Captain’s Log, supplemental: (Yep I just used a Star Trek reference.)
It was Thursday, January 15th around 11:45am. We were driving through Canada in the middle of nowhere on the AlCan with no cell phone signal. We would see one or maybe two cars an hour pass, going the opposite direction. We were only about 25 miles away from the nearest “villiage”; i.e., little place with 1 service station that may have snacks too, or may not. We hungry and ready for lunch. We were going downhill on a snowy road and suddenly started fishtailing. We fishtailed for what seemed like forever (but was probably only a minute or two) as my life flashed before my eyes and I fervently prayed that this wouldn’t be the day we died. But thank to lots of safe travel prayers from friends and my husband’s superb driving skills, we were able to make it out of the fishtail. I looked into my mirror out at our trailer and said “hey… why is our tire flapping?” So we pulled over.
Sure as the world, it was flat. But lucky for us, they had given us a spare when we rented the trailer.
So the husband unit changed the tire while I took pictures and the dog got to sit outside while the kids waged civil war inside of the truck. Funny part of being so far in the middle of nowhere on that lonely stretch of the AlCan Highway… I could have probably taken a nap in the middle of the road because there was almost literally no one crazy enough to be on these roads!
So we got the tire changed and went on our way. At about 2pm we finally arrived at Haines Junction (Yukon Territory, Canada.) This is where the highway splits off and you can either keep going on the AlCan through Canada or veer off and take the road to Haines, Alaska, which is called the Haines Road Highway.
High ho, high ho, it’s off to Haines we go! From that point on, the roads steadily got worse. They were much less traveled than even the previous highway. (Which is hard to imagine, I know.) They were icier in spots and fresh snow started to fall. At about 4pm, it was so snow cloudy (not a word? it is now!) that it was hard to see where the road began and ended. Essentially, we were the snow plow of the road.
Think that was bad? It got worse.
Those were the best of times, those were the worst of times… I began starting conversations like this: “If we make it out of this alive…” and “I sure wish I’d have done [insert witty comment here] since we’re going to probably die soon.” I was praying. The husband was praying and driving. The kids were in their car seats whining about being hungry and bored, completely oblivious to the fact that they were probably going to die when we drove off the road in this warm winter’s blizzard because we were slipping and sliding all over God’s white earth.
The heavy snowing/praying/reign-of-terror lasted probably 2 hours. The whole time, by some miracle, we had one or two cars trailing behind us, giving us at least some level of comfort that we were not alone in the universe.
We finally came across the most welcome sight in the world… US Customs!! I could have kissed the guy there (just kidding, the husband unit would not approve). I was so happy to be back in America and so close to our destination. From the US Customs building, Haines is only about 40 miles. We knew the end of our journey was near!
My cell phone didn’t come back into service until about 5pm when we finally arrived in Haines. I had told my sister in Oklahoma of our travel plans for the day and to send in the cavalry if she didn’t hear from us within a certain amount of time. It was 8pm her time when I was finally able to get back into contact with her and she was ever so relieved! Just kidding, she was quite disappointed she couldn’t call the Alaska State Troopers and alert Trooper “Howie”, which she calls “McDreamy”, just to be able to say she talked to him.
The little town of Haines was very sleepy but quite pretty.
We were so proud our Tundra made it through the Tundra!
The next day we loaded our truck up onto the ferry and sailed off on the 4 hour trip to Juneau.
The ferry set sail at 4pm so we unfortunately it was too dark to be able to enjoy much of the scenery. We arrived in our new hometown around 8:30pm on Friday, January 16th, 2015.
And now for the crazy part that I promised to tell you. When we turned in our Uhaul trailer the next day, we let them know about our trip and the flat tire, how we changed it and were out of cell phone service area. And you know what they said?? They were very puzzled…. they said they never supply spare tires because it’s not safe for people to try to change the tires themselves, the prefer to be called so that they can send out their emergency roadside assistance people. They don’t know why we were even given a spare tire.