First day in Whitehorse, getting new springs
Friday june 22nd
I got up and let Julie and the kids sleep in while I went to get the new springs as they were all quite tired. The placed I had phoned from the maintenance yard in Swift River that were sure they would have a spring for me didn't. They had a huge wall of all the same size springs which I found odd. They gave me another place to try so I called them first and they said they didn't have any and gave me 2 other places to try. The first place I called from their list was a welding shop that said they had lots. It was quite a drive to get there as it was way outside town and when I got there they brought a spring that was too light and a spring that was too heavy to the counter. When I asked if he had any springs in-between the guy got quite upset, so I picked the heavy ones. The spring on my trailer that broke was a 2 leaf rated for several hundred pounds more than the weight I had on it so it must have been defective or something. The new springs were the same thickness and 4 leaves, so much stiffer.
I needed some hose for the car which Canadian tire did not have but they had some mosquito repellent with a higher deet concentration so I picked that up since what we had was not working well. When i went to walmart for some groceries i met the older couple who had the wheel come off their trailer a mile from where I broke down. Someone had blocked their good axle up with wood like i had done so they could make it to the parking lot, put their slideouts out and sleep in their trailer. Then they got towed to Teslin but had to bring their trailer spindle to Whitehorse so a shop could try and cut the bad part off theirs, weld a new section on and machine it smooth since no new ones were available. So if I got my timeline right from them it was 2.5 days waiting for a tow and would be at least 4 before they were back on the road.
I have a tire pressure monitor system in the car that reads the temperature and pressure of the trailer and car tires but the solar charging in it quit and the battery in one monitor dies so i picked up parts for that and went back to our campsite for breakfast.
We left the campsite at about noon, and Ryan drove us to Napa to get a hose he needed for the car. When he'd put the hose on, we went to the transportation museum. Outside the museum they have the world's largest weathervane; it is a DC3 airplane that saw a lot of use in the Yukon. When it was retired, it was placed on a turning pedestal, and it turns with the wind, no matter how light the breeze is. Shawn thought we were blowing it, and was adamant that he get a turn!
When we got our tickets, the lady sold us a combined ticket with the nearby Beringia museum, and we also got our passports stamped. In the gift shop there were some small toy cars that the boys played with while we talked with the lady behind the desk.
In Whitehorse, there are a number of public pianos, and one of them was in this museum. I wished my sister could come and play it, so I took a picture of it. The museum had quite a bit about the route people took to the gold fields, and the difficulties they ran into on the way.
There was a very interesting display about a man and woman who were badly injured in a plane crash in the Yukon and spent a month and a half in the woods, basically living off of melted water in temperatures that didn't get above -40f, before they got rescued. It was quite an interesting story for anyone who wants to look it up.
In another room, there was a bicycle hooked up to some lights, and you could pedal until you lit them all. The boys couldn't do it, so they begged us to do it over and over.
Yukon license plates are kind of interesting. from 1953-84 they had gold dots in the miners pan hand painted by the registry office workers. Certain people had certain numbers in the early days and people still have 4 digit license plates although 5 is more common. The population of the Yukon is only 35,874 in a land mass larger than California which is the continental USA's second biggest state. California by the way has more people than all of Canada.
In the museum's hallway, they had a display about the sinking of the Princess Sophia- the greatest disaster in the north. During a winter blizzard wind speeds were around 60mph and the captain couldn't tell where he was as they used landmarks on the shore at the time for navigation. He ran aground on a reef and conditions were so bad that 500 yards from a nearby lighthouse, the station's light could not be seen and the foghorn could not be heard, other ships couldn't get close enough for a rescue without risking running aground as well. 40 hours after they ran aground the ship slid off the reef and sank. All 360+ passengers died, a dog was the only survivor. It was quite devastating for a large area with a small population, one town lost 1/10th of its population. More of the story of the sinking of Princess Sophia
We have no idea what this is but its big...
We had lunch in the park that's next to the SS Klondike, then made a shopping list and went shopping. To make a shopping list, we need to decide how many days we need food for, and then I work out a meal plan for until the next time we plan to go to the store. Sometimes this goes fairly well, but there have been several times that we needed to change the plan in the store, or Ryan shopped with the boys while I did the laundry, and I ended up with different food than we'd planned because the store didnt have what we needed, so I need to change my whole meal plan.
When we'd completed our shopping list, we went back to the campsite for supper. Ryan changed both of the trailer springs, reinstalled the mudflap and worked on the car a bit while I cooked.
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