Whitehorse YT to Skagway Alaska

The past couple weeks I have been battling the 5'ers slideout trying to fix it. I've been making careful small adjustments to the vertical and horizontal adjustors with no luck. And the problems have been been gradually getting worse. I have to manually push the top of the slide to finish bringing it in by using our carwash brush on a long handle. And lately new noises and grinding reached a point where a piece on the bottom underside of the slide ripped off. Our worst nightmare realized.

But …. everything worked out for the best despite the fact it was Friday the 13^th. When we arrived in Whitehorse in the Yukon we found a tire shop to rotate the tires on the 5'er. Then we found an RV repair place. It was about 4:30 and the RV place said they could look at the slideout in the morning. The next morning their technician came out and gave the slideout a thorough inspection and found that the floor had separated from the wall and the floor was dragging low and making those terrible grinding noises and causing the slide to not retract correctly. It looked like a major all day job but one that had to be done. And they seemed like they knew what they were doing.

By pure luck we found the best RV repair place on the planet. Everybody that worked there was very nice and a lady in the office recommended we leave the RV and drive to Skagway. Skagway is a city that we were considering because we heard a few people tell of the beautiful drive. It is about a 115 mile drive one way. They said we could camp in our RV overnight at the shop and even plugged us into their power.

And they were right, the ride to Skagway was one of the prettiest we've experienced on the trip. It was also nice driving and not dragging the beast of a trailer behind us. The mountains were spectacular and we even saw a large Brown bear along the way.

The town of Skagway is one of those Cruise ship towns, filled with history, tourist shops and hundreds of tourists milling around. We counted 4 ships in. So we milled around some too and found a perfect place for lunch. It was quite interesting reading the history of this town during the Gold rush times.

When we called the RV repair shop at the end of the day we braced ourselves expecting the repairs to be very expensive. We were pleasantly surprised when they told us it's working like new and the price was less than $200.00. That was the best news of all. And it's one worry that won't follow us down the road any longer. Plus we got a free night of camping in their parking lot.

The pictures we took along the road to Skagway doesn't even come close to what it really looks like. Emerald Lake was the prettiest lake I've ever seen with emerald color and white rings inside the lake that played off the colors in the lake. The sunshine made it spectacular even though the weather turned quite moist as we got closer to Skagway. Also we started in the Yukon, cut through British Columbia and ended up back in the US in Alaska (customs and all). On the way back we had to go through Canadian customs again and then back to the Yukon.

When we got back to the RV, I was impressed with the workmanship and technique they used to reconnect the slideout floor with the walls. It was good timing that it went out when it did. RV repair shops of this caliber are uncommon. And I must put in a plug for the people of Whitehorse, Yukon. Everyone we met has been over the top nice. We went downtown for breakfast and later had dinner at a little family owned pizza place for dinner. Whitehorse is an interesting community. If I were to live in the north, this would be the town I'd pick. There's just something about this place.