Lovely Alaska Cottonball Wildflowers
They look & feel like cottonballs!
Dinner Stop at the Work Campers Camp
at the Yukon River
The Alaska Pipeline
Zigzag of the Pipeline
Enjoying the YukonRiver
View of the Bridge over the Yukon
After hot debate as to whether we should go to the Arctic Circle or not & if we do go, should we do a 1 day round trip coach tour or a 1 day drive up/fly back tour or a 3 day drive/fly back trip all the way to Prudhoe Bay at the Arctic Ocean, & also!! if Ann should even go at all because she did not think the agony of being on an undeveloped road for 18 hours or more would be enjoyable, “WE” concluded to go together & to take the round trip 1 day bus excursion.
PHEW! What a day we had! We were picked up at our campground by the tour company at 5:45 am on Thursday which meant we were up & into the shower at 4:30 am, but what difference does time make in this state. It’s light all the time (in the summer) anyway! We were delivered to the small aircraft terminal at the airport where all these type of tours originate. It is located on the side of the Fairbanks Airport where all the many many small planes of Fairbanks are nestled. Seems like just about everyone here is a bush pilot! At the Fairbanks Airport there is a float plane pond located next to the main runway & between the big plane & small plane terminals for the landing of pontoon planes. At the air terminal we met up with 17 other people whom we would be spending the day with as well as our tour guide. A briefing was given by the terminal staff on what we could expect during the day. We were loaded aboard a specially designed narrow motorcoach which could more easily accommodate the narrow roadway & which held a total of 24 passengers. At 6:30am sharp we were off & running for the 168 mi journey to the Arctic Circle which would take a little more than 16 hours to complete. The bus was equipped with an air glide suspension system that I suppose made our drive more comfortable than being in a car, but it was hard to believe when we were bouncing & rocking & rolling all over the place along numerous frost heaves, a dirt & gravel roadway with many potholes & a road that went up & down & around, etc!!! Just to make my point, you should know that our guide stopped halfway on each leg of our journey to get out of the coach & hit the tires with a giant ball peen hammer to hit the tire to ensure that they were not losing air. Our guide, Alan, was a 70 yr old gentleman who had come to Fairbanks with his family in the ‘70s. After a stint in the USMC he studied in MN to become a teacher but couldn’t find a teaching job at that time (Remember the ‘70s??) so he & his wife packed up their 4 sons in a van (I picture the old VW bus type) & carried a tent with them & they traveled all over the US looking for steady work and doing odd jobs along the way till they ended up in Fairbanks. Been in AK ever since! They added an additional son & a foster daughter after permanently locating in AK. (I think they were the hippie type!) The tour job is now Alan’s retirement job & he loves it & is very good at it as we soon realized. Anyway, enough about Alan, but thankfully he was a very interesting & informative guide. Our drive took us north on the Dalton Hwy which goes from Fairbanks to the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay (500 miles) & it follows the TransAlaska Pipeline all along the way. The Pipeline, as it is more commonly known, crosses 800 rivers, streams, & creeks along its way from Deadhorse at Prudhoe Bay in the north to the port of Valdez in Prince William Sound in the south. Interestingly, Alaskans refer to their highways by name, not by number, since they have very few highways. We received an extremely good education from Alan about the pipeline as well as many other things about Alaska. The TransAlaska Pipeline is a zigzag pipeline 799 miles long, more than ½ built above ground & less than ½ built underground, carrying crude oil from Prudhoe Bay south to Prince William Sound where the crude is loaded on ships & taken to refineries in mainland US. The story of the development & the engineering design of the pipeline across the Arctic tundra & through a mostly permafrost land mass is incredible. 