It's Always Sumthin!!!

Robert, Thursday, September 11

We set out for points further south and east today. We weren’t sure if we were going to go all the way to Dawson Creek or if we would stop somewhere short of there, Little did we know that regardless of what we thought, fate was deciding for us. Our starting point for the day, Fort Nelson, is 283 miles from Dawson Creek, the end of the Alaska Highway. Just after we had gone 114 miles was a long, steep hill to climb. As we started up the hill, the truck didn’t seem to have too much power. About half way up the hill, the speed suddenly dropped and the engine quit. We were in the middle of the right lane on a three-lane road–two uphill and one down. I backed the rig onto the shoulder and tried to restart the engine to no avail. So there we sat. We decided that Leslie would walk back to the campground we had seen at the bottom of the hill where she could phone for help. We have emergency road service that I had renewed just a few weeks before. I sure am glad I notice that the card we have expired and I made that call to renew. I stayed with the rig and tried to raise someone with our CB radio. I finally get a trucker to say the nearest help was at Fort St. James which was about 122 miles further down the highway. After what seemed like hours, Leslie got a ride back with the owner of the campground where she had walked. She said she had finally made arrangements for a tow truck that should arrive around 5:30. The truck had died at 1:30. We sat there until 6:00 and I decided to try to get the rig down off the hill by backing down the shoulder. Without the engine, the power steering and power brakes made control difficult. We got most of the way down when we got too far out in the road. Suddenly vehicles stopped to see if they could help. We finally got the rig towed about 100 feet back onto the shoulder. By this time I was beginning to think that the problem had something to do with the fuel. The truck has two fuel tanks–the original main tank and an auxiliary tank. Inside the truck is a switch that selects the fuel tank to use. The amount of fuel in whichever is selected is displayed on the truck fuel gauge. About 10 miles prior to the engine quitting, I had run the auxiliary down to almost empty and then I switched to the main tank. My thought was that the valve had not switched the supply and we had simply run out of fuel. One of the people who stopped had a 5-gallon tank of diesel so we put that in the auxiliary tank but the truck still wouldn’t start. Leslie went with him back down to find out what had happened to the tow truck and to replace the fuel in the fuel tank we had used. Just then the tow truck arrived. Leslie returned and we towed the rig up to the top of the hill where there was a pullout. The tow truck driver though we might just have air in the fuel lines and so we bled the air out. The engine still wouldn’t start. So we loaded the truck onto the tow truck, hooked the trailer on the back, and started out to Fort St. John, the nearest Ford dealer. About half way we stopped in the town of Wonowon (101). It is at mile marker 101 on the highway. The stop was to check the tie downs and the driver wanted to get some coffee. While we were there, a couple had just pulled in after hitting a moose. Looking at the front of their truck, it looked like a total loss. Our driver told him that he would probably get the call from his road service as he was the only service along that part of the highway. We loaded up and headed on the Fort St. John. About a mile down the road we saw moose remains in the road. Shortly thereafter, the tow truck driver got a call to pick up the guy who hit the moose. We continued on to the Ford dealer in Fort St. John. We got there just before midnight and set up in the dealer’s parking lot. We were both tired and hungry so we grabbed something for dinner and crashed.