Ultimate do-it-yourself RV

We've all see various home-built conversions on the road, usually something somebody has made less than perfectly out of an old school bus. This one we spotted permanently parked on the beach in Homer seems to have had a lot more work than most. And yes, to all appearances, the basis for this motorhome appears to be an old school bus.

We especially like the idea of the rear deck under the second story. Surrounded by oceans, mountains, glaciers and eagles, it might be kind of hard to beat this for a kicked-back lifestyle.

Planting a tree the hard way

We were at Homer this past weekend introducing our grandchildren to the joys of wading in a very cold ocean when we came across this tree embedded in sand and gravel on the Homer Spit, a five-mile-long sandbar connected to the mainland.

Homer does have a reputation for practical jokes, but this ones seems a bit better than others we've heard about. Almost everybody seeing this for the first time does a double take.

Spare Tire Addendum

Few of the blogs I've written have generated as much response as the one last week about spare tires on the Alaska Highway. In it I wrote that I made the extra effort to purchase a spare wheel and tire for my class A motorhome, which did not come furnished with a spare.

What I forgot to write was how I handle being able to change it, and at least one reader took me to task. It's true, you don't change one of these as an after thought as the wheel-tire combination weighs more than 200 pounds and the lug nuts are tightened to 375-foot-pounds of torque. Both of these are beyond the capacity of most of us without some sort of mechanical advantage.

First the lug nuts...I bought a one-inch-drive breaker bar, the appropriate-sized socket, and a four-foot piece of steel pipe to slip over the breaker bar for the necessary leverage to loosen and tighten the lug nuts. This will do the job, though you'll need to have the torque you apply to the spare checked at the first opportunity.

Dealing with the wheel-tire combination is another matter. I finally solved this with a crow bar and a piece of two-by-four. (I carry the spare in the small truck I tow as a dinghy so it is relatively easy to get at--I don't even want to think of trying to handle this monster on a bracket under the motorhome in the space provided.)

Taking off the flat tire is relatively straight forward after you break the lug nuts loose, unless it is an inside dual. Then you may need a five-pound, short-handled sledge hammer to break it loose from the wheel. Putting the spare on involves rolling the spare up to the now-vacant wheel, lining up the bolt holes with the lugs as much as possible, adjusting the height of the jack so you only need raise the wheel a quarter to a half an inch, then using the two-by-four as a fulcrum for the crow bar to lever the wheel off the ground with one hand while you push it onto the lugs with the other. This last took a couple of practice runs before I got the hang of it, but using this technique I was able to do a complete six-tire rotation on my rig last spring. Considering the advanced state of my arthritis, I'd say this worked out pretty well, though I was certainly ready to visit the aspirin bottle after I finished.

A final note about jacking up a motorhome is also in order. If you have hydraulic leveling jacks as I do, put them all the way down on the affected side of the motorhome. This alone may raise the tire off the ground. If it does not, slip a small hydraulic jack under the axle near the affected wheel and raise it the rest of the way. If your rig uses compressed air for leveling, you are going to need a much stouter jack because the air bags raise and lower the frame in relation to the axle; they do not raise or lower the entire rig at once as do the hydraulics.

Eagles rule the Homer skies

When touring Alaska, one of the real treats is the sheer number of American bald eagles that can be approached to within easy camera range. One of the best places to do this is in Homer at the end of the Kenai Peninsula, about 210 miles south of Anchorage.

Driving to Homer, keep a lookout to your right for the last 50 miles or so. You'll almost certainly see plenty of eagles cruising up and down the coast. In Homer, drive out on the spit and take a picture of any eagle that strikes your fancy. You'll find them sitting on pilings, on deck rails, on buildings and on boats. This one was sitting on the rail of a deck that extended out over part of the beach.

Seeking Alaska's Past

You won't find this one in many guidebooks, but if you're a trucker or perhaps a train buff, visiting the Alaska Museum of Transportation and Industry just north of Wasilla on the Parks Highway is worth an afternoon on your trip to Alaska.

The splendidly refurbished exhibits are kept indoors while the stuff that's too large for the building or awaiting restoration is kept outdoors. This 1930s-era Kenworth truck is one of the museum's meticulously restored vehicles. Next to it are a unique Ford Model-T pickup--unique because it is painted red--and a number of other vehicles and aircraft. Outdoors are whole trains, airplanes, boats and much more. There's even a 1917 bulldozer that yours truly helped the National Park Service find in the ghost town of Glacier in 1980--and it still runs.

Carry the right spare

Alaska Highway legends have been built around flat tire stories for decades. Those stories, though, are mostly things of the past. You don't need to carry two or three spare tires these days. The odds of you having a flat tire on the Alaska Highway are probably no greater than they are on one of the interstate highways near your home.

However, here's a tip from my book, The Alaska Highway: An Insider's Guide. If your dinghy is a small car or truck, it probably came equipped with one of the tiny little do-nut spares to save weight. Leave that at home and replace it with a full-sized spare that is the equal of the other tires on the ground. That little tire may not be enough to get you the distance necessary to find a tire repair shop or a place where you can buy a replacement tire.

