DONE WITH THE DEMPSTER

A little pond along the road

Scenery along the Dempster south of Eagle Plains

We left Eagle Plains yesterday and puttered our way along, stopping often for pictures. At one stop, I discovered why our fresh water tank had less water than it should have. The little plastic cap on the drain valve had been hit by an errant rock and cracked allowing water to drip out. I did some emergency repairs using electricians tape although it is still dripping a little. I put a bucket under it last night and it only dripped just over a gallon. While working on the cap, Aileen noticed a leak from one of the trailer tires. We found a place to get off the road, with a bit of breeze to help with the nasty mosquitoes, and had the tire changed in about 20 minutes. We stopped for the night at a convenient gravel pit to boondock.

We hit the road early this morning, 7:30, and again wandered leisurely along. Aileen spotted both our moose today. Interestingly, they were both close to Two Moose Lake. The closest one declined waiting around for pictures and the other was too far away. We seemed to get even better gas mileage this tank (yesterday and today) coming in above 13 mpg. Driving at 40-50 kmph for most of 400 kms seems to be very good for mileage.

We drove up to Dawson City this afternoon and things were good until I went to dump the tanks. The handle for the black tank was gone! There is a sort of RV repair shop across the road and they will try to fit us in tomorrow afternoon to jerry rig something. The water drain plug cap will have to wait until we get back to civilization to find a replacement part. I'll have to rig up some means of protection for it as the same thing could happen on pavement if there's loose gravel. It was a bit of a shock to find the temperature at 24C here in Dawson after some of the cold we've had the past week.