Chuck:
A really quiet night, considering we were dry camped about 100 feet from the “Alaska Highway”, almost zero traffic from 9 pm to 9 am; actually, not much any time. As we are preparing to roll down the road for another day, Betty cranks the engine as I walk around to check the outside. Hey, we have a flat tire. The right, rear outside tire is totally FLAT. When I announce this; Betty reminds me that we have no cell coverage and we are 85 miles from the nearest town, Tok. Bren informs us that we may not be “in the middle of nowhere, but he can see it over by the base of some distant mountains”. Thanks Bren. They both decide the proper response is from the Geico gecko, “Somebody out there, please help me!”. Where is nephew, Barry Johnson, when we need him. Ok, we disconnect the Honda, Betty & I drive about 5 miles back to a gas station near the Canadian border. Great, they have a phone. We call AAA, they contact a garage in Tok. I give Willard the details of the tire, the damage and our exact location. Result: about 2 pm, Willard arrives with a new tire, old air compressor and a bunch of tire tools. I assist him as we work through the old time procedure: remove the wheel, force the tire off the wheel, force the new tire on the wheel, coax air into it hoping for a seal, remount the new assembly onto the RV. This took a lot longer than it should have, maybe because of my help. Great, 4:30 pm and we are now on the road. We will spend the night in Tok and settle up with Willard in the morning.
The Tok RV Village has full service hook-ups: water, 50 Amps, sewer and cable TV (much more than we have been accustomed to for the past few weeks). As Betty registers, Bren and I disconnect the car from the RV and discover that the Honda has a dead battery. We “jump it” from the RV. Evidently, this morning while Betty and I drove to find a phone, I was trying to find an AM radio station and I left the radio on, in the “search” mode; for hours while it was being towed (the CRV must have the key in the ‘Acc.’ mode while towing and of course the car’s alternator is not recharging ). Tonight, the RV park has a local band in the community building; Alaska Sweetgrass & Dave Stancliff: old guy on guitar, young guy on banjo, good looking young gal on fiddle. Good tunes and lots of Tok facts: they claim to have the lowest temp in North America – minus 83 degrees, with a population of 1,434, they refuse to incorporate, “nobody likes their local government so why have one”. Consequently, some houses have really weird colors, residents do as they please, but, they pay no municipal taxes and they have a sense of cohesiveness that they must work together. Meanwhile, Bren is back at the RV freaking out with all the available TV channels and internet connection after a week of NOTHING!