Today was an adventure. We decided that the Arctic Circle was only 30km North of us so we started the day heading there. We also figured it would be a good test for the used tire we had mounted. We made it with no real problem and have now driven across the arctic circle.
On the way south after about 15 km’s there was a loud bang and the used tire had blown. Fortunately we were at a nice flat spot and on a long, dry, firm stretch of road. But for the first time Ron was going to have to change a tire on Scout. A sparsely traveled road 10 miles south of the arctic circle and 220 miles from the nearest paved road was not the ideal place to test our tire changing equipment. Ron was regretting not doing a dry run before with the tire changing equipment. Everything was going ok until it was time to position the bottle jack to lift the truck. Because the tire had failed completely the rear axle was too low to put the heavy duty bottle jack Ron had bought under the axle. But luckily two fellows who worked for the Yukon government came along and stopped to help. They had a jack that would fit under the axle, but was only rated for two tons, which was not enough to lift the truck. But it would lift the axle enough to get the heavy duty bottle jack under the axle, so success. The tire was changed with the help of a third guy who worked at the Eagle Plains gas station who wandered by with a water truck. I never did get the names of the two guys who had the jack that made the repair possible but I really appreciate them taking the 45 minutes it took for me to use their jack.
The next stop was Eagle Plains to assess the situation, as we were back to the same problem as the night before, 365 kilometers from the nearest pavement and no spare. We were forced to make the budget busting decision to buy a new spare tire that worked in a pinch, but we will be discarding when we get to civilization and can buy a matching tire for the one we lost.
After getting everything sorted in Eagle Plains we took off for Dawson City about noon and after a very cautious drive arrived about 730pm. A very long day.