And, if a spare tire was not provided as part of the purchase when you bought your motorhome, as was the case with mine, you may want to consider buying a spare wheel and tire to take along on your trip. I made that decision after having a tire failure in Seward the day the Seward Silver Salmon Derby opened. The nearest help I could find was more than a hundred miles away. All the locals were out fishing. It turned out to be a terribly expensive call out, as you might imagine.

Marking the End of the road

Often in the North Country we uses distances in lieu of address. For instance, someone may live at Mile 31.6 Old Richardson Highway. And, en route to Alaska, you will notice many official addresses as being something on the order of Mile 612, Alaska Highway.

The latter may be momentarily confusing since Canada uses the metric system and road signs are in kilometers, but the addresses date back to a time when Canada, too, measured distances in miles. It may also be confusing, too, when the mileages don't match anything on your odometer. Over the years, the Alaska Highway has gotten significantly shorter as various parts of it have been straightened out and rerouted. Thus and address in Watson Lake of Mile 630 may only be 612 miles from Milepost Zero in Dawson Creek.

In Alaska, there are actually two mileposts marking the end of the Alaska Highway, one at Fairbanks and the other at Delta Junction, about 90 miles before you get to Fairbanks. Technically the Delta Junction Milepost is correct. The Richardson Highway between Delta Junction and Fairbanks existed for years before the Alaska Highway was built. However, most folks headed north are aimed at Fairbanks, not Delta Junction, and they're looking for this Milepost on the banks of the Chena River in downtown Fairbanks.

Bask in natural hot water

One of the chapters in my book, The Alaska Highway: An Insider's Guide, lists my 10 favorite stops along the Alaska Highway. Leading the hit parade is Liard (locally pronounced leerd) River Hot Springs in northern British Columbia, about 500 miles from the start of the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek.

This is a beautiful Provincial Park with an extensive campground (no hookups). From the main parking lot a well-designed boardwalk leads about a quarter mile to the lower pool, shown here. Changing facilities for men and women are available at the pool. The water is slightly warmer than you would have in your bathtub and makes for a wonderful soak after a long day behind the wheel.

An upper pool is another quarter mile or so up the hill, but it is not always open because bears wandering in the area cause park rangers to close this lesser-used trail from time to time. The upper pool is much more secluded and if you do visit it late in the evening, be sure to give warning of your approach. Although nudity is supposedly prohibited, not everybody necessarily obeys the rules. Changing facilities are available at the upper pool, as well.

Angling for the big ones

Probably the most-frequently asked question I get from visitors is where do you go to catch the biggest or most trout, salmon, grayling, halibut or whatever. If I could guarantee the answer to that question, I'd be there right now with a rod in my hand. However, over the years I've developed some favorite spots along the road system that seem to produce regularly for me, so I'll list them here.

Halibut: I seem to catch the most halibut out of Homer, but they are generally pretty small--25 pounds or less. Charters out of Seward, particularly those that go all the way to Montague Island, seem to produce fewer fish but more of the fish seem to be in the 50-100 pound range. My absolute favorite in this regard is to take a combination halibut-salmon charter out of Seward in late July when limits of both halibut and silver salmon are possible.

Lake Trout: Lakes in British Columbia and Yukon en route to Alaska offer probably the best roadside lake trout fishing in the North. My favorites would include Tagish, Marsh, Atlin and Teslin lakes.

Grayling: Any clear-flowing stream along the Denali Highway between Paxon and Cantwell in Alaska. Walk a few minutes away from the road for best results.

King salmon: Blind Slough in Petersburg around the 4th of July. You'll have to take an Alaska Marine Highway ferry to get here, but it is the only place that I have ever been able to catch kings ranging from 20 to 40 pounds on every cast. Biggest kings in the world are in the Kenai River south of Anchorage in July, but this tends to be a very crowded fishery and bag limits can be very restrictive if biologists decide that the run of fish is small.

Silver salmon: Seward starting in late July and running through early September. You'll need to go out in a boat at the start of the run, but by mid-August it's possible to stand on the beach in town and catch silvers.

Pink salmon: Allison Point near the Alyeska Pipeline Marine Terminal in Valdez in July. Dry camp in the lot above the shore, step past your rig at any time of the day or night and catch a 3-6 pound fish on every cast.

Rainbow trout: This is a tough one from the road system as most the the premier trout streams are in the back country and require a floatplane for access. The Kenai River south of Anchorage is probably best...after the salmon runs are done, which means late September and October. Otherwise there are a number of stocked lakes near most of the more populated areas that routinely produce catches of small trout.

Spring means getting outside

It was a long wait for Spring this year in Alaska. So when last Sunday dawned bright and sunny, it was time to get outdoors for at least a few hours. We decided to head for a Mount McKinley overlook about a hundred miles from home.

Well, the bright blue day lasted for about 40 miles, and sure enough Mount McKinley was covered with clouds. However, nearby Mount Hunter was peaking through a hole in the overcast, so we snapped a few pictures.

The turnout overlooking Mount McKinley, Mount Hunter and other peaks in the Alaska Range is about 150 miles north of Anchorage on the Parks Highway, which leads to Denali National Park and Fairbanks. There's plenty of parking, even for the largest RVs and it is all but impossible to miss at roadside, especially on a sunny day when the mountain is out--there will be lots of vehicles in the parking lot.