Today we set out driving for the Arctic Circle. Originally, we'd planned to camp our way up there in the Suburban, but since the truck was acting a little cranky, we elected to leave early in the morning in the Suzuki and make a one-day affair of it. The day was overcast and a little cold (~ 60F) so it was better day for driving than hiking, anyway. We got on the road by about 8:30am, our cooler packed with a mason-jar of iced tea and sandwiches made from the previous night's campfire-cooked salmon. YUM!
Note: Heck if I know why the pictures are way down there, and my HTML-fu is coming up blank. Scroll to find them.
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Our first stop was Fox Springs. It's a natural (artesian?) water source that runs all winter long, no matter how cold it gets. We filled our water bottles and they stayed cold for the entire trip. The water is as good and sweet as the locals say, and it seemed kinda cool to actually fill up with springwater at the beginning of our trek, even if we were just driving in a car.
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| To get to the Arctic Circle, you have your choice of road: The Dalton or The Dalton. Yep. Just the one road. It was built in one summer (one Alaskan summer) as an access road for the TransAlaskan Pipeline, which runs alongside the road for its entire length. It starts from the Elliot Highway, about 80 miles north of Fairbanks. This picture is from the Elliot. |  |
| The Elliot was a very smooth ride (not counting the 'frost heaves' -- places in the road where the permafrost is shallower than others, and the highway sinks, providing you with a toothrattling mini-rollercoaster effect) and we made excellent time for the first eighty miles or so. For the most part, the road was eerily silent -- we tood a 30 minute pee break at one point and didn't see a single vehicle. Could've taken a nap on the double yellow. |  |
| Somewhere along the Eliot we passed this series of signs marking a driveway. The biggest one says "Security by Smith & Wesson, additional coverage by John Deere and Alyss Chalmers." There's a plank off to the left side that you can just barely see -- that one says "www.angrybear.org". Turns out this is not a joke. Make with the clicky. |  |
| Here's a closeup of the stopsign and the two smaller signs. The top one reads:"Private Drive, No Access / Yes This Means You Land Stakers". the bottom one says: "Private Target Range / Hello Target / This is NOT Wilbur Creek Trail". While I was out of the car taking this picture, a woman in a huge red pickup met us, coming the opposite direction. Apparrently this was the owner of the house. Thankfully, she only smiled and waved at the two hippie tourists in the Japanese car snapping pictures of her signs. She pulled into the driveway, and we sped off before she changed her mind. |  |
| Here's the first picture from the Dalton, also known as the Haul Road. We saw all sorts of wildlife on our way there, including a fat, waddling porcupine, who disappeared into the brush before I could take a picture. There were tons of snowshoe hares, and we're pretty sure we saw a big grey goshawk, too. |  |
| The Dalton is measured by mile markers; the first is at the Elliot junction, and the last, 414, is in Prudhoe Bay. Up until recently, you needed a permit to go the last 200 miles or so -- but they stopped that in about 1994. It's easy to understand why -- the road's really, really rough. We passed one unlucky schmo in a camper who'd blown out a tire. He asked Layla if she had an air compressor in her car, and she replied no, it was in her other car. Unfortunately, when we checked later it was there, and we felt like crap. The guy was gone on the way back, so he must have gotten assistance from another traveller. Good thing, too -- it's 50 miles in any direction to gas, and the tow trucks understandably charge through the nose. |  |
| It's technically a gravel road, but the gravel was fist-sized, sharp, and vehicles kick up an incredible amount of dust (at one point, I thought there was a fire behind us -- no, just a huge tractor-trailer coming down a hill). We managed an average of about 30mph on the unpaved parts. You're supposed to yield to oncoming trucks at all times, and rumor has it that drivers who don't get narced on by the truckers over CB -- and then get harassed by other angry truckers for the rest of their trip. |  |
| That's not to say the trip wasn't stunningly beautiful, and the slow going made it a lot easier to really drink in the scenery. The mountains were layered -- small hills in front, whitecaps in back. Gorgeous. |  |
| Layla says there're only five trees in Alaska: Black Spruce, White Spruce, Cottonwood, Aspen and Birch. The further north we got, the more the forest skewed in favor of the scrawny Black Spruce. Sometimes described as "gasoline on a stick", these resinous little guys outlived their arboreal competitors by evolving into a form designed to burn; it takes a wildfire for them to release their seeds. As my grandfather would say, "not much for pretty, but she's hell for strong": most of these tenacious little trees are three to four hundred years old, though most are barely more than five or six inches in diameter. |  |
| The road winds ever on and on. And on. And on. And until you get to the Brooks Range, about two hundred miles north of the Yukon, this is what it looks like. It's one thing to hear people say "There's nothing up there," but it's entirely another to get up there and see exactly how much nothing there really is. |  |
