Day 16 & 17 - Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On!
It's a little cloudy this morning but off we go, maybe the weather will cheer up as we go along. So this is the Dalton Highway. The biggest surprise is what good condition it is in for a lot of the way. Some of it is chip sealed, some is paved, some is gravel in good condition, some is gravel in not such good condition, some of it is a mud road! It is like someone wanted to experiment with all kinds of road surfacing and how it would react to the climate, permafrost and heavy trucks. Each few miles the surface of the road changed.
The constant along the road of course is the Alyeska pipeline that winds its way north, at times right beside the road, then off in the distance, under the road (never over it), up hills and down dale, just like the road. There are some huge hills along this road and if we had not got our transmission problem fixed we would not have been able to do it. Blessings and thanks to amazing Zak again and again!
We soon came to the first major stop along the highway - The Mighty Yukon River. There is a visitor centre here with information panels about the pipeline, the river and the bridge. This bridge is a little freaky - it has a 7% grade slope - going north it's a downslope. The Pipeline crosses the river here too. We wondered around and read all the information panels and admire the river and bridge. Then we popped into the visitor centre and had a great chat with Dottie the interpreter. She has a great passion for the north, the Dalton Highway and the Arctic and it was very interesting talking to her about our plans and what we might see up there for animals and plants. We again, promised to stop on our way back to let her know what we saw as to wildlife.
There is a little place called the Hotspot Cafe just past the Yukon River that we dropped by to
see. It is amazing to me that people are able to establish businesses
in such remote locations. This is a little motel and eatery with tables
inside and out with a small gift shop. While we were there, quite a
few people also found it. Of course, they are in The Milepost so people
can find them.
Traveling north again, we drive rolling terrain with evidence of past forest fires, lots of fireweed and interesting rocks. One such rock is Finger Mountain at Mile 98. Just a few miles later (Mile 115) we arrived at the Arctic Circle. It is very different crossing the Arctic Circle here than it is when you cross on the Dempster Highway. On the Dempster, you are already on the tundra and can see for miles and miles and miles. Here on the Dalton at the Arctic Circle, there are still trees and bushes and you cannot see for miles. We did our photo ops here and met some interesting people - some were turning around here, some were going all the way like us and some had already been up and were on their way back down. We drove around the little campground and it is very nice but it is too early to stop today and we have many more miles to go as we need to get as far as we can today. We might stop here for the night on the way back as it would be cool to say you spent the night at the Arctic Circle!
Coldfoot at mile 175 is an interesting spot. They have accomodations (camp style) and a buffet for lunch and supper where you get soup, salad, main meal, dessert and beverage for one low price. We met a young man there from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who was conducting a survey on why people venture up the Dalton and what they hope to get out of it. We agreed to do his survey, it will be interesting to read the results when the study is complete. I am sure there are many reasons people head up this way - sense of accomplishment, adventure, curiosity, insanity...
As we mosey along, the speed limit along here is usually 50 mph but mostly you are not traveling that speed, the terrain is changing and the trees are getting more stunted. This far north, they have what they call continuous permafrost so it does not thaw. There are lots of little pools of water where the surface permafrost thaws in summer but only down perhaps a foot. There are patches of deep magenta fireweed, splashes of yellow from the Potentella and clumps of fluffy white from the Arctic Cotton. I just love the arctic cotton - it looks like someone is growing bunny tails all along the highway! The Brooks mountain range can be seen from quite a long way off and as you get closer and closer those mountains are quite striking. Earl's favourite one for photos was one called .....
that is sharp and jagged with interesting shapes, shadows and colours. There are also beautiful rivers and creeks that are glacier fed so they take on that aquamarine colour just like at home in Toad and Muncho.
Wildlife was a little sparse at first, but as we got closer to Deadhorse, we saw muskox down by the river, two snowy owls (two separate sightings) that were just breathtaking and two little fox kits who were playing by the roadside. When we go close to them, the ran across the tundra so fast in a zig-zagging pattern as if they were thinking "Oh, no! Mom warned us about playing by the road. We'd better get home!"
