Saturday, July 3, 1999

We actually pulled out of Prudhoe Bay at 11:30 p.m on Friday but we'll count that as the start of this day.  You can see what our car looked like for the return trip.  We took one last look at Prudhoe Bay and the ice.  There were no signs directing us out of the area.  There are no signs telling you where to go when you come in either.  That's what we noticed the entire way.... there are just no signs... no services ..... so no need.   It's just beautiful uninterrupted scenery if you incorporate the pipeline into the big picture.  If there was no pipeline there'd be no road!!

The locals call this road the "Haul Road" because all that ever traveled it were the big trucks.  I tried to picture traveling this road in the winter and I just can't imagine it.  Lots of things it's been hard to imagine up here.   That's the "midnight" sun in the picture below.  It never goes down and sure gets one's body clock confused.

We hadn't calculated the distance we traveled getting to the Dalton Highway so the numbers home made us realize just how far we'd really come on that gravel road.  The trip in reverse was just as beautiful and a slightly different perspective.  The tundra was fascinating.  Waterfowl abounded and we just didn't know what some of the birds were.  Rus saw two Snowy owls which I didn't catch till they were about out of view.  The polygons are shapes caused by the freezing and thawing of the soil.  Some rise higher creating little ditches between the shapes. I guess very similar to hard cracks in very dry soil out west.  It's interesting that the tundra is classified as a wetlands.  The soil is permafrost and frozen year round.  Only the top couple feet thaw.  Water can't penetrate past that so the little lakes form.  The area only receives 11 or so inches of rain a year so technically it's classified as a dessert as well.  It's a classic oxymoron.  (A foot of snow counts as one inch of rain).  They may not get a lot of snow out there but the winds are horrendous and can drift snow up to twenty feet.

We came up into the mountains and through the pass about 6:00 a.m.  At an overlook we came upon a tent with a car that had barely pulled off the road.  Two fellas were taking a tire off.  They had had their second flat the evening before and just camped there.   One was hoping to catch a ride with two tires into Coldfoot.  That's the first stop on the road for tire repair.  This point was still 130 miles away.  We picked up David and the tires and left his buddy there to stay with the car.  They were lucky we came by so early in the day as there weren't any folks on the road.  That's David by the car at the first public toilet on the highway from Prudhoe.  I guess that was about 8 or 9 hours out for us.  David is a botanist at the Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.  We enjoyed his company along the way.  He spotted a swimming moose we'd probably have missed.  We had warned him that he was joining a sightseeing, often stopping crew!  He was just grateful!

We came upon a half dozen tundra swans along the way and hiked out to get closer.  It was always fun to stretch the legs and enjoy the cool, crisp, fresh air.  We must have seen a hundred snowshoe hares along one particular stretch of road.  They are special food for lynx so I had my eyes searching for one but didn't see any in that area. 

Rus did have such fun playing with the mosquitoes out on the tundra.  Imagine trying to video tape mosquitoes!!  There's an article in the July Reader's Digest about Arctic Mosquitoes.  Rus could have written it.  We didn't find them to be anything but slow and maybe stupid.  They swarmed and hovered but didn't really zero in to bite ... thank goodness.

We spotted one caribou running down the road in front of us.  We hopped out and tried to follow it over the ridge.  That was more challenging than we thought.  The tundra is so spongy and the polygons make it so uneven you just about can't do it.  We discovered why you don't really get out in the tundra in the summer.  They do all the oil exploring when the snow is on the ground.  

Along the highway at some of the streams they leave pumps put in the water. The tankers come by and fill up and then spray the highway.  We stopped at this creek coming and going. I think the tanker just parked there for the holiday weekend.  

The road is one section is obviously closed at some time of the year and traffic is not allowed.  The bars come down and that's the end of the road.  There was an air strip near there.  We can only imagine how all that worked for folks.

We dropped David at the garage at Coldfoot and then we drove around the back of the little motel and parked the car.... making our own shade.  Stacey had been asleep in the car for a couple of hours so we threw out the sleeping bags and hit the hay for an hour or so.  We were tuckered by then.  After that little nap we continued on.  We were trying to get to the Yukon River by 1:30 p.m. so we could catch the boat there for a ride.  You see we made it.  The bridge here is the only one over the 1800 miles of the river.  The pipeline is along one side of the bridge.  We had an Athabascan Indian telling us about life along the river and as always we found it very interesting.  Life for these people has changed a lot as they have become mechanized.

We had to wake Stacey up for the boat ride and she stayed awake about that long.  It was pretty warm and so different than we expected in the Arctic Circle.  I think the record is further into the Yukon and is in 80's!!  Who would have imagined?  The fish wheel here is just parked.  They are only allowed for a certain number of hours on certain days of the year.  They are pretty efficient at catching fish and would be a problem for the salmon population.

Stacy actually slept the rest of the way back to Fairbanks.  She slept close to twelve hours.  We decided our test of when WE were exhausted was when SHE fell asleep.... but we had to keep driving.  The trip became a test of endurance from the Yukon River on.  It was about 130 miles from there and we were worn out.  We took shorter turns driving and dowsed ourselves with icy towels periodically.  The third flat occurred at the point of 66 miles out.  We were within 30 miles of paved road at that time.  We were so dirty and dusty by then as well as HOT.  Poor Rus was on the ground under the car getting the spare etc... When we pulled in at Ted and Beth's at 8:00 p.m. Stacey woke up.  I think we all must have been a sight!!!  Never has a bath been so welcome.  Beth and Ted were such wonderful hosts.  I think they walked us through unloading the car and trying to clean things up.  NOTHING was without a layer of dust.  Beth's washing machine did double time!!! She even washed my moose hunting tennis shoes.  They were so gracious and we were so grateful!

We got out the video camera and caught them up on all our activities so we were up pretty late.  When midnight came we crashed for good  - fully intending to sleep in the next morning.