It was a pretty morning at the Cabela's in Anchorage.
And we noticed the 20 RVs in the RV/Trucker parking lot last night had swelled to about 25 with a few others overflowing into the main parking lot out front.
We pulled out a little after 8:00 a.m. and drove less than a mile to Great Alaskan Holidays which is the number one RV rental company in Alaska. It seems an odd place to go for service and to be Winnebago's only authorized repair facility in the state.
However, Great Alaskan Holidays (GAH) is more than a rental company. They currently rent only Winnebago Minnie Winnie and Thor Four Winds class C motorhomes with the Ford chassis and V-10 Triton engine, and they sell Winnebago travel trailers and new Winnebago Vista and View models in addition to their used rental units. The rental units are in the rental fleet for no more than three seasons, and then they are placed in their Certified Pre-Owned inventory.
With their volume of rentals, and their sales programs, they also have a service and repair facility and are an authorized repair and warranty shop for Winnebago, Ford, and Onan generators. They have a really good relationship with Winnebago and are quite familiar with their products which made us more confident and pleased that we made the decision to drive all the way here.
We pulled in and went to the repair service desk where we met with the nice young lady I spoke with on the phone last week. She had everything ready to go, and I wrote up what we needed to have looked at and the questions we needed answered just so our expectations would be clear.
Then, we went and sat in their waiting room. While there, we spoke to a couple of renters and listened to the conversations out front between staff and people dropping off rental units and those picking up rental units. All the customers seemed pleased, and it really appears to be a clean, well-run, first class operation.
We watched as they took our motorhome in the shop at 9:00 a.m., a good sign as sometimes, even when you have a scheduled appointment, service centers don't actually start working on your RV for a couple hours or so after you check in.
Now, while in Anchorage, we arranged to take care of a couple of medical things and it was much more convenient to do them here than in other parts of the state, so there were a couple benefits to making this premature trip to Alaska's largest city.
We do our prescriptions through Walgreens, and they make it very easy to request refills online and schedule pick-ups at stores throughout the country. While they have limited coverage in rural Alaska, there are a few stores in Anchorage and I ordered a refill a few days ago from a store near the RV repair facility. It was ready to be picked up.
Also, I was due for my every six-week blood test and there is a Quest Diagnostics in Anchorage which I have found to be the cheapest, easiest, and most reliable company for lab work in our travels. So, I got that knocked out.
While we were at Quest, we got a from call GAH and they told us that our RV electrical problem, our fried Automatic Transfer Relay, was determined to be the result of the issue for which recall letters were sent out in 2016 and Winnebago would be covering the parts and labor to fix us up. However, it would take seven to ten days to get the parts, so we could come and pick up our rig and they would call us when the parts were in.
We picked up the prescription and ran a couple more errands while we were out, and then we retrieved the RV. We hadn't really decided what we were going to do, so we drove back to Cabela's to gather our thoughts and make some decisions.
Do we hang around the area? Do we go to the Kenai Peninsula which is closer while we wait? Or, do we backtrack and pick up with our original plan to visit Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Valdez?
Because we shortened our stay in Haines, if we backtracked, we would actually still be on my loosely planned schedule and all it would cost us would be the fuel and time of the additional 400 miles of driving for the unplanned detour to Anchorage. And if we didn't, we probably would just skip Copper Center, Chitina, McCarthy, and Valdez - that, for me, just wasn't an option.
So backtracking it is. I asked Linda if she wanted to stay at Cabela's another night, but she was ready to move on although it was now around 2:00 p.m. and we still needed to put gas in the motorhome. Our target would be the boondocking spot we saw yesterday on the Glenn Highway at Eureka Summit about 130 miles away.
We found a place to fuel up, and we were off.
One thing about backtracking today was that the weather was clearer, and we would be able to see some of the mountains on the Glenn Highway we missed yesterday. Was it just yesterday? Wow.
Here are some of the photos from the passenger seat.
The drive proceeds along the Matanuska River valley.
Ah yes, the visibility was much improved over yesterday.
We made one stop at a turnout for a little better view of Matanuska Glacier than we had the day before.
This is my favorite photo of the day - Nelchina Glacier - as we continued along the north side of the Chugach Mountains.
Soon, we were at Eureka Summit, and we pulled off to choose a boondocking spot. The RVs from yesterday were gone, so we had lots of choices. However, after unhitching the Jeep and checking things out, some of the terrain was a bit rougher to get through than it looked from the road.
Ultimately, we selected an unsheltered, fairly level spot on a high mound with the mountains in front of us, and a pond to our left.
From a higher angle behind the rig, it looks even more spectacular.
Here's another look.
With our great views, and good sun exposure for our solar panels, we were shocked to discover that we had a 4G Verizon signal there. That would turn out to be a very good thing later.
So there you go. We still have our electrical problem, but we're functional, and it will be taken care of when we make it back to Anchorage in a week and a half or so as we had originally planned. And, tomorrow, we'll be right back on my planned route on pretty much the same schedule. It's all good.
Way to roll with the punches. These type of issues are part of the Alaska experience. Those long hours of daylight make long travel days possible. Can’t wait to see what happens next !
Posted by: Tracy Perkins | Thursday, June 20, 2019 at 07:52 PM
It looks like GAH would have volunteered to bypass the ATS and wire the Genset directly to the RV. You would have been able to use the generator if needed. Or they could have wired the shore power direct, but I would prefer the generator.
I'm glad you are backtracking. It would have been a shame to miss Wrangell and Valdez. They are our favorites in Alaska.
Posted by: David H | Thursday, June 20, 2019 at 09:20 PM