Tundra Tales: Part 2

So, the second day of travel.

Waking around 10ish, we started to make sense of what was left to do, and had a lovely conversation with the crazy B&B owner, who is a climate change denier and frequently sleeps out with her sheep in the shed.

Everything outside is drenched, leaves are yellow and coming down, but the worst of the storm has passed.  Our goal was Tok, about 6 to 7 hours ahead.  The drive was gorgeous, passing by glaciers, following the Matanuska River up into the mountains, then down into the Copper River Delta.  Unfortunately, the road was very rough, and just outside of Glenallen we hit a bad bump hidden in a puddle and our check engine light came on.  We limp into the gas station in Glenallen (there are only 2), and check everything.  The jeep is running a little rough, but nothing is obviously wrong.  I ask the attendant if there was anywhere in town we could get it checked out, and he tells me nobody in town has the sensor to hook up to the engines computer, but that the mechanic will be in tomorrow and can look at it.  Or we can drive 2 more hours to Tok, and get it looked at there.

That was an incredibly stressful 2 hours, along a bumpy road, the roof flexing at every jostle from the weight of the carrier, and me entering a full panic mode.  Still beautiful, and the clouds have lifted, but hard to enjoy when something is wrong and we might not make our ferry ($1500 ticket going to waste looming, and about that same price in gas and lodging and another 4 days of driving if we miss the boat).

We get into Tok around 6ish, and are too exhausted and stressed to do much, so we find a hotel room, set an alarm for 2am (The northern lights were supposed to be fantastic that night), eat and fall right to sleep.  Next thing we know it's 9am, the power had gone off in the night, and we have 8 more hours of driving to do before being at the ferry at 6pm AND figure out what's wrong with the car.  We run around to a few different places and one finally has a computer to tell us the #5 cylinder is sparking to the boot (it came loose and got some water into it).  This means it's been dumping un-ignited gasoline into the cylinder for the last 2-3 hours of driving.  They tell me they can't fix it for another 2 hours, which means we miss the boat, so we try 2 other places in town, then come back to the first place where they unplug the wire, plug it back in, and suddenly it's working again.  We haul ass to Haines, through the Yukon territory, with gorgeous scenery and weather, and make it right before the boat starts loading.

We have sunny weather the whole way down, but it's hard to let the stress of the past week go.  To be continued in Part 3, sailing the inside passage!