Moving to Alaska: Day Eighteen

Most of the next few days is driving, not stopping, not looking at stuff, just covering a lot of miles as fast as possible since Thao has to be back at work in five days and we have ~2200 miles to travel with unpredictable weather. And to complicate that further, in talking, Thao wanted to try and get back as early as we could, like, a day earlier if possible, so we had time to unpack and settle in and such.

So we plan to hit the road early every day. Though today that involved running a few errands around Vancouver like grocery shopping to have stuff for camping and snacking on the rest of the drive. Once we finally got going we were about 100 miles outside of Vancouver when a tire blew on the car.

First a flight delay. Then a blown tire.

In looking at the tire, it was worn to the metal from the weight of the trailer. Actually both back ones looked like that. The AAA driver (or CAA technically) said I have a non standard tire size (of course) so made a few calls and we learned our only option was to drive back about 40 miles to a bigger town where they MIGHT have them. Like it or not, we towed the trailer on the temporary tire to get back to town. The issue with this trailer is that it is held onto the car by gravity, meaning the only way to take it off or put it back on is to pretty much empty the entire trailer.

So after a slow hour of driving, the tire place said they could get us the tire by the next afternoon... which we did NOT want. Luckily they sent us to another shop who at least said they could get us out of there the same day, though it would be late. So of course we went there and we waited since same day is still better than next day. It took about five hours since they had to first get it from their Vancouver store. To pass the time, Thao, the cat and I hung out in the shopping mall parking lot, got out the camp stove and made some lunch. And reevaluated the route planning for the day. We figured out a target area assuming it would be a 6pm (when the store closed) departure and once we finally got back on the road, things went smoothly all the way to the campground.

Yeah, this is a boring blog. Short too. That happens when most of the day involved sitting in the grass taking a nap.

Start: Vancouver, British Columbia

Stop: Cache Creek, British Columbia

~310 Miles Driven

~2.2 Miles Walked
2 Letterboxes Found

0 Letterboxes Not Found

0 Letterboxes Planted
2 Tires Replaced

Pictures will be posted on Facebook in this album (and the link will be included in all future posts for this trip):

Moving to Alaska Photos