Element Blues

Dawson Creek, BC – Saturday, September 24, 2011

Woke to 41degrees around 8. We want to get an early start to Ft. St. John, BC, they are the closest Honda service, but not sure if they are open on Saturday. Frank went out to check on the Element and it still sounded the same. He looked under the hood and found a disconnected hose on the air manifold. He put it back together and it sounded fine. We hope that fixed the problem.

We headed out and are going by Ft St Johns anyway. We still aren’t sure of our route and need to check weather and road conditions. Went to the Visitors Center and it is now closed on weekends. Decided to try the Royal Canadian Mounted Police station to see what they could tell us about Hwy 97. The building was closed, but a patrol car pulled in as we were leaving and asked if we needed help. They told us that the road was still under construction after the washout and that there were long waits for the one way traffic. They did not recommend we take the RV that way. That convinced us.

Fueled up and headed to Dawson Creek.

We stopped at the Dawson Creek Visitors Center (they were open until 5pm). We came by here on our way to Alaska, but they were closed. We toured the museum and got our “I Traveled the Alaska Highway Certificate”.

Next stop, Walmart parking lot. We took off in the Element in search of possible laundry sites. As we were driving around the Element started making a new noise and the “bucking” problem seems to be back. Great, now what do we do?

BG Miles Today	119	BG Total Miles	8831
Eat Out total $	1266.55	BG Total Fuel $	5156.27
Entertainment total $	1391.63	Total Camping $	1162.03
E Miles Today	19.25	E Total Miles	2763.51
E Total Fuel $	575.82	Day # of Trip	116