We left our coach at Oregon Motorcoach Center in Eugene, Oregon to get its annual service (early) and some repairs and improvements, and drove our truck about 246 miles, about four hours of driving, to our home base near Shelton, Washington.
An interactive map:
We of course took Paladin with us; traveling in the truck (or any travel really) isn’t his favorite thing, but he’s happy enough with some chill juice, if not stuck in his crate:
We stayed in a bedroom in our home base while our coach was being serviced.
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.
