[A/S] Scudders back home after a 14,000 trip to Alasks

[Perry Scudder <perryjoe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi List,
Mary and I left Wilmington, NC, in mid June for a trip to Alaska, with a
stop at the International Rally. We made the trip, including the WBCCI
Alaska Caravan, and made it home 10/12/01. It was a wonderful trip, with
no problems of any kind with the 1998 34' Limited trailer or the 2000
GMC 2500 Gas truck. I took the precaution of building a stone guard of
PVC pipe and Hardware clouth for the front of the trailer, buying a set
of big mud flaps for the back of the truck, and covering all the exposed
gas and water lines under the trailer with pipe insulation before the
trip. I had 7 new Marathons ( Load range D) installed on the trailer.
The only problem we encountered was the death of our TV set in Homer,
AK. We averaged 9.997 miles per gallon for the entire trip, which
included several high passes in the Rockies. I spent several weeks fly
fishing down through the Rockies, and ended up in Durango, CO, before
heading down to I-40 in NM, and on across country to Wilmington, NC. The
average cost of gas was $1.8264 per US Gallon. The most expensive gas
was in Canada where I paid $2.489 US/US gallon for regular 87 octane
fuel.
I was able to get access to E-Mail in all but 3 or 4 places we stopped
on the entire trip. I was amazed at the fact that in places where they
didn't have electrical power from a grid, they usually had a phone
connection of some kind and were glad to let you use it to hook up to
your ISP using an 800 number. I used good old Bellsouth, and never
failed to hookup on the first try. I haven't missed a single post from
the list while traveling, even though, some of them got short air time
in light of the other things to do along the way.
This was our first caravan, but will not be the last. We loved it!!!!
The people were wonderful, and we met some people we will look forward
to meeting on future caravans. The worst tragedy on the trip was when
one lady rolled her new 39' motor home off of a 12 foot bank. Neither
she nor her invalid husband got a scratch, and finished the caravan with
her sister that was traveling the caravan alone in her classic motor
home. This took place between Dawson City, YT, and Chicken, AK, on the
"Top of the World Highway" on a straight paved section of the road about
45 miles out of Dawson City.
We had rain about 40 of the 52 days on the caravan, but never enough to
miss anything we wanted to do or see. The temperature was in the low
70's or upper 60's most days with lows in the 40's and 50's at night.
The roads were mostly very good, with three exceptions. The section of
the "Top of the World Highway" between the Canadian border and Tok, AK
was all mud with pot holes much worse than the dirt roads of the back
hills of Tennessee where I grew up. It had been raining for days when we
made the crossing, which did not help matters. The road was so bad that
a Holiday Rambler Motor home caravan that was on about the same schedule
as us stayed 3 extra days in Tok in order to get their rigs all
repaired. The Airstreamers had a few minor problems, but with the
exception of the before mentioned motor home, we all pulled out of Tok
on schedule.
The GMC performed flawlessly except for a small clip fell out of the
throttle linkage that connects the cruse control cable in place. I
repaired this with a carter pin at the next rest stop. The Ultra 2020
brake controller never needed to be touched one time for the entire
trip, and needless to say the Hinsley Arrow served me well for the
entire trip. I was very pleased with the choice of trailer, truck and
all the connecting pieces I had learned about on this list. I would make
one change now that I have done some dry camping. I would have installed
a 100 Watt Solar panel instead of the 50 Watt I now have. I installed it
to keep my batteries charged while the trailer is in storage, which it
does just fine. My two Optima Deep Cycle batteries would start to get
very low after 3 days of dry camping when the furnace was needed some
during the night. I think the extra output of the 100 Watt unit would
have kept me going at the usage level I was able to maintain. I am not a
dry camper, so I may not ever add another panel to my system.

End of a long story that covered almost 4 months, and 14000 miles - What
an adventure!!!

Joe and Mary Scudder
WBCCI 8624
Alaska Caravan down, and lots more to go.