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.