Twas sunny and a blamy 77 at the arctic circle

Beginning the gravel road.

What do you think of when someone says Arctic Circle?  I think of ice and snow and whiteouts and cold beyond imagination.   How about sunny and 77 F?  It was shirt sleeve weather now, but don't plan on that in the winter! 
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs from Prudhoe Bay through Fairbanks and down to Valdez.  There is a gravel road that runs along the pipeline all the way from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, where land ends and the Arctic Ocean begins.  It is known as the Dalton Highway and it is 491 miles from Fairbanks to Deadhorse.  As dirt roads go, its a dandy.  It has quite a reputation as being almost un-drivable.  Still, there is a fair amount of traffic along the road since all the supplies for the oil field and pipeline must go up that way.  Food, prefab housing, lots of fuel, construction equipment and anything else you need for a pipeline.


Shirt sleeve weather at the Arctic Circle, wow!

We had considered going up to Deadhorse, but there are few to no accommodations along the way.  I wasn't going to take the RV up there since I didn't want to tear it up and I could not figure how to drive over 900 miles on a dirt road in one day.  Stories of torn up tires and broken suspensions abound here.
Along the way, the Dalton Highway crosses the Arctic Circle, 66 degrees 33 minutes of latitude.  It is the circle on the earth above which the sun does not set on the summer solstice.  From there north is the land of the midnight sun.  It's only 199 miles from Fairbanks. 

It took 13 hours but we did it.  Along the way were amazing things.  We set out at 8:00 AM with a full tank of gas in the truck.  We drove north to Livengood, AK which is a house and a highway maintenance shed at the end of three miles of dirt road.  No services.  I don't know why it is on the map, but it is.  As we were going down the gravel road to Livengood, we got behind three motorcycles.  When the road ran out and it became apparent that there was no gas to be had, we had a conference with them.  They were unsure of where to go, so I shared the map.  It turns out that they were from Covington, KY!  What a small world.  We traveled together for most of the way. 

Gasoline became an issue.  Some truck drivers  that I talked to at the Dalton Highway Sign said they should have gas at the Yukon River crossing, so I decided that was the turn around point if there was no gas. Even at that point I was sweating the amount of gas we had.  The lower half of the  tank is always smaller that the upper.

Dirt road and trees,  saw a lot of this

The countryside you pass through varies tremendously.  In many places its covered with Birch and Spruce trees like the land further south.  But, as you go north, you find increasingly large areas of no trees and meandering small lakes.  This is arctic tundra in the summer when the surface of the frozen ground has melted for a foot or so.  Underneath is permafrost on north facing slopes but is largely melted on south facing slopes. 
In Alaska they have a plant called Fireweed which grows in the short summer and blooms a pink flower.  We saw whole hillsides covered with it.  Beautiful. So the view out the window varies from tree lined road to wide open views that go for miles.  In the picture above, you can see the road going over a hill in the distance.

Fireweed on road bank.

 There was no rain which meant that there was no mud except where the highway department was spraying water on the road.  Those folks love mud.  Evidently in wet weather, the road can become treacherously slippery.  Potholes abound as does washboard.  I am glad we left the RV behind.  You also learn very quickly to slow way down and move over when vehicles come the other way.  Rocks go flying and your only hope of keeping your windshield is to be going very slow when they hit.





Gasoline at last!  Also lunch

Well, it turns out that The Yukon Crossing was open for business and thriving.  The crossing is a bridge over the Yukon River that also flows past Whitehorse, YT.  Boy had the river changed since then.  There were pictures in the Camp of trucks crossing on an ice bridge before the metal one was built,  THAT IS SCARY!
The most I have ever paid for gas, $5.50 a gallon and your choice was regular.  Glad to buy every gallon.   It turns out that the place is run by very friendly people and has good food.  It is also a bunkhouse for oil line workers.  We had salmon potato soup made with coconut milk.  Amazingly good.  The motorcycle guys show up just as we are leaving.  They had collected a fourth for their drive. They are really slowed down by the gravel patches and deep potholes.



Kentucky Motorcycists

So, we keep on driving.  Another several hours and 60 miles later, we reach the Arctic Circle.  A short time later, the Kentucky motorcycle guys pull in also.  One of them caught the mood very well.  He said "Take another picture of me, I drove 4000 miles to get it!"  There were several groups of people there and you rarely see grown adults having so much fun standing around a big sign. 





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So, a white van full of people pulls up, the people get out and mill around just like we did when we got there.  One guy comes running up with a rolled up rug.  What???  Oh there is no line for the Arctic Circle, so he unrolls the rug in front of the sign.  I got Pat up there for this photo.  It doesn't' get any better.  What does it look like around this part of the Arctic Circle, well here are a couple of pictures:

You can see the highway crossing the picture.

Woods and tundra in the region of the sign

 Not the mental image that I had.  We decided to drive on further to see what it looks like.  At this point we are only 1/3 of the way to the Arctic Ocean and it is 2:00 PM.  An incredible drive indeed.  We went another 16 miles into the Land of the Midnight Sun, hit a bunch of road construction and turned around.  We made it to Gobblers Knob and around OH Shit Corner, famous as a place to loose your load if you are not careful.  Not much changed as far as scenery.   Now for the long drive back.  by this time Pat's arm is tired of being in the truck (I think the rest of her was, too), and I was sick of being bounced around.  That little white Nissan does ride like a truck for sure.  Some time later, we reach Yukon Crossing again in time for dinner.  If its a guy place, the chili must be good, right....wrong.  And the Tums were at the RV.
If you look in the Milepost Alaska Travel book, you see all kinds of red warning text for the log of the Dalton Highway.  Well, it certainly has some amazing grades,   I saw a couple of 3 mile long 8% grades and  a couple of 1/2 mile long 11% grades.  Those end up being third gear (out of 6) trips at 25-30 mph.  So some of the road is paved, some is not.  Some of it is a 60 mph drive and some of it is a 15 mph drive.  In many cases the dirt road was better than the paved parts.

Above are a couple more pictures of the road.  The lower one is a hillside of Fireweed and the upper one shows how far that road goes.  You never think its going to end.  Those of you who know me also know that I have had a life long tendency to go down funky roads to see what's at the end.  Well, for the first time, I was beaten by the Dalton Highway.  We only went a third of the way.

Now for some useless information about the Arctic Circle.  It doesn't stay in one place on the Earth.  The Earth wobbles on its axis as it revolves around the sun, completing one wobble every 41,000 years.  That is known as the Milankovitch cycle after the Serbian climatologist Milutan Milankovitch.  (Yeah, sure, I knew him well.)  That translates to 200 miles of movement.  So in 40000years the arctic circle moves nearly to the Arctic Ocean and down as far as Fairbanks, AK.  However, I won't be around to see it, so a more meaningful measure is 25 feet per year.  Do you think they move the sign?