Day 94 – June 12 – North Pole and Fairbanks

The day started out very bad!  We planned to get up a little before 6 a.m. and drive for a while, then stop to fix breakfast.  Well, I think there is an old saying something along the line of when man plans, God laughs.  He must have been slapping his knee and laughing His socks off today!  

Our camper has two switches for battery turn off.  One is for the house battery – it runs the inside lights, furnace, and water pump.  The other is the chassis battery – it is for the automotive stuff like starter, running lights, and so one.  There is a recall for a problem with the chassis kill switch – it can fail and turn all the power off to the motor.  So if you are driving along and it fails then the motor stops and you are dead in the water, so to speak.  You guessed it.  The switch failed this morning.  Ethel would not start, no lights, horn, or any other electrical function from the chassis.  Yes, there was a recall.  Yes, I had looked up what needed to be done.  No, I had not made the fix.  We had the camper home for 2 months before we left on the trip, but we never had a warm up like we normally do in January or February.  So I didn’t fix the problem.  I had the instructions on what to do, just didn’t do it.

So at 6 this morning instead of hitting the road, I am outside in 40-degree weather trying to get the old girl going again.  We were about 50 miles from North Pole, Alaska and it was cold.  Normally I would have been really mad at Ethel and myself, but we are in Alaska!  For some reason the problem didn’t really upset me like it would in Missouri or any place else.

I said it was cold, right?  I was cold when I got up because Dorrie and the dogs were nice and warm.  We don’t normally turn the furnace on at night because it will end up getting too hot in the camper.  So it was the same temperature inside as it was outside.  Maybe a degree or so warmer inside, but not much difference between the two.

I moved the battery cable to the other terminal like the recall said to do and tried the electric step.  It didn’t work!  Rick suggested trying to start the motor and it fired up.  So now I have a problem with the step, but Ethel was running again.

We belong to a roadside assistance program named CoachNet.  Dorrie got them on the phone and I explained the issue.  The guy on the phone said he would locate a service place in Fairbanks for me and call back.

We hit the road, drove a short distance and Dorrie saw a moose on the side of the road.  I didn’t get stopped in time and Rick was behind us and didn’t see it – I called on the CB but didn’t say which side to look and he looked left instead of right.

A few miles later we rounded a little curve and were hit in the face with this!

How could you be mad in a place like this?

After pictures we started up again and stopped at the Knotty Shop.  It was a fun place to visit but they were very proud of their stuff and seemed to want to keep it based on the prices.

Our next stop was Santa Claus House in North Pole.  What a great stop.  We met the man himself, saw the reindeers, and got some small gifts.  We spent about 90 minutes at the place.

Candy Cane Light pole

Dasher or Donner - they are hard to tell apart

The big guy

A couple of year old reindeer

We moved on to Fairbanks.  Everyone was tired from the early start so we checked out Fred Meyers to see if there was a place to stay.  The lot was pretty small, so we moved over to the WalMart lot.  This is camper city!  When we pulled in around 2 o’clock there were more than 10 camping units on the lot.  We parked and went in to see if we could stay.  They seemed a little surprised we asked.

There is one guy on the lot living in an old van that he has to coast to start.  He told Rick he has been staying here for over a month.  That is really pushing it!

Rick looked at the sunset and sunrise information on his phone - sunset is after midnight and sunrise is a little after 3 a.m.  We have not seen a star since we were in Oregon or Washington, not sure about the last time.

Later in the evening we made reservations for a 3-day stay in Denali National Park. We will try to work our other visits in this area around that stay.  When we are in Denali we will be out of touch for a while – no hookups or cell phone service then.  I will remind you all before we enter the park.