Day 11, July 5, Whitehorse, YK to Grand Prairie, Alberta

Our first leg took us along the Alaska highway (mostly) from Whitehorse, YK, to Ft Nelson, BC.  The were clouds and occasional light showers but it was good VFR weather.  There was some smoke towards Ft. Nelson, but visibility was probably greater than 7 miles.   We flew the highway to the Laird River, and then decided to take a more direct route from there to Fort Nelson.  It went over a scenic "Grand Canyon of the Laird" and then, when we were nice and far from all roads, the engine starting running rough.  Geez!   But first some pictures:

light showers:




scenic mountains:


here's the Alaska highway to our left:


For about the last 40 miles the engine was running a bit rough.  I checked the magnetos and one was definitely rougher than the other.  It was probably more scary than dangerous since it's usually due to dirty spark plugs.  We landed in Ft. Nelson and had a mechanic look it over and a few of the spark plugs were plugged so he cleaned them off.  I continued to have these problems for the next few years, spending lots of money getting it diagnosed (got a new ignition harness in the process, new spark plugs), and finally I just decided to get a new magneto and that took care of it.  I wish the mechanics could have figured that out, since that's what they get paid for, but I guess they got paid well for not figuring it out too.

From Ft. Nelson, we headed to Grand Prairie and stayed the night there.   We travelled 691 nm today.