The Signpost Forest, in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory
Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end. Here’s where we 
are overall:
- Total miles driven: 8968
- Total miles by ferry: 489
- Total days on the road: 95
- Total nights in a hotel: 4
- Total miles hiked: 100.94
The restored S.S. Klondike, in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
Some interesting stats for this week:
- Fuel stops: 5 (diesel: as low as $4.27/gal in Tok, AK up to $5.64/gal in Carmacks, YT)
- Technical Issues: 1
- Bears sighted: 2
- NPS Sites Visited: 3 (Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park in the US; and Dawson City Historical Complex in Canada)
- Auroras sighted: 2 nights’ worth
After that first night where we had good luck sighting the Northern Lights, we kept an eye on the weather forecast as well as the aurora forecast. For the next three nights, no matter how tired we were, we got ourselves out of bed at 2am and stood outside hoping to catch another glimpse of the show. We didn’t have much luck – we only saw them again faintly on the second night, and only for about five minutes (see photo above). Oh well. We count ourselves lucky to have seen them at all!
We had one minor technical issue with the van this week, as a result of driving on so many dirt and gravel roads. We were driving along (on a dirt road, of course) and heard a very high-pitched squealing sound. At first I thought I had left the fan vent on top of the van open, so Kevin pulled over and I went to check it. Nope, it was tightly shut.
We started going again, and this time the noise got louder. It sounded like we were about to lose a wheel or something. But all the wheels looked okay. I sat in the back and listened while Kevin drove – yep, definitely the wheel. We pulled off the road again and Kevin looked a little closer. Aha!
A tiny rock had wedged itself under the brake caliper. You can kind of see it in the photo above if you look closely. And the squealing noise we had heard was it scraping against the wheel hub. Even though we had only driven about five miles with it wedged in there, you can see where it scored the wheel hub as it grated against it.
So great – we’d identified the problem, but now how to get the rock out without pushing it further under the caliper? Kevin to the rescue: he deftly fished it out with a piece of duct tape wrapped sticky side-out around a screwdriver. Easy peasy!
Are there any problems that can’t be fixed with a little duct tape?
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