Fairbanks to Deadhorse return - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 149

They fix tires here too. Fortunately we didn't need this service. Northern roads achieved
their reputation for shredding tires courtesy of the crushed shale they'd been initially sur-
faced with. Shale is awful stuff, breaking into pointy shards that easily tear through your
basic passenger car tire. Fortunately shale is mostly a thing of the past; we saw very little of
it and over 15,000 km never experienced any flats ourselves. That said, there are a couple
million potholes and significant corrugation in sections so there's no doubt the roads are
tough on tires. Go prepared.
I had also read about the road dust that is sucked up and into the backs of campers, coating
the inside, right into closed cupboards. I had been through this before in the dustbowl of
outback Australia. It is an absolute misery trying to wash/beat it back out of the upholstery
once it has crept in and carpeted everything. Despite my best efforts we'd lie there at night,
noses twitching as it resettled. This time I insisted on duct taping the back doors of the van
shut before leaving Fairbanks. But there has been no dust on this trip. The unrelenting rain
transformed the dust into gumbo.
When we stopped for the night we discovered that we could not even get in or out of the
van without stepping into sticky mud inches deep on the van's steps. Even the door handles
were greasy with muck. Where the mud had dried it was like cement, consolidating to the
pointofinhibitingthetiresonturns.Toremedythiswestoppedbytheriver.WhileIbanged
and scraped the largest chunks off with a tire iron Steve carried up buckets of water, dash-
ing them over the steps and door handles.