Can We Drive to the Arctic Circle?

June 2: Today we have a day off in Whitehorse and June 6th we  have another day off in Fairbanks. There are too many days off and idleness is the devil’s workshop. The Arctic Circle is only 400 miles round trip north at that point. A few of us want to drive there; an open 1916 Lancia, a 1970 NSU RO-80 (Wankle engine), a 1967 Mustang, and , of course, our 1967 VW Bug; “good well-seasoned automobiles”.

1916 Lancia

When word gets around, others may join us. We have to check on the availability of fuel and maybe persuade the organization’s repair van to go with us, because none of us have satellite phones. It will probably be cold; it already is. I think my 5W-50 synthetic engine oil will be fine. At least darkness won’t be a problem, June 20th will be the last day the sun sets in the Arctic.

I have a new level of energy today. Ed

Bears and Bad Weather

May 29: Vancouver to Quesnel. We left Vancouver in light rain and fog. From what I gather this is rather typical although everyone (make that locals) says it is unusually cold. I didn’t bring clothes for all this cold but found two long-sleeved t-shirts at a Gap yesterday. Even in this climate, most of the stores no longer have long-sleeved t-shirts. After all it’s almost summer!

After we left our lunch stop we had rain, sleet, hail and wintery mix. Some of the cars ahead of us actually got quite a bit of snow. That’s enough weather for one day!

Stewball on the Sea to Sky highway

We drove the “Sea to Sky highway” out of Vancouver to Whistler and Lillooet. A point of interest, the signs are both in English and Indian. I think it is Squamish but the sign for Whistler is also Skwikw. We certainly didn’t see this in the U.S.

I’ve been waiting for a bear sighting. We did see one black bear back in Virginia, but I didn’t get a photo. Well, just before Clinton, our lunch stop a Mama bear and her two cubs crossed the road in front of us. I was driving and by the time I got the camera from Ed, they were across the road heading down a gravel one. I did get this photo.

We avoided the gravel section today, it was 105 miles long and reported by the organizers to be “rutted with washboard.” This was an easy decision since we had over 400 miles to cover. Lots of the drivers were under their cars for most of the evening. The real endurance test will be the 530 miles we cover on day 25. Yuck!

Stewball and Canadian friend

We were met in Quesnel, pronounced Quenel, by the local antique car club and one of the cars was a 1967 Beetle. So Stewball had a friend!

More from the road to Alaska,

Jan

Leg 2 begins

May 28: Arrived Vancouver yesterday, the end of Leg 1.

Entering Vancouver, BC

Tomorrow we start the second leg from here to Anchorage. This is the part we really came to drive. Last evening we had a farewell/ welcome dinner.

Ed and Els dancing after dinner

We will miss friends we made on this first leg. In particular,

Marco and Claudia

Marco and Claudia and their 1969 Camaro and Huibert who was the co-driver for Bert in his 1927  Bentley. Bert will go on with a new navigator but we will miss Huibert’s ready smile and easy friendship. But we welcome Klaus and Maja, friends from Germany that we met on earlier rallies. They have just drove from Nova Scotia in their 1973 NSU RO80. Don’t ask me what it looks like, I’ve never seen one but I know it has a rotary engine but I promise to post a photo later. Right now it is some parking garage somewhere in this city.

Canadian mountains

Leg 2 promises to have spectacular scenery but long distances between stops. Our longest day is still to come-530 miles between Smithers BC to Watson Lake in the Yukon Territory.  I just hope our weather improves so I can get some good pictures. Today we have what I gather is typical Vancouver weather, heavy grey skies and rain.

Jan

A book award and a blind Garmin

May 26:A day off in Osoyoos, BC. From our Canadian vantage point, we can look across Osoyoos lake and see the U.S.

Osoyoos Lake from the Canadian side

The good news: We had an email waiting. Our novel, The Long Road to Paris has just received another award. A 4 star rating in the IRDA contest. From the hundreds of books submitted, we made the short list, fifteen books in our catagory. The final winners will be announced on June 3 in NY city at Book Expo America. The chance of being one of the grand winners is slim but we are pleased to have made this cut. They will post their review of our book on their website. You can access that website at: http://www.indiereader.com

The bad news: If you have been reading this blog, you know we were left behind in Kalispell, Montana with an oil leak. The rally left on Thursday with a stop in Cour d’Alene, ID. We left on Friday with the car running fine,  but it seems we needed a guide dog to lead us through Canada. We had to take the shortest way in order to cover the distance that the rally did in two days.

Border into Canada

We crossed into Canada successfully with just questions about what we were going to do with the books we were carrying and how many cigars Ed had. After three hours or so of driving on Highway 3, following our GPS that we had programed for “shortest way” not fastest way-we came to a border…into the U.S.!  We turned around and our panic gradually subsided when we realized we were only about 2 miles off course. Canadian Highway 3 runs right along the U.S. border and our Garmin thought crossing back to the U.S. then back again into Canada was the shortest way. Now just what questions might we have gotten from the Canadian border guards when we tried to explain why we were entering Canada twice in the same afternoon. They’re patient guys, but will they believe: “The Gamin did it.”

Canada at last

We are now back up with the rally and are very pleased to say that Terry and Shelia in their MGB are also back. We were just returning from lunch when they rolled in.  We are so glad to see them.

Jan and Ed

Left Behind

May 24:We’re sitting in our hotel room in Kalispell, Montana. Our forced day off. We’ve talked to the VW restoration shop and we are still hoping Stewball will be ready later this afternoon. It was a strange feeling to see everyone start off this morning.

