Mon, Aug 24: Fairbanks

Dick is up early and gone by 7:45AM to try and find someone who can align the front end of the rig. His first stop is the local Ford dealer. The service writer is very nice but they do not have an alignment machine that will take the weight and physical size of the rig. He recommends two places in town that should be able to do the work. The first of these cannot do it for the same reasons, but the second, Gabe’s Truck and Auto, can do it and are a Good Sam Service location. They make an appointment to have the work done at 1:00PM on Wednesday, August 26. Now, let’s hope the problem is just an alignment issue and not something bent or broken.

Dick returns to the rig about 9:30AM to silence. He quietly makes a travel mug of coffee and then heads out to replace a digital camera card reader and to look for a single DVD disk onto which he needs to copy some photos. The reader is easy, but no one will sell a single DVD and the bundles of 10 that he finds are a little expensive. He will look some more later.

After putting gas in the Explorer at $3.139 per gallon, he returns to the rig by 10:30AM and Carolyn is up. We don’t expect the call from the Dell technician today so we plan to drive the 132 mile round trip to Chena Hot Springs just to get out and to see the countryside. We see some interesting signs and a couple of moosealong the way but the last 35 miles is under construction and we spend over an hour waiting for pilot cars during the round trip. Except for the construction the drive is nice. There is a little color in the aspen and the road follows the Chena River the whole way. Chena Hot Springs is nothing to brag about in the summer. It might be quite nice as a winter sports area.

We return to Fairbanks and restock our bar at a WalMart liquor store and then return to the rig. Dinner is baked chicken with Stove Top Stuffing and green beans. It might not be quite as good as the salmon and prime rib of last night but it tastes good just the same.

We continue to suffer from the sun’s refusal to go down and once again we go to bed with it quite light outside despite it being nearly 10:00PM.