Drive from Glennallen to Valdez, Bad Day

Today we drove from Glennallen to Valdez. This was a drive to remember. First, the road was in so-so shape. We felt every joint and every patch. We encountered 3 construction zones, all with a pilot car. In two of the zones we had to go on a temporary “road”. This was down a steep incline to about 12’ below the road surface and then immediately up the other side, dirt, mud, not paved. I really wasn’t sure we were going to make it and could hear the hitch towing the car dragging. I never thought I would off-road with the MH!

Another construction zone went on for many miles with stops here and there to let construction vehicle through.

The following are pictures of our day on the road.....

Sometimes you felt you were driving off the end of the road

Glaciers pretty much are all over

I breathed a sigh of relief when we were through all the construction until we went up to Thompson Pass, only 2800 feet but socked in with clouds. I don't think we could see 50’ in front of us, we had no knowledge of the road as to where we could pull off. We dropped to 20 MPH and put on our 4-way flashers. Then to top it all off we had a 10 mile downhill before getting to Valdez.

By the time we got to Valdez we had driven about 100 miles but I felt like it was 1000 miles.

The bad day wasn’t over. We went to unhitch the car and discovered a part of our hitch had broken off somewhere along the way and the toad had no brake lights or brakes for however long.

No rest for the weary, I found a picture of the missing part and we went off to the hardware store. Luckily they knew what it was and had one in stock. 

That morning noticed our heater(propane, blue flame, uses minimal propane and efficient) was shutting down by itself. This usually happens if you are about 8000-9000 feet due to lack of oxygen We were at sea level. Did some research and the orifice needs maintenance. Will work on that later. 
 

I had done some research on the internet regarding the propane heater and we needed to clean the orifice. Needed a pipe cleaner and a can of air. Back to the hardware store to buy a can of air. George(cat) loves pipe cleaners so we took one from his collection. He was not a happy cat. We thought he was going to be a problem when we cleaned the orifice and all he did was watch the pipe cleaner. We gave him his pipe cleaner back and he was happy.

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