Prudhoe Bay

Since this was our second night out, we knew where everything in the truck was stashed, so it was easier getting coffee made, breakfast eaten and on the road again. We left the campground at 10 AM. That’s OK – we’re retired!

The terrain continued to be rolling hills and we could see some taller mountains off to the northwest. We are always on the lookout for animals and soon spied a good sized caribou standing on a knoll a few hundred yards off the highway. We were not the only ones to see him. This is hunting season for caribou and a hunter had parked his truck and was stalking him. The rules prohibit using anything but a bow and arrow within 5 miles of the pipeline, so he had to get reasonably close to take a shot. I watched through binoculars as he took his first two shots. Apparently he missed and the caribou did not hear the arrows because he never moved. He just continued to look around. The third shot did not miss. He ran about 25 yards, stopped and then fell to the ground. For those who are not hunters it would be gruesome to watch and Dianna did not enjoy it. I found it interesting to watch and was impressed by the distance the hunter shot from. He will feed a lot of people many meals.

We soon began following the Sagavanirktok River, which the locals call “The Sag” for good reason. We followed it for the last 100 or so miles into Deadhorse. The land became progressively flatter as we left the north slope of the Brooks Range and entered the coastal plain. It also kept getting colder and dropped to 50. About 35 miles from Deadhorse we saw a huge herd of musk ox. They are fascinating animals who live up here all winter, even when it is 80 below. They were very near the highway and we had a chance to watch them for a while.

At times we don’t see another vehicle for more than half an hour. It is a very remote place. Most of the vehicles on the road are trucks hauling loads between Fairbanks and Deadhorse. There are also many pickups that belong to the pipeline company and some private pickup campers. We also see quite a few motorcycles, but they are the special off road rally type, not Gold Wings or highway bikes. There have also been a few 4 wheel drive SUV’s, but not many. We have seen a few regular passenger cars and only two motorhomes. There have been no RV trailers. I bet those who have driven motorhomes and passenger cars wish they had not. This road is no place for such vehicles. Just 25 miles or so south of Deadhorse we saw an overturned passenger car off to the side of the road. Our truck has been a great vehicle for this trip. The big tires smooth out the bumps as much as can be done, and we feel very secure and comfortable traveling in it.

Then we drove on into Deadhorse. It is the end of the road and the farthest point north you can drive to in North America. It is an industrial town that was built to service the oil fields. It is not a fancy place. It looks like an oilfield. Even the $200 a night hotel looks like another of the prefab industrial buildings. It looks about the same on the inside.

   

We went to the general store, which has a great supply of most everything you could want, except food. There is no place to buy groceries north of Fairbanks. You have to bring it with you or eat at the few cafés and restaurants along the way. If you rely on them you will get hungry because they are few and far between. At the general store Dianna bought a special tee shirt that said Polar Bear Club on it. It is for those who take a dip in the Arctic Ocean.

We drove around town just to see what’s there and saw many caribou wandering around. They must know that there is no hunting within about 5 miles of Deadhorse and so they are safe here. Just a few minutes ago a red fox ambled from the river up toward the airport. He passed within 25 feet or so of the truck. We have certainly seen some incredible wildlife.

We parked for the night along the river near the airport. As I write this at 8:30 PM it is 41 degrees, the wind is blowing hard and the fog is coming in so that the visibility is now about 100 yards. I think the truck is going to idle a lot tonight to keep us warm.

We are both in awe of the place and keep pinching ourselves to realize where we are. It is a place few visit and we feel very fortunate to be able to do so. We will remember this place and this adventure for the rest of our lives.

Atigun Pass

We got up early and made coffee and had cereal for breakfast. The biggest drawback to the truck is the lack of running water. We have a portable sink, but using it inside with no place to dump is a challenge. We managed.

The only way to heat water is using the microwave. Since it is only 600 watts it takes about 8 minutes to boil two cups of water. We use a French press to make the coffee and it works really well.