| There're a few people scattered here and there, but anything without a driveway directly onto the Haul Road is accessable only by plane. There's about five hundred miles of pretty much nothing but wilderness on either side of the Dalton -- one direction leads you to the Arctic Ocean, the other to the Yukon Territories. |  |
| After about two good hours on the Dalton, we hit a patch of construction. As Layla mused, what the Dalton is to an ordinary gravel road, the Dalton construction was to normal road repairs. Here's just part of the line of bellydumpers. Each is as big as a tractor-trailer. Getting through the construction was really hair-raising, especially with lines of semis roaring past at top speeds. We genuinely began to fear for the safety of the Lawlors' perky little Suzuki. |  |
| We finally made it through the construction unscathed, and quickly came in sight of the Yukon River. We breathed a sigh of relief, as we only had a 'doughnut' in the trunk in case of tire failure. We weren't total idiots about this trip -- we made sure to check all the fluids as well as the tire pressure before we left, and we did have Layla's 'breakdown bag' with us -- but a flat would have really hosed us. That little car did a heck of a job, all things considered. |  |
| The Yukon River is as mighty as they tell you. Gorgeous, huge, muscular, and largely unphotographable. There's no pedestrian route from the bridge, and the guardrails are high enough and thick enough that it was hard to get a decent picture of it. So we just put down the cameras and drank it all in. |  |
| The Yukon River Bridge is paved with wood. Construction trucks had one lane closed off to replace the planking as we drove across. It must have something to do with the extreme temperatures the bridge experiences -- 90F to -60F every year. I'll bet wood does better than asphalt under those conditions. It also has a separate 'lane' exclusively for the pipeline. |  |
| We stopped and ate lunch at the river. A couple busloads of geriatric tourists got off and wandered around in their nylon tracksuits and too-white sneakers, snapping photos. Funny -- there were campgrounds, but no hiking trails anywhere. There really isn't much at the Yukon crossing; a general store of sorts where you can get gas and repairs, a boat landing for the locals, some pit toilets and a couple interperetive signs. We were a little bummed, because the scenery was spectacular, but there really wasn't a way to get to it other than just crashing through the underbrush. Not that we were averse to that sort of thing, because we'd spent the last two days doing just that, but surprising because it was pretty much the only waystation for several miles in any direction. |  |
| We did meet some nice locals who lived on Smooth Face Mountain. They were Minneapolis natives who moved to a parcel of land just before a wildfire devastated it. They lucked out, though -- as they were building their cabin, literal thousands of dollars of morel mushrooms poked up through the ashes. The mom of the group made cool little birchbark and porcupine quill jewelry, and Layla and I each bought something from her. She also shared with us the best way to harvest quills from a living porcupine: gently whack his back with a styrofoam cooler lid. The quills embed, and porky gets away unharmed. Oh, and these are 'chiming bells', a wild northern relative of comfrey. |  |
| Here're the boats the locals use. Yep, those are aluminum fishing boats outfitted with plywood shacks. Considering how freaking cold it gets up here, that seems pretty smart to me. The Yukon really is a highway unto itself, and we saw quite a few boats puttering up and down it. |  |
| By the time we finished our sandwiches, we were ready to head out. After discussing the matter, we elected to head back. The Arctic Circle was another 65 miles over rough road, and even with a few miles of paved road thrown in, we decided we'd rather spend those four hours of our lives hiking at Layla's house rather than going to see a sign. We headed for home. The return trip was pretty uneventful -- but we did see my first moose! She was standing in the middle of the road, but politely moved aside for us. |  |
| Since we didn't make it to the Arctic Circle, we took this picture in front of the Arctic Circle Trading Post in the one-house town of Joy, Alaska. Joy is named for the matriarch of the Carlson family, who runs the trading post and 'comfort station' -- five outhouses for the girls and three for the boys. |  |
We returned home in pretty short order, took a nap and relaxed for the remainder of the evening. Layla made us mooseghetti, and it was really delicious. I've had caribou and elk and venison, and I have to say that moose trumps all three for taste. Though Orion justifiably mocked me (Look ma! They have food in Alaska, just like back home!) here is the obligatory picture of mooseghetti:
After dinner, we went out for an amble, which turned into a scramble as we climbed the towering rockpiles around the cabin. During our walk, I found a couple fossilized bone fragments! One's probably bison and one's probably mammoth. I'm considering taking them into U of M to have them analyzed. Too cool!
Did you really think I'd forget today's installment of pug? You guys must think I'm slacking off.
Wow. Amazing. Thank you for letting us all live vicariously through you!
And wow, thanks for the incredibly useful tip!! You never know when you might need to harvest porcupine quills!!