6 Sept 2017
Yellowhead Hwy, Hwy 16 East
Left Frazier Lake about 0900, beat our normal time by an hour! Nice sunny day as we head towards Prince George and Jasper. The road was good and we were able to drive about 60 mph, so we were making good time. Lot of 6% grades up and down as we get closer to the Canadian Rockies.
There are many forest fires, none of which we are close to us, but the smoke creates a “foggy” view of all the mountains, and of course blocking our SUN from our solar panels.
We are just driving along, listening to the NFL Network on our Sirius radio ( yes it works now) until the we heard the “alarm”. A ear piercing beeping noise
with red flashing light , indicating we had rapid loss of air on our passenger-side inner dual tire. I pull over immediately on a very narrow shoulder, and sure enough it is flat.
I grabbed the warning triangles and walked them a couple hundred feet before our 9 tire yacht. Just as I was finishing up the tire change, a RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) galloped up (in his patrol car) checking to see of we were ok.
Ann Marie told him she had it under control, he nodded, and galloped off……I got the spare tire on and we were back on the road in about 30 minutes.
Not quite a NASCAR pit stop, but I was happy with it. McBride, about 170km away is the next town. There is one tire shop there and they were happy to see us.
They did a great job, nice folks. There was a puncture in the center of the thread of the flat tire, that could have been fixed but the side wall was destroyed so we had to buy one new tire. Of course the only tire they had was a mud and snow tire…perfect for the South East! They took care of us and we are on our way to Jasper. It is about 1600 so we started looking for a place to call home. About 50km away we found a nice rest area next to a glacier fed stream. Beautiful place, no one here but us!
We get set up, Ann Marie is inside getting stuff moved around, I’m outside inspecting, and what do I find? A strip of thread had separated from our driver-side front tire! About 30 km ago we thought we heard something,
like we ran over something. In fact we stopped, but did not see anything…
Well, at least we are setup for the night, what is one more tire change, right? I drop my new mud and snow spare, that I just put up there 45 minutes ago, jackup the front end and change out the tire…..
So now, if it snows, we are good to go, as long as the snow is only on the center of the road….
Oh, all is well. It could have happened in much worse places, so we are thankful.
After all this offroading we have done, the BFT needs a front-end alignment, and 6 new tires. I will wear this new “spare tire” out quick, but don’t have much of choice.
Once again, no internet, no tv, no problem, time for a beer.