So, here's the thing! The further we got up the Dalton, the more rough the road got until we were grinding along at about 20 mph (the journey takes a long time at that speed). The road is narrow and there is not a lot of places to pull over but you have to try get as far as you can, stop and let the big trucks go by. The other name for this road is the Haul Road because they haul supplies for the oil and gas fields up here. Just like the Alaska Highway, one road in, same road out! We finally stopped for night or tried to at about 1:30 in the morning! But the bugs were so bad and the area we stopped on was at such an angle we could not stay in our trailer. We tried to sleep in the truck but were not succeeding so we pushed on further at a snails speed and finally found a better place to sleep in the little guy at 4:30 a.m. Needless to say "Happy Camper" were not words to describe me just 4 hours later when Earl woke me to say we needed to press on if we were going to get to Deadhorse by our 3 p.m. appointment for the tour to the Arctic Circle.
The last 60 miles of this road is total washboard! You cannot go past 20 mph without shaking yourself, the truck and Little Guy trailer to bits. At least you get to feast on the scenery - beautiful tundra that is already getting a tinge of its Autumn colours in places. There are the bluffs that are just beautiful where we saw muskox and lovely reflective ponds and ducks. We also saw long-tailed Jaegers that have a weird flight pattern - they look like they are tethered like a kite, they hover over the Tundra finding voles and then drop to the ground to capture their prey - quite fascinating to watch.
After many, many innards shaking miles we arrived at Deadhorse or Prudhoe Bay. Deadhorse is the camp and although people preferred the name Prudhoe Bay, somehow when the post office was officially awarded it was named Deadhorse after the company that shipped materials originally for the pipeline. People would see all equipment with the name Deadhorse and starting calling the place Deadhorse - it stuck although both names are used. Prudhoe Bay is actually the name of the bay on the Arctic Ocean that Deadhorse is on and where the oil was found. We arrived just in time for lunch at one of the camps, a hot shower (what do you say when they tell you it costs $10 to have a shower in Deadhorse - well thank you very much I'd love one!) We then headed for our tour to the Arctic Ocean.
Since 9-11, you can no longer go to the Arctic Ocean by yourself as it is on BP's property and there is not security just in case of sabotage plans for the oilfield, so you book with the tour at $49 a head. However, this was a very pleasant surprise as we really did think twice about spending that just to go to the ocean but the tour was actually 3 hours long, with informative narrative by our guide on the oilfield, the discover and development, the wildlife and other interesting facts. We toured the town, the tundra, and the ocean shore. Also along for the tour was a group of Amish people, which was a surprise but they were very interesting people. I would have loved to chat to them more after the tour to find out what they think about all this oil development but they had to leave right after the tour and head back as they had accommodations at Wiseman 226 miles away! Our tour group also included two ladies from the University of Alaska and an interesting couple who were biking the Dalton. Now, biking the Dalton, on a tandem bike is amazing enough but these two are doing it to raise awareness for the abilities of people who are legally blind. The lady had 100% vision loss in one eye and 90% in the other, and the gentleman had a degenerative disease that was gradually narrowing his vision so he could only see like looking into a narrow tunnel - and they biked from the most southern point of road in South America to the Most northern point of North America by Road Deadhorse! Just amazing. On our tour, we saw Caribou, a lot of different types of ducks and Canada Geese, and a fox. The guide thought there was a good sight of seeing a grizzly but we never did - they often do on this tour! When we got to the ocean, the guide had just finished telling us about how this is an arctic desert and they only see 5 inches of precipitation - then the heavens opens and we got torrential rain - just buckets of it. At least we got a few minutes of paddling in the ocean and some photo ops done before it poured and we had to run for cover in the tour bus.
When we got back to Deadhorse, we drove around to find the sign that said "End of the Dalton Highway" and the general store. We looked around and had a great conversation with a local who had worked for BP for 40 years up here! He gave us his card and said if we email he'll send us some more information. We were able to use our phones in Deadhorse so we called each set of parents to let them know we made it and were safe. Not accommodation or camping right in Deadhorse so we head back up the bone rattling road to a place called Last Chance (70 miles from Deadhorse) to camp for the night before we headed back down the highway. It turned out to be a lovely place to camp, we had it to ourselves, the wind was blowing so now bugs and the sun came out and created a beautiful rainbow right over out little guy trailer.
We are pretty tired from our adventure and very short night last night so its off to bed.
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