The Moment of Truth

How easy or difficult would it be to reconnect the RV to the Truck? Well, Thursday August 8 was the day we would do the deed or at least make the attempt. The morning was slow; we slept in and enjoyed the campground. Later in the morning we drove to Carcross to use the internet, make more calls and eat lunch at the local bistro. I was able to find some scrap lumber at a construction site in the village. I told the job supervisor I needed some for cribbing to lift up our trailer and he offered whatever we could use from the free wood pile. I found enough 2x6 lumber to do the trick.

We returned to the campsite and I cut the lumber to make blocks I could stack up under the bottle jack I would use to raise the left side of the RV. We added additional tire chocks to all four tires and started the process slowly and methodically. Karen was on the leveling control panel raising the right leveling jack while I lifted the left side with the bottle jack under the frame behind the broken jack. Slowly we raised the trailer high enough to back the truck under the hitch ball in the bed of the truck....kind of! The alignment was off slightly and we tried to correct the centering of the ball but we were still off.

I thought we were close enough to try connecting, The scary part is the lack of lowering control using two different systems that are not synchronized together. Karen started retracting the right side at my direction and I released the pressure on the bottle jack as close to simultaneously as possible. BOOM! The trailer goose-neck hitch slipped onto the hitch ball in the truck's bed with a little more energy than I would have preferred. But, good news....we were back together again. Thank you Jesus!

We thought about staying the third night, but honestly I just wanted to get back on the road and somewhere we had cell phone service or wi-fi. We had already paid for a third night when the ranger came by to check on our situation. He took pity on us and understood our desire to get back on the road; so much so that he retrieved our payment envelope and returned our money for that one night. It was a really nice gesture that we both appreciated.

Everything was packed up; we drove up the hill back to the Klondike Highway, through Carcross and 95 miles back on the ALCAN until it got late enough to pull over at a rest stop for the night. It turns out that Teslin Territorial campground was next to the rest stop; we found a nice long back-in site that was level and settled in at the campground..

Driving on Friday, August 9 we covered 150 more miles in under three hours to Baby Nugget RV Park just outside of Watson Lake, Yukon. Joe at the office set us up with a site that had a slight downhill slope to accommodate our nose high configuration staying connected to the truck. Just east of the RV park is the junction south to the Stewart-Cassiar Highway 37. This was our planned route south through British Columbia.

For those traveling to the Yukon and/or Alaska, Highway 16 / 37 offers an alternate route from the Alaska Highway. Much less used than the Alaska Highway, it offers very different scenery (not better or worse, just different), making it perfect as part of a circle route.

The Cassiar Highway was completed in 1972, and is asphalt-surfaced with the exception of a short gravel break through the Stikine River valley. The highway passes through hilly and mountainous, mostly wooded wilderness regions where services are found in sparsely populated communities and far from each other.

We planned on returning this way, but would the hitch situation make that route problematic? What the heck, we decided we wanted to see new scenery and eventually camp in Stewart, BC before going on to Prince George. So Saturday, August 10 we departed Baby Nuggett RV Park and turned onto Highway 37 heading south.

On the Stewart-Cassiar we stopped in Jade City, BC to check it out. Jade City is a settlement in northwestern British Columbia, Canada, near the Yukon, located on Highway 37, west of Good Hope Lake and close to Cassiar, in the Cassiar Highlands. The region around Jade City is rich with serpentinite (a jade precursor), greenstone (jade look-a-likes), and Nephrite jade. Jade City is by road about 19 hours north of Greater Vancouver, and 1 hour south of the Yukon border. As of 2015, it had a population of about 30 people. While we were stopped in Jade City, another Alliance Avenue 32RLS rolled in. We met their owners, Gary and Mickey Vander Veen from Holland, Michigan. They were headed south like us to Lake Kinaskan Provincial Park and eventually Bear River RV Park in Stewart, so we talked about getting together for a future visit and dinner together.

We drove 223 miles over four hours and found Lake Kinaskan Provincial Park in Iskut, British Columbia. What a gem! We backed into a lake side spot for only $15 anight! After setting up our campsite we discovered the water pump no longer worked, but fortunately I had purchased a new pump while we were in Florida earlier in the year anticipating the need to replace it eventually. That had day arrived. Day two at the lake was spent replacing the water pump and repairing some of the rubber trim seals around the slide outs.

We could have stayed here for a week without blinking. Just an INCREDIBLE location!!!!