07/26/2023
Alaska
This fun little job was all ours! Our leaf springs couldn’t handle our journey from Fort Myers, Florida to Alaska. Everything seemed to be ok in the lower 48 but, they flattened out pretty good around Destruction Bay, YT, Canada and were completely flat just inside of Alaska and we had to cut part of our fender away so that it would stop rubbing on our tire. We took a day trip to Fairbanks and tried to find some upgraded springs but had no luck. The places we tried only had the springs that we currently had on the fifth wheel which would have been waste of money because we knew that they couldn’t handle the load very well. Our short-term solution was to try a helper spring just for some extra support since we decided to buy the upgraded springs from etrailer.com, the only problem with that was that we needed a place to ship them. Living life like a nomad makes receiving packages a little tricky and takes some planning. We already had a reservation to be at a campground in Fairbanks and they would let us have a package sent there, we just had 2 weeks and 930 miles before we were supposed to be there. It was not ideal or anything that we ever want to do again, but we made it work. The helper spring did help but also got flattened in the process. Once we received our new springs, we then had to wait to put them on because most campgrounds don’t want people to work on their own RV’s. I can understand that because of noise and some peoples’ inexperience that could make for a bad situation. However, that meant waiting and driving yet again on already flat springs. We white knuckled it for 90 more miles to our next stop and were finally able to get the new springs on! We are now riding high, right where we are supposed to be instead of feeling like we are dragging the ground. Our mileage has improved dramatically, and our stress has decreased considerably!