As mentioned in that post, we decided to head home to get the truck fixed (if possible), and do the Alaska trip another year. After driving our morothome and truck separately for about 950 miles (1,529 km), we made it home safely.
Today we dropped off our truck at a local body shop, so they could investigate further, and get it inspected by the insurance adjuster. Hopefully we’ll hear their conclusion in the next few days, most likely early next week.
Here are some photos of the broken components laid out on the ground at home:
Truck, front frame, tow base plate, bumper, tow bar; all damaged:
I’ll do more real-time updates as we hear more, but in the meantime will resume normal blog posts next week, which are a couple of months behind real-time. They are not without drama, too… stay tuned!
This blog is a bit behind real-time; we are actually in Canada at present, on our way to Alaska. Just 46 miles into the Alcan after Dawson Creek, leaving a fuel stop in Fort St John, the front frame of our truck failed, and the tow base plate broke off. Fortunately the truck was stopped at an intersection when it failed; it could have been much worse if it failed in motion. Luckily we caught it within about a minute of it happening. Yes, we have a rear-view camera which shows the truck, but we don’t stare at it all the time, when merging onto a highway and navigating traffic (and it shows the side view when indicating).
After sleeping on it, we decided to head home. We considered driving the truck separately, or storing it in Fort St John and renting a car in Alaska, but either would impact the enjoyment of our trip. We decided we’d rather come back again in a year or two and do it right. (We’re thinking about downsizing to a van or B+ anyway, which might work better.)
I’ve zip-tied the loose wires etc, and we’ll drive separately home over the next few days. We aren’t entirely missing out on Alaska this year: we also have an Alaska cruise in September, so that helps us feel this was the right choice for us. We’ll be back to see the rest of Alaska in the next year or two, and would like to explore more of Canada too.
Here’s a video from someone who saw us dragging the bumper (and then flagged us down). The video has gone viral, with millons of views in various Facebook groups, TikTok, etc. Reading the comments provides an interesting sample of humanity; some sympathetic people, but a lot more trolls showing a lack of empathy for a significant event, or making irrelevant comments or incorrect assumptions (it’s not a Jeep, we didn’t drag it lots of miles, we’re not Boomers or rich, etc etc). Disappointing, but not surprising.
Annoyingly for a one-night stay, we had to untoad, as the site was too short to remain connected. That might be my fault, though; they let you choose your site when booking, and I must not have measured it with Google Maps:
If we stay here again in the future, we’d choose a better site.
Opening day in Anaheim stumbled out of the gate, with the anthem singer mugging for time due to a botched flyover by vintage fighter planes. The crowd booed the outgoing president of baseball ops and remained agitated throughout the game. Fans seemed more into the party than the game itself. Bryan Woo was electric for the M’s, but our bats were quiet until the 10th when Cole Young tripled to score the ghost runner, and Josh Naylor hit Julio and Cole in. The Angels got one back with a sac fly in the bottom of the 10th, but too little too late. Overall, a subpar experience at a subpar park, but the Mariners won, so a net positive.