We then continued our adventure north. I was expecting that the terrain would be rather flat like most of the rest of the intermountain areas we have been through in Alaska, but that is not the case at all. It is constant up and down all the way until you reach Atigun Pass at the north end of the Brooks Range. Then it is almost straight up and straight down. It is a 12 percent grade and the 4,800 foot pass scares even the most experienced truck drivers. It would have scared me too if I had been pulling a trailer, but since we left it down south, it was just a beautiful drive. The Brooks Range is magnificent.

Pavement started again about 100 miles south of Coldfoot and ended there. We have grown to really dislike pavement up here. It develops potholes and frost heaves that can not be easily repaired, so it is much rougher than the dirt or gravel roads. They just regrade them frequently and are much smoother to drive on. They do make the truck muddy though.

Before we got to Atigun Pass we stopped in Coldfoot at the Arctic Visitor Center. It is a new facility, just like you would find anywhere down in the lower 48. It even had a regular restroom and flush toilets. We have seen nothing but pit toilets since leaving Fairbanks. The coldest temperature ever recorded in the United States was recorded just south of Coldfoot in 1971. It was minus 80.

We made reservations for the tour to the Arctic Ocean in Deadhorse on Saturday. You can only drive in a private vehicle to about 8 miles south of the ocean. Due to security, you have to make reservations 24 hours in advance and provide identification so they can run a background check on you. Thanks again, 9/11.

We stopped to take a picture of this porcupine that waddled across the road in front of us, but the three wolves we saw were too far ahead of us to get a picture.

We emerged north of the big mountains and stopped for the night at Galbraith Lake, just where the north slope Arctic Plain begins. It is nothing but tundra from here on in. We are at a BLM campground that is four miles off the highway. It is very remote and quiet here, except for the glacier fed stream that runs by about 100 feet away on its way to the lake.

Happy 60^th Anniversary Mom and Dad Widener!

North to the Arctic

I took the truck in for the shocks and water leak fix this morning. It only took a couple hours and then I returned to the campground where we hooked up and left at about noon. We drove north on the Elliot Highway to about 20 miles north of Fairbanks where we stopped at the Hill Top Truck Stop. They said it would be OK for us to leave the trailer there for a few days so we packed up the truck with what we would need for our journey to the Arctic Ocean and left about 2 PM. The pavement ended about 50 miles further on and we began our trip up the Dalton Highway, or Haul Road. It runs along the pipeline most of the way to Prudhoe Bay and was used by the pipeline company to haul supplies to the oilfields. It still is.

Very few vacationers make this trip because of over 400 miles of dirt road. It is very rough on cars and Motorhomes, but since it is mostly used by big trucks we figured ours should fit right in. And, we were right. The big tires help smooth out the ruts and washboard so as long as I keep my speed down it is not bad at all. There are some places where it is worse than others and I slowed to 30, but most of the time I ran about 45. The speed limit on the whole highway is 50.

Civilization ended quickly and there is nothing to be seen except the vast Alaska wilderness and the road and pipeline. We stopped at the Yukon River crossing and took a few pictures. That is quite a bridge in the middle of the wilderness.

Just a side note about small worlds. While at the bridge we chatted with a family who live in Fairbanks but used to live in Kansas City. They said they were originally from a small town in southwest Iowa. Dianna said her great grandfather used to have a store in Corning, Iowa. The lady said that is where she was born and her mother who was with them said she would be in Corning in about 3 weeks having her hair done. We visited there a few years ago and saw the building in the downtown area with Dianna’s great grandfather’s name on it. Small world.

We then drove 5 miles further to a BLM campground (just an old gravel pit with an outhouse) which is located right next to the Hotspot Café. Everything we read said they had great hamburgers so we had to try them. They were huge and really good.

We parked in the campground for the night and played cards until turning in early.

A quiet day

It rained most of the day so we stayed inside enjoying Internet until late afternoon when we found a used book store so Dianna could get some more reading material, and then we did a little shopping at Fred Meyer. Really quiet day of rest.

Fairbanks Again

It was only about 85 miles into Fairbanks so we took our time. After looking at a couple RV parks we decided to stay at the Rivers Edge RV Park for two or three nights so we could do laundry and catch up on internet activities.

I went to the Kenworth dealer here in town to see about getting the repairs on the truck. They think it is just an O-ring replacement for the coolant leak, so that will be much less expensive than I had feared. They have also ordered shocks for it and I will have both installed on Wednesday if they arrive from where ever they found them.

