Selected Trip Journal entries:
7:43 AM = Checked out. 5116.6 trip miles. 14174 total.
7:58 AM = Parked at Northern Alaska Tour Company, Fairbanks airport.
8:34 AM = In the van for the tour up north!
9:15 = Passed the gas station from last week -- rest is all new!
The higher you go on a mountain, the warmer it gets -- valley is cooler. (1) sun is close to the horizon and not shining directly on the valley floor -- it shines on the hillsides. (2) Cold air drops down in the valley.
10:52 = Dalton Highway -- "Speed Limit 50 next 416 miles". Coldfoot is 175 miles from here. Deadhorse is 414 miles.
154 days and 3000 men to build highway...
1:07 PM = Yukon River crossing..
Till 3:30 = Lunch at Finger Mountain... Great views!
4 PM = Arctic Circle Crossing (1500 miles from North Pole) (milepost 115).
5:45 PM = Arrived Coldfoot, Alaska. $19 for buffet dinner. Gas price here is $3.69/gallon, but doesn't affect me.
EXCELLENT "nature talk" in the visitor center about subsistance living in Wiseman by one of the locals.
At night I could hear the wolves howling... this is just amazing!
Surprisingly the accommodations were much better than my expectations! My room actually had a private bath, and its one of the BEST showerheads I've had on this whole trip!!
I'm writing this on Friday morning and I've been up since 5:30 -- we're leaving at 6:30 AM for the ARCTIC OCEAN today! (After Wiseman, Brooks Range, and North Slope) Treeless tundra....
Other things about today, not written in the journal:
The drive today was from Fairbanks to the arctic town of Coldfoot, Alaska -- the "northernmost truck stop in the world". The scenery is nice, but not the "typical" arctic weather one might expect! I happened to go there in the warmest 2 weeks of the whole year. There was no ice to be found anywhere, and the temperatures were in the high 60's or low 70's! The road up is lined with black spruce, aspen, birch... The tourguide said that anywhere you see the spruce, that's permafrost under the ground. They're the only trees that grow well on permafrost. And whenever we saw that, the road was bumpier than normal... the ice under the ground pushes the earth up, so any road you build there is full of bumps and potholes! Frost heaves... so everyone in the van was looking forward to the aspen and birch trees!
The mountain scenery was also good -- rolling green hills near Fairbanks, then Finger Mountain up north. Lunch to-go was picked up at Yukon River camp, then we went to Finger Mountain to eat it picnic-style.. The views from there were fantastic! We didn't see too many large animals though -- most of them were hiding in the dense forest on either side of the road... but that was about to change very soon...
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| July 26 | Contents | July 28 |