Everyone we have spoken to about the trip to Alaska warned us that the roads were bad, especially the roadworks, and that Alaska does a roaring trade in expensive replacement windscreens for towed vehicles. As we lost our first windscreen cover to crosswinds in west Texas, I spent some of my time in Edmonton on a version 2.0, which secures all the way down the sides and base where it tucks under the doors and bonnet, and this time reinforced it with lexan rather than just sunshade foil. It's stayed on for the last 1750 miles and the windscreen is still intact. Result.
After the first day on the Alaska highway we were picking stones off the roof of the car, and had collected quite a few little chips in the front of the bonnet, so I invested 20 bucks in a sheet of corrugated construction plastic and made some plywood brackets to protect the nose. Seems to work - there are lots of puncture marks in the front of the plastic sheet but our headlights are intact and the paintwork doesn't seem to have suffered any further. Bonus.
After the infamous Top Of The World Highway from Dawson City, which is mostly unpaved, into Alaska in the rain and cloud, the dirt does a wonderful job of sticking to the wet and forming a nice crust over everything, as above. The car is actually dark blue under all that crap. I did think of painting the front up to look like a hockey mask (we were in Canada, after all), but seeing how it ends up there is probably little point. All in all, time and effort well spent.
We had no problems getting back into the US at the Alaska border - we knew in theory that with our 10 year visas we should be OK doing a new entry from Canada - but its a relief that it worked in practice. And to prove the point, the rental RV that tried to come through the border behind us was turned back as they had outstayed their 90 day visa waiver program entry and so were not allowed to re-enter the US....bummer for them, smugness for us.
We now have 2-3 weeks to bum around Alaska before heading back to Canada and down towards Vancouver before it starts snowing...
Addendum: took toad to a jet wash, drove it for the first time on a decent road and it was shimmying on the highway (to quote my cousin vinny) so thought I had lost a wheel weight from the new tyres. Turns out there was so much muck around the inside of the wheel rims I had to take it back to the jetwash just to flush that out, and its riding OK again now. Serious mud.
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