Puncture at Pelly Crossing

The night after we finished the Dempster, we camped at Pelly Crossing. The council provide the campsite here, it is very pleasant, spacious and free. In the morning, we discovered a flat rear tyre. Very flat. The small electric pump we had bought in Inuvik was no use for this. I called Canadream to ask where the tools were and they told me not to attempt to change the wheel myself. I explained I was quite capable and willing but no, do not even think about it. What would happen, they said, if something went wrong further down the road as a consequence of me changing the wheel? Mid-afternoon a man arrived. Jacked the car up. Fitted the spare and then left. We could then press on to Whitehorse – nearest place with a tyre shop. In the morning, we arrived at the appointed tyre shop where they discovered that six of the eight wheels nuts were loose. Worse, the holes in the spare wheel were now oval shaped because of the way the wheel had been rattling around. We had only narrowly missed a nasty mishap because the spare wheel was on the verge of coming off. Now, we no longer had a usable spare wheel. Two days later, Canadream had us visiting a scrap yard to collect another wheel and then another tyre shop to fit the spare tyre to it. All this because they would not trust me to use a spanner.

Between punctures and the Dempster, we were running on a tight schedule now. We passed more forest fires. Some of them still burning. Also, areas where there had been fires in previous years. We could see how the forest was starting to grow back.

At 2.6 km², Carcross desert is possibly one of the smallest deserts in the world. It is not really a desert, just a few sand dunes. The sand was formed during the last glacial period as sediment on a lake bottom. When the lake dried up the dunes were left and vegetation locked them into place. The dunes support some rare plants. The government tried to make it a protected area a few years ago but the locals objected because they like to use the dunes for sandboarding (like snowboarding but on sand).

We saw some more bears and managed to photograph one. Usually what happens is that we see a bear, stop the car and the bear vanishes into the forest. This is good bear behaviour. It is better all-round if bears are shy of humans. It is when they lose their nervousness and start getting too close to humans that they can become a problem – and that just leads to them being shot.

The rest of the route back to Vancouver was easy. Easy roads and comfortable campsites. We came through Whistler which is a big ski area. Unfortunately, there was not any time to explore. We found a monster car wash at one campsite. This was a lucky break because we had a lot of mud to remove. Even with both of us working at cleaning, it took most of the morning to get the RV back into a reasonable condition. Then most of the afternoon to clean out the inside and pack our stuff. We were quite pleased with the results and thought that the 10,000 km we had done did not really show. If the vehicle needs a lot of cleaning when you hand it back the company will charge quite a lot for this. The next day we dropped the RV off, picked up our bags and headed into Vancouver.