Neither Jason nor Catrina had any sort of rest. We both twitched with anxiety, tossing and
turning, achieving sleep only briefly.
We forced ourselves to stay in our bed until after eight.
We drove by the first shop, driving slowly, carefully into
the parking lot. The hand-painted signs
advertised tires, but the building appeared to be abandoned for likely
sometime. We passed the airport, and made it into town. The rain had not stopped the night before.
We pulled into the driveway of the first tire shop, a
Firestone dealer, in Dawson City. Jason
went inside. They did not have the tire. It would take over a week to order the tire.
We decided to go across the street, to another tire shop/gas
station/RV park. They did not have the
tire either. The owner began to look
around the shop, in hopes that another tire would fit our car. A fox trotted out across the parking lot and
when Catrina exclaimed, the owner brushed off the sighting as a routine occurrence
in his thick Northern accent.
He went inside to make use of his Internet connection to
either locate tires or another size that could work. We showered at the RV Park, and then, Jason
called for roadside assistance to gain permission for the local to tow the
camper into town.
Jason started activating a phone tree in hopes of locating
tires. We needed not just one tire, but
two. The owner had located a tire in
Vancouver. The camper’s roadside
assistance service were communicating with the Ford dealership in Whitehorse.
While they did not have one, they could order one. It would take over a week. Jason’s parents were beginning to call every
tire shop in all of the Northwest.
The story was quickly changing. No longer was this the story of how we went
to Alaska. This was becoming the story
of how we became stranded in the Yukon, and never saw Alaska, at all.
Yet, finally the tires were located. American Tire in Fairbanks, AK, had a set of
four that they were unwilling to separate.
But how could we get them to us any faster than any other ordered tire?
Customs could delay us receiving tires for seven to ten days. Our donut and our other rear tire could not
make the over one hundred miles on gravel road over the border. American Tire began contacting freight
planes, in hopes, that one was going to Dawson City.
At one o’clock, we jumped in a Jeep with the owner of the
tire shop to go retrieve the camper from the side of the road. Another fox trotted out across the road in
front of us as we travelled. The skies
poured raindrops onto his windshield, and the sound of the wipers swishing back
and forth interrupting Jason’s attempts at conversation.
When we arrived at the camper, we jumped out and began
preparing the trailer for movement. We
piled our trunk contents into the back of the Jeep. And we were soon headed
back into town.
The owner did not think there were any planes bringing freight
from Fairbanks anymore. He thought there
might be a tour bus that would be willing to bring them to us instead.
When we returned to town an hour later, we began to set up
our unwanted camping site. The lot was
flat gravel, and the RVs seemed to be parked close together. But we would have hot water for showers, real
restrooms, and a chance to do laundry.
When we arrived back into phone service, American Tire told
us the same thing about the airplanes.
We drove into town to get phone numbers for the tour buses. The people we called were beginning to hear
about our situation before we called.
And no one was to be found that could get us the tires before over a
week had passed. Businesses were closed
on Tuesday for Canada Day, and there seemed to be no hope to have tires before
Wednesday of the next week.
Finally, someone was found that made the drive every
Friday. By Saturday morning, we could have
tires.
That night, after dinner, we all had much more rest than the
night before.
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