Day 4 - There's a hole in the tire Dear Liza

Well, today we blew a tire. I'm looking out of my sideview mirror and all of a sudden I see chunks of rubber flying in the air. Certainly this can't be normal so I pulled over. Sure enough, the tire was completely shredded but have no fear, I had a spare, TWO jacks, and an air compressor. Using the scissor jack first, the ground was so soft that it started to slide out from underneath it. So I used jack #2 which is the original jack that came with the van. The jack worked great until I went to put the shredded tire on the front and the van slid downhill about a foot (did I mention that we were parked on an incline getting ready to climb a hill?), jamming the jack at a 45 degree angle beneath it. The problem with both jacks is that is that if you put them too far underneath the bus you won't be able to crank the arm. Oh yeah, and the air compressor stopped working so we were forced to use my emergency bike pump - it actually worked pretty well believe it or not. Bumming a jack off of someone else, we were able to make it to Whitehorse (about 100 miles away) where thankfully they have a population of more than 10 and a few tire shops to pick from.

We dropped off the tire in the evening, checked out the local fish hatchery (which supposedly has the longest fish ladder in the world), grabbed a beer at the bar, and drove up a dirt road to find a place to camp. We ended up finding an awesome view of the city with mountains as the backdrop - another great ending to a good day on the road.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, we saw several heards of bison, not to mention several more bears along the way! Margaret is still leaking a little oil but it doesn't look too bad.