Left behind

Earlier, after our stop at VIR in Virginia, we had to make up two days because we left the rally to dip down into N.Carolina for our daughter’s graduation. That was different, we left them. This time they left us. Reminds me of when I was a child, my face pressed against the window, watching all the neighbor kids walking to school when I was home recovering from polio.  An empty feeling.  And it doesn’t help that it is a cold, rainy, grey day.

Terry and Shelia and their 1967 MGB GT are even further behind having had to be towed back to Bozeman, MT with a drive-train problem. We last heard he had located parts for a repair. We hope they catch up by Vancouver as Terry ws so looking forward to meeting up with a friend he has not seen for 40 years or more. We miss them.

Stewball’s Chinese license plate

Now, those of you who know about our participation in World Race 2011, you will appreciate this. We have no car, the hotel restaurant is not open for lunch so we ordered Chinese delivery! It’s the very first time we have had Chinese food since our 21 days crossing China almost exactly a year ago. It has taken that long to even want to look at Chinese food. You know what? It was good!

One more thing for today’s blog. We have learned that our blog is linked to Endurorally’s blog and we have some new followers, some of whom are competitors on the Trans-American Challenge who are reading our blog for the first time. Endurorally mentions that the name of our blog is a bit confusing since it refers to the novel we wrote and published last year. For those of you who are car rally enthusiasts, let me say that the setting for the novel is a fictional world rally set in 2008. That was the year the 2008 Great Race was scheduled, a centennial celebration of the first world race in 1908. It was cancelled when China withdrew our travel permits so we fictionalized that event, adding spies, sex and secret technology from WWII. But the plot’s twists and turns unfold while our protagonists ( a driver and his beautiful, resourceful, secretive navigator) are rallying around the world. You will see that the rally rules in the novel follow the format of the American Great Race and not Endurorally, but in both cases drivers must drive with precise speeds and navigators must follow tulip diagrams and navigate with constant attention.

Janet

P.S. If you’re reading this because you are on this rally, this footnote is to let you know we have a few copies of the book with us and will be happy to autograph one for you when we meet up again in Canada. Cross your fingers that will be tomorrow.

Our engine is being pulled

May 23: Day 16. We are in Kalispell, MT, and the car is at the last antique VW repair place we know of before 2000 miles to Alaska.  We took the car in for a  routine service, and they found an oil leak in the seals where the oil cooler connects. The engine must come out to fix it. I am having the repair done because we could suddenly lose our engine oil… and ruin the engine. This will take an extra day and we will now be a day behind the rally until we catch up.

Entering Blackfeet Nation in Montana

Another problem, this one from the repair shop.  The ower doesn’t want to put synthetic oil back in because it “could  ruin the engine.” I insisted on it because it runs longer between oil changes and we don’t have spare time for  oil changes on the way home because of our flight to Paris.

Stewball overnights in Kalispell

The shop’s owner is unhappy with me and opinionated on the subject. He also knows that “antique VW engines never get vapor lock.” Perhaps I am opinionated too but Europeans I know who drive old VWs all use synthetics without a problem. I hope I am not shooting myself in the foot but conflicts like this leave me feeling sick.

Ed

Moving Fast

Day 14: Now in Montana. Since I last wrote we have covered Utah, a bit of Idaho, Wyoming and now in Montana.  Leaving Provo, we had no  choice but to run the gravel roads. We decided since we had to run this anyway, we would run it as a time trial. Ed and Stewball did well on the first one and we missed our time by 8 seconds. Now understand, many of these guys hit it on the second, but we were pleased. We were so busy congratulating ourselves that I missed the turn just after the time trial and put us on a scenic navigator’s tour (make that lost) for 12 miles! By the time we made that up, we missed the second time trial all together! The second one was 15 miles of dirt and gravel and Ed just drove it slowly which proved to be a good thing.

Somewhere on that rough stretch, this beautiful 1952 Jaguar XK 120 lost the left rear wheel cover and the 1969 Camaro SS-350 hit a deer and dented their front end and put out a headlight. One of the Mercedes was leaking oil so badly that it had to go to a garage to be lifted up for repairs. Fortunately the locals came through as they always do for rallies and even at 6:00 pm on a Sunday, the guy opened his service station for the rally group.  Once again we have decided we MUST avoid these gravel sections if we are to get Stewball back to NC. The roads are too rough and speeds to high to avoid serious damage. More and more people are opting out. The serious competitors will go on.

Consulting

As you see, we were not the only ones with problems when we arrived in Jackson, Wyoming, aka. Jackson Hole with problems. But Stewball needed attention too. Ed discovered that gasoline was leaking from the carburetor and the engine hesitated when you accelerated. That meant the accelerator pump wasn’t working. Ed decided to change the carburetor- we had a spare and when the mechanics took off the old one, they discovered the fuel filter near the carburetor had a leak.  So they replaced the carburetor and fuel filter and adjusted the points.  We thought all was well.

Stewball on the Grand Teton Parkway

Today our drive took us on the Grand Teton National Park, with the roadsides still deep in snow and then to Yellowstone where no one can leave without a photo of Old Faithful. Here is mine which is probably just like everyone elses.  But it is an incredible sight if you haven’t ever seen it and we hadn’t. Our European and Australian rally friends got their fill of wildlife today. We had sightings and photos of bears, elk, buffalo and even a white wolf! We had buffalo with babies block our road but I was driving and didn’t get that photo. Tonight we are in Bozeman, Wyoming.

Jan with technical support from Ed