4/5ths of the Alaskan landmast is permafronst which presents a unique situation for all engineers. More than half of the pipeline is above ground in areas where the permafrost is unstable (melts when warmed & shifts) & half is constructed below ground where the permafrost is stable (does not shift or melt). Alan would stop the bus frequently so we could get out & walk on the Arctic tundra, which felt like walking on very wet mushy sponges. He also would demonstrate the incredible frozen earth just 10 inches beneath the surface. He dug through the firmafrost to the icy earth below. He said he could dig a small circular hole & stick a warm beer or soda can in it for a few minutes & it would come out ice cold. We made several stops at locations on our way north. The first was in Joy, AK named for the wife of the homestead family who opened the little outpost store which had designated men’s & women’s outhouses to “attract” the travelers heading both north & south. The Joy Outpost offered coffee, muffins, & souvenirs which we gladly passed up as well as the use of the other “amenity!” One of the tour passengers bailed from the tour in Joy due to travel sickness. Thankfully for him, the tour company sent a van from Fairbanks to pick him up & return him to Fairbanks. I wondered how he enjoyed his wait at Joy’s place! About 4 hours into our journey, the Dalton Hwy crossed a wooden plank decked bridge over the mighty Yukon River. This is the only bridge crossing the Yukon in Alaska. (We had previously crossed the only bridge in Canada over the Yukon River.) We stopped for lunch at a rustic looking pipeline work campers camp, called the Yukon River Camp, just on the other side of the Yukon. Steve & I had packed our lunches but others had ordered box lunches prepared by the work camp staff. We would return there later in the day for dinner. It was actually quite a nice restaurant & a very pleasant surprise. Very rough on the outside but the food was very good! This establishment actually had flush toilets – the only such modern conveniences we saw along the route! Throughout our journey Alan played various cds of applicable topics regarding Alaska, such as the Permafrost Story, the Gold Rush Story, the Native Indians/Esquimo Story, & the Trans Alaska Pipeline Story. When a cd was not playing Alan was always filling us in on plenty of other facts about Alaska, the pipeline, the gold mining industry, etc. One story that I found particularly interesting was about the education for the children living in the bush who are both the native tribes & those other Americans who just prefer not to live within a close society. Alaska has a law that any area with 10 or more school age children will have a school or schools provided to them. Where there are less than 10 students the state provides home schooling. Reps from the state will come to their cabins & set up satellite dishes, provide computers & books & even teachers will be flown into the bush for additional teaching assistance. The problem is that in the winter there is no sun to power the solar panels, so the students need to do more academics during the summertime than the average American student. It is no longer acceptable to send children away to larger cities for their education because when that was a general practice few of the children would return to their native villages.
Upon our arrival at the Arctic Circle Alan laid out a red carpet so that each of us could cross over The Circle with grand ceremony! It was a very pleasant day with temps about 64 degrees, but I had to wear my red jacket that I had carried with me because I always thought it was very cold in the Arctic. I wasn’t the only one who thought that as everyone on the trip had heavy clothing with them, but of course, I was the only one who wore her coat for the pictures! At the Circle Alan spoke to us about the sun’s motion over the Arctic. He explained how the sun never gets directly overhead this far north in AK & for that reason it is very difficult, if not impossible, to tan your skin in this area of the state. Always a disappointment to his children as they were growing up. I noted later in a news article that Alaska has a very low rate of skin cancer & perhaps that is the reason.
After jostling about in the buss on this very rough & bumpy highway for 16 hours we returned to Fairbanks at 10 pm where the tour company had a brief ceremony to present each of us with a certificate for crossing the Arctic Circle. We were then returned us to our campsite where Steve & I crashed for the next 10 hours! What a day! What an incredible & grand experience! We’re so very happy that we made that journey!
Back at the campground we spoke with a couple who had taken the drive to Prudhoe Bay/fly back to Fairbanks Tour & they reported that the road was even worse from the Arctic Circle farther north! (My brother & sister-in-law will be making that journey soon!)
For those good friends & family who are wondering about Bennie during all this dialogue, I can assure you he was in very good hands. Our campground offered complimentary pet watching service, so they were very kind to visit & walk Bennie 3 times that day in our absence. They reported the next day that Bennie was very happy, agreeable, & adjusted to their attention! What do ya know?
