Well that didn't go as planned....

So our camping/lumber hauling/shopping trip to Whitehorse this weekend didn't go quite as planned. We were involved in a motor vehicle accident and are just thankful that no one was injured. The situation could have been a hell of a lot worse.

We were just 15 minutes from Carmacks on the Robert Campbell highway. Up until this point the highlight of the trip had been the smoke from nearby fires:
We came up a hill, around a curve in the road and WHAM we hit a truck. A smaller truck came out of a pull off at the Columbia Disaster site and pulled right in front of us trying to get into the other lane to head to Faro. We didn't have much time to react at all. Matt was able to swerve to our left (thank god there was no oncoming traffic). So instead of hitting the other truck on the side, we destroyed the front of his truck and the corner of ours. At the top of the hill we figure we were only doing about 80km and Matt was able to hit the breaks, so I think we were only doing maybe 50 or 60km when we hit him. That is still quite the impact. Both trucks were moved to the sides of the road after the crash.

You can see our skid marks in this shot. There is the truck we hit. When we hit him, he was right in our lane.

The camper looks alright, but a mirror broke and there is glass everywhere:

More skid marks:

I am pretty sure this truck will be a write-off. But you know, no airbags went off in this truck or ours.

Our damage:

There was another couple at the pull-off that saw the accident. You would think that being just 15 minutes from Carmacks they would offer to drive in and call for assistance. But nope. They asked if we were okay (they were from southern BC), and then when I told them we had friends in Carmacks that were RCMP and we needed to get a hold of them, they buggered right off!! I wonder what they were running from....

So we waited another 20 minutes for the next vehicle to arrive. The boys were fine this entire time. They had no clue what happened, they just wondered why we had stopped! They were upset that our truck was hurt. But they loved all of the action over the next couple of hours. A vehicle pulled up and it was a hunting film crew! They were making space for me and the boys to get a ride to Carmacks when some of the Yukon Wildland Firefighters arrived (oh they are nice to look at!). They had a radio system that worked and they called a dispatcher in Carmacks. We had them tell the dispatcher to get ahold of our friends in Carmacks. As luck would have it, the dispatcher office is right behind our friend's (also an RCMP officer) house and she just walked over and told him to come out for us. We got a great fly-by from the Wildland Fire helicopter too! The boys loved that.

In the mean time, the RCMP officer from Faro drove up on his way home. And I am pretty sure half of Faro and Ross River drove by after that. We had a lot of offers of assistance- thanks everyone! The RCMP member from Carmacks arrived soon after and we got everything dealt with. We emptied all of our stuff in the RCMP vehicle, including us and headed to Carmacks.

The guy driving the other vehicle (from Faro and of course we know him well- small northern world), got a lift back to Faro with the other RCMP member. Once in Carmacks, we dealt with insurance as much as is possible on a weekend, got a tow truck to come out, filed the police report, and then put our feet up. Thank you so much Tim and Michelle Lynch for making us feel right at home!!

The next day, we borrowed our friend's van and went into Whitehorse. We were hoping to rent a truck and still be able haul our load of lumber back to Faro. The lumber is already paid for, packaged together and ready to go. But the only rental we could get was a small car. Uggg. So the trailer is still in Carmacks, lumber is still in Whitehorse and we are now back in Faro.

We are really hoping that our truck can be fixed. I am pretty sure the other truck will be a total write-off. It definitely screws up all of the plans we had for a number of weeks. I am really disappointed about having to put all of our plans on hold and I know that we are going to have a lot of chaos in the coming weeks. But I am so thankful that we were all uninjured!