In the meantime, I have uploaded to the gallery all the photos we have taken so far on our trip. They are just grouped in broad categories and not edited or titled, but please feel free to look them over. I’m not sure when I will have time to work on them.

Yummy Scrumptious!

We slept in late this Sunday morning and did not leave Talkeetna until almost noon. The area we drove through was the part we did not see on our way down due to smoke, clouds and rain so it was nice to finally be able to see what we missed. We did catch a glimpse of the top of Denali a couple times, but other than that it was just beautiful views of the Alaska Range.

About 2 PM the truck flashed a warning that the coolant was low so we stopped for lunch and I checked it. Sure enough, it looks like we have a small leak coming out of the front of the engine. I don’t know what it means, but that is one more thing to have looked at when we get to Fairbanks.

We stopped for the night about 25 miles north of the Denali National Park area in a secluded pull out. It appears to be an abandoned gravel pit and the roads down into it mask the highway and get us far enough away that the noise will be less. We discovered that there are wild raspberries growing here so we picked a bunch and Dianna made a pie after our halibut dinner. We had it before bed and it was yummy scrumptious!

Landing on a Glacier

We left Anchorage, hopefully for the last time, and headed north. In only about 30 miles we left most of the traffic behind and were out in the wilds of the North Country once again. After a lunch stop along the highway we took the spur road toward Talkeetna, about 125 miles from Anchorage. Almost immediately after leaving Anchorage the skies cleared and the temperature climbed into the 70’s.

Talkeetna is a historic town at the meeting of three rivers that has become a tourist mecca. The streets in the downtown area are lined with gift shops and restaurants, and there is even a mule wagon you can take a tour in. Many of the buildings are on the National Historic Register so it is an old town, but it now makes it living by selling souvenirs, fishing trips, jet boat rides and, of interest to us, plane trips up to Denali.

We made our usual grand entrance into town. There is a small town square and when we pulled in with our trailer in tow, all 200 or so people stopped and starred as we drove around the square. I guess it is nice being noticed, but it sure makes me nervous about my driving and shifting. I want to look like I know what I am doing so I am even more cautious than normal. Whenever we stop we still get stares, and an amazing number of people stop and talk to us about our rig. Universally they are impressed and even more so when I tell them the truck cost less than a new pickup, has 525 horsepower and gets over 8 MPG towing the trailer.

We signed up for a 7 PM sight seeing trip to the mountain that included a landing on a glacier. Their planes are equipped with skis so this would be a first. There were clouds as usual around Denali and even some thunderstorms roaming the area, but we flew up over many of the glaciers and dodged the storms easily. As we climbed into the mountains it grew more and more impressive. The ruggedness of the mountains and the scouring, flowing glaciers, the blinding white of the snow on the mountains and the clouds we were flying around combined to make it spectacular. It was true mountain flying as we skimmed over passes and flew right next to huge rock walls.

The clouds parted and we were given a fantastic view of the summit of Denali, floating above the lower clouds.

Our pilot has been flying in Alaska for over 30 years, and the plane was an almost new 8 passenger turbine DeHaviland Otter which is one of the best bush planes ever made so we felt very secure as he zoomed and swooped around mountain bowls and finally made a circle approach to an uphill landing on a glacier in an area known as “base camp”. It is where all the climbers start out from when they climb Denali. Landing on skis, which are lowered hydraulically below the wheels, was a lot rougher than landing on wheels. The snow was very soft and he later said he would not be returning to that spot again until it gets much colder.

We all got out and spent about 20 minutes taking pictures, sinking into the snow, watching snow and rock falls on the mountains around us, and soaking in the majesty and grandeur of the place. It was a wonderful experience.

On the way back to Talkeetna we flew over lakes, rivers, gold mines and a lot of muskeg.

If you want to see all the pictures we took you can see all 63 on our gallery.

We had parked the truck and trailer on an empty lot near the airport and decided to just spend the night here. One of the great things about Alaska is that you can park just about anywhere and no one cares.

It was a great day. Tomorrow we continue our trek toward Fairbanks.