I awoke around 6:30 and pondered while waiting for J to awake. The solid cloud layer would be OK for wildlife, but it would ruin the reported good views of Mt. McKinley. Had some Quaker Natural Granola - Oats & Honey & Raisins with the boxed UHT milk. UHT milk is "ultra-pasteurized" and has a six (6) to nine (9) month shelf life. We buy it in 1 qt. (946mL) boxes that are about 2.5x3.75x6.5 inches (6.4x9.5x16.5 cm). It's great for full-time RVers like us who are frequently away from good shopping areas. The milk does taste a little different than regularly pasturised milk, but it'll do in a pinch. The nice thing about the Quaker Natural Granola - Oats & Honey & Raisins cereal is that it makes its own sweet sauce when imersed in milk, so it tastes great with powdered milk when camping or UHT milk in the RV. J suffers the most with the UHT milk because she likes a glass of milk with dinner. After breakfast and some computer work, I repacked my camera gear to get it out of the LowePro Photo Trekker Classic backpack I used in Denali and back into the LowePro Pro Trekker AW backpack and Kinesis L526 Lightweight Long Lens Case 500. We left at 9:10 in the Jeep and ...

Headed up the Petersville Road. The road turned to dirt after a while. We passed The Forks Roadhouse at 9:42, and it was closed. I was surprised to find meadows with grass and ponds mixed with the rather hilly terrain. We both agreed that we'll have to return and spend more time along the road sometime. Some ferns were changing a nice orange color. We turned around at 11:08 because the weather wasn't going to improve and there was no sense doing the water crossing to continue further.

On the way back, we stopped at a Devil's club leaf that we had spotted on the way in. It was turning color and had some really nice green veins which made a nice pattern (left). It started raining as we were setting up to photograph it, and the water collecting on the leaf reflected too much light to make a great image. :(

We stopped again later so J could photograph some of the ferns. I had had enough of the rain and stayed in the Jeep.

We returned to the RV at 2:15. I turned the RV around then hooked up the Jeep to tow. We left around 2:40 and headed back to the Parks Highway where we continued heading south.

We stopped around 3:05 at the Talketna cutoff to shower. The place where we had boondocked wasn't very level and I hadn't used levelers, so showering there would have been more difficult than need be. Plus, by driving for a while, our engine-coupled water heater would reduce the amount of propane we'd have to use to heat up the water to shower. There was a really large parking area at the turnoff that was perfect for a mid-afternoon break. We left at 3:51 and continued south along the Parks Highway.

I thought we blew a tire just before reaching Willow at 4:25. All of a sudden, there was an odd rumbling noise under the RV, and it kept growing louder. I pulled over onto the shoulder, and the tires all looked OK. Then I looked under the RV and saw that the exhaust pipe had been severed just before the catalytic converter! OK, that would explain why the cab sounded louder when we pulled away from the Tesoro last night. I had thought the doghouse had shifted and wasn't seating as well anymore, but now I think it was because the exhaust pipe had started to crack apart.

We drove down the road a bit looking for a good place to pull off so I could crawl under the RV to tie up the exhaust pipe so it wouldn't bounce around and possibly start dragging on the ground. The engine was extremely noisy!

We pulled into the Willow Community Center parking lot around 4:35 to affect repairs. The exhaust pipe had cracked just downstream of the junction between the right side and left side exhaust pipes from the engine, so it was almost like we were running with headers! No wonder it had been so noisy! The exhaust pipe had cracked in almost a straight line like someone had taken a saw to it, so I was able to align the break to get the exhaust pipe to blow into the catalytic converter. We left around 5:20.

The engine was much quieter when we first pulled out. However, it got noisy again by 5:25 as the exhaust pipe shifted. I put in earplugs to reduce the engine noise.

We stopped at a laundromat in Wasilla around 6:00 to do all of our laundry at one time using several machines instead of doing load after load at D&RA's. It turned out to be a very expensive operation! While doing the laundry, we got a large pepperoni pan pizza from the nearby Pizza Hut for dinner. We left around 8:15.

We arrived at D&RA's by 8:30, and they could tell exactly what was wrong with our RV because they had had a similar problem with their RV before. I leveled the RV, then hooked up the electricity. I took advantage of the wireless internet to download the two episodes of Car Talk that were released while we were away, then worked on some blog entries.