alaska. We ate supper at the Elf Inn and drove past Santa's Workshop to get here! This is a fun place, our camping spot is 10 minutes out of North Pole and 10 minutes out of Fairbanks. But I'm getting ahead of myself! Let me tell you about yesterday's journey first!
We had a leisurely breakfast at Fast Eddies, after a delicious and free hot shower. As you probably notices we updated the blog while we were there. Then we headed to the visitor centre in Tok which is a lovely little place with an interesting video about the Alaskan wildlife and places to visit. There are kiosks set up with information about each major place to visit - Fairbanks, Anchorage, the Denali; Valdez etc. Earl picked up a great t-shirt highlighting Tok as both the coldest (-71F - brrrr!) and hottest spot in Alaska and I picked up fun postcards for my students there too.
We are still having trouble with my little red truck, especially on hills, and with the engine racing in park so we asked the people at the centre about a recommendation for a good mechanic. They directed to one who said they couldn't help but he directed us to the Amazing Zack of Z Transmissions. We have an appointment for tomorrow morning. So we headed up the Alaska highway to Delta Junction which is the end point of the Alaska highway. So now I can say I have driven the whole of the Alaska Highway! We even got certificates for Earl, myself and Corona the wonderdog to say we drove to the end of the highway.
I must say the drive from Tok to Fairbanks is a little boring with not much to break up the monotony. Earl was falling asleep so I took over and found then I was all tired. We stopped for a rest and some refreshment and felt better. A little further along we did see some scenery worth the photos and climbed out to admire the Chena River Delta - its is quite beautiful and the hills all around have this orange tone to them.
We stopped just before North Pole at the Knotty Shop as the Milepost said is was the place to stop. They have some cool animals made from burls and lots of souvenirs. We also got a free ice cream because we had out Milepost with us - yum! Corona was happy too!
Then we pushed on to North Pole and set up camp, at supper at the Elf Inn and happily went to bed in our little trailer. Before we went to supper we had a bit of a scare. We dropped by the office to ask for a recommendation for supper and where the Safeway was so we could get some food to make at camp tomorrow, and unbeknown to us, Corona got out of the truck while we were gone! We headed down the road toward our supper destination and I looked in the back seat to say something to Corona and he was gone! Thank goodness he had not gone too far, we turned around and headed back to camp and the people at the office had him and had already phone our cellphone (which was off because of roaming charges) that is on his dog tags. Thank goodness we noticed right away though, we would not have known where we lost him! His was in a bit of trouble and he does not like being called a bad dog so he wouldn't make eye contact with us the rest of the night. Silly dog!
After a good supper and some chats with our neighours we went to bed and woke up to a bit of a cloudy and cooler day but it soon brightened. Earl headed into Fairbanks to meet with Zak about the transmission. Corona and I stayed at camp, tidied up a bit, and sat and relaxed. Earl was back by lunch with some good news. Oh, we were so worried we needed a new transmission and a disreputable company could have said we needed one and we would have just paid it and probably have cut our holiday short as the quote for a new transmission was at least 2500 dollars! As it turns out, Zak the Amazing Transmission Dude, shook his head, marveled that the truck made it this far and said that we did not have a connection to the part of the engine that coordinates the motor and the transmission ~ the wires that plug into it were there but there was nothing to plug it in to!!!!! It tells the motor when to change gear and idle etc. We are not sure if it never was in this truck - we got it second hand, did others have the trouble we're having and thought it needed a new transmission and sold it? Anyway, he ordered a $59 part from NAPA who delivered right away, Zak the Amazing put it in, only charged us for half hour of labour ($45) and said we can have a nice summer and our truck will run much better now. He did check to see if we had done any permanent damage but none showed up on the scan! He adjusted a few things and we were done.
Oh, this is such a relief. We really were thinking perhaps our holiday was over. Now we are busy doing laundry (well Earl is napping and I'm doing laundry and catching up the blog) and then we can make plans as to what's next. The Dalton, the Denali, perhaps a train trip or a flightseeing tour! We will let you know!
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