This morning I got to work remounting the axle.  With two sturdy jacks and the necessary replacement parts, the repair only took a couple hours:

B did her homeschool outside:

Once the spring bolt was installed, I cut it to length with my angle grinder:

The next step was to jack the axle up under the springs and secure it with the axle bolts:

Since the tire had been badly chewed up when the axle failed, I swapped in the spare:

All done! I also fixed the trim piece right behind the wheel.  All that’s left now is bending the stairs back and fixing the trim that was crushed by the stairs being pushed back.

We hitched up and drove West on the Taylor Highway, a barely two-lane gravel and dirt road with thousand-foot drop offs in places and no guard rails.  After about 30 miles, we reached the “town” of Chicken, Alaska:

In addition to its seven residents, Chicken is also the final resting place of the Pedro Dredge, a smaller version of Dredge #4 in Dawson City:

More Chicken-themed kitsch:

Duck Dynasty? I’ve Never seen it.

The Taylor Highway is paved after Chicken, and we arrived in Tok without incident.  One of the local motels has an enclosure with Husky Puppies as well as dog mushing paraphernalia:

While Trish did the laundry at a local campground, I straightened out the stairs and trim panel bent by the axle failure:

Tonight we’re overnighting behind the local Chevron station, pulling WiFi from the Tok Library.  See the trip map for driving details and our current location.