My Telus internet key is awesome! It’s fast, coverage is decent, and I’m not burning through nearly as much bandwidth as I would have expected. In fact, I shouldn’t have bothered upgrading from the 500mb plan to the 1gb plan for this billing period.
That said, I expect that I won’t have internet access again until Whitehorse, which should be Saturday, although I will make it a point to try connecting when I go through towns.
I pulled out at about 8:30 this morning and was able to confirm that Prince George really needs to put more money into its signage.
Last year, I used my GPS to get out of town and wound up on a road with a bridge that had too low of a clearance for Miranda. This year, I followed the signage and found myself on that exact same road! At least, this time the construction was done and I was able to squeak under the bridge. I had to circle back about ten kilometres only to discover that I hadn’t missed any signs at all. I put on my four way flashers in a busy intersection and took out the GPS. It told me to turn right and that ended up being correct while the signage clearly said to go straight for Dawson Creek. The idiots probably changed the roads in that area and ‘forgot’ to update the signage, cheap bastards.
It was stop and go all the way out of town, with several people cutting me off, and I was pretty cranky by the time I hit the open road. I stopped at the Crooked River rest area for brunch and then my mood improved considerably as I pushed north into my beloved landscape of poplar and black spruce.
climbing up to the Pine Pass Summit
climbing up to the Pine Pass Summit
approaching the Pine Pass Summit
snow!
stopped for construction; the guy in front of me was doing some impressive calisthenics!
stopped for construction
This construction stop was memorable for the route that followed. We had to go behind a pilot vehicle and there was no room for error. At one point, my wheels were literally a couple of inches from the edge of a cliff, with the side hanging out over a ravine. I made the mistake of looking down once, nearly lost my lunch, and then focused on the road!
approaching ‘the other Dawson’
There were some pretty impressive downhill stretches all the way to Taylor, between Dawson Creek and Fort St John, and I didn’t remember them from last year. It just goes to show how barreling down a hill with no brakes teaches you to pay more attention to the elevation changes. 😀
It got colder and windier the more north I drove and the snow on the ground at the Pine Pass remained all the way into Fort St John. There were actually a few icicles forming on the exterior of the loft when I pulled into the Walmart!
I completely avoided ‘the other Dawson’ this year, but I still felt that tug at my heartstrings when I turned onto the Alaska Highway. Some things aren’t going to get old any time soon!
It was quite the exciting driving day, but it would have been a good day on the road had this not happened:
That’s probably going to be a total windshield replacement. The impact was such that there are shards of glass inside the cab and there are three cracks pushing out of the chip. One grew and grew and grew before my eyes and I thought I was going to have to pull over and call for help, worried that the whole windshield was going to go. So far, it doesn’t affect my visibility, so I’m holding out hope that they can just fill it with epoxy and buy me some time…. I can handle a chip repair right now, but not a windshield replacement! And before I get any comments on the subject–Yukon vehicle insurance does not cover glass claims.
Well, no sense worrying about this until tomorrow, so I’m going to turn on the furnace and then go make a nice dinner!
Even though the water is not fixed and it definitely needs a new circuit board, Les definitely bought me some time with the few adjustments he made. While it does shut off periodically, I have been able to run it when needed for the past 24 hours and have had all the hot water I want for showers and washing dishes (yes, I’m manually washing dishes while on the road!).
When I get to Dawson, I will research suppliers for the part to find the one with the best shipping options. This is going to end up being a nearly $200 part and it just was not something I could afford this past winter. Many people will disagree with me, but I consider hot water a luxury, not a necessity. Moreover, I didn’t know for certain that I needed the new control board. Now that I’ve had an RV repair expert look at the problem, fiddle with settings, and change the probe I know for sure that the purchase of a new board will solve my problem and I am more willing to spend the money.
I’m off to take advantage of unlimited running water and my ten gallons of hot water that would otherwise go to waste… 😀
Today was an easy, lounging, sleet-y kind of day. After the brouhaha of the last few months, it truly felt like a day off even though I completed a little over five billable hours! I need to do between ten and twenty hours a week and Monday is the first day of the weekly cycle, so I’m off to a roaring start for this week!
Tomorrow, I will do an hour before heading out and then I won’t worry if I find myself without internet for a couple of nights.
This dream life of mine is really taking shape.
I learned something about Miranda in the past few days that has simply boggled me.
She was sold to me as a 1997 model. Nothing in my paperwork actually gave the model year, so I assumed that this was correct even though little things didn’t jive, like the brochure Glendale sent me, the fact that she does better in cold weather than she should, and her layout being just a tad off from other ’97s.
The gang at Lube-X told me that according to Ford, she couldn’t possibly be a ’97 (I think it’s because there were no E-450’s built in ’97).
And then I met up with a real ’97 Royal Classic en route to the Chasm and the suspicion that has been growing for longer than I realised was confirmed:Â Miranda is a 1998 model!
I did some more digging and found proof! There is a note under the hood that she was built in December 1997, officially making her a 2008 model. A year might not seem like much, but I think that for an RV it makes a huge difference.
Guess this means I can hope to be ‘stuck’ with her an extra year!