Road Trip 2010: Day 44 STILL Fairbanks (sorta)

Very, very early this morning,--like 3:30 AM--Terry and I awoke to have a quick breakfast before heading out to the airport for our tour north above the Arctic Circle.

Little did we realize that there were two other couples making the same preparations for what was billed as a Drive-Fly Tour. (Ours was listed as an Arctic Circle Native Culture Adventure but also started by driving and then flying out of Coldfoot, some 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle, out to Anaktuvak Pass in the Brooks Mountain Range before we fly back to Fairbanks. They would fly directly back to Fairbanks from Coldfoot.) So six of us Good Sammers ended up boarding the same tour bus out of the Northern Alaska Tour Company at 5 AM heading north.

There were five others on our trip. Three from England and a couple from Australia all of whom were quite friendly and enjoyable to be with all day. (Terry and I were still the only two planning on going north out of Coldfoot.) Our driver, John, a young man originally from Wyoming by way of Oregon and who just completed his Masters in Fine Arts at the University, proved very friendly and engaging.

It was overcast and drizzling when we got on the bus at the airport, and things got worse as we headed north on the Elliot Highway out of Fairbanks. Rain and fog seemed to be making an attempt to totally ruin our day. But, there came a report over the CB from a trucker that there was a break in the clouds a short distance ahead and the weather would be improving. We were skeptical, but the trucker proved correct. While the showers didn't completely disappear, there were many more hours of sun light than minutes of rain once we got on to the Dalton Highway.

But before we got to the Dalton, we made contact with an old friend, the Alyeska Pipeline.

THE Pipeline

John explained that the pipeline runs underground where there is either no permafrost or a stable, i.e. dry, form of permafrost. These are also locations for better, deeper soils for tree root growth. The pipeline goes underground where ever there's enough soil for aspen, birch and poplar trees but remains above ground in the thin, poor soils the black spruce can live on. This location (shown above) shows this quite well.

Vegetation patterns created by soil depths and quality.

We made our first stop at the Wildwood General Store in the little town of Joy, Alaska. The Carlson clan (how about 5 "home grown kids", 18 adopted kids, and a bunch more foster kids) helped build a town--literally. Do they have a story to share with you!

Wildwood General Store.

A short distance up the road we left the Elliot Highway and started our travels on the Dalton Highway.

Beginning the James W. Dalton Highway

The highway is named after James W. Dalton, an engineer and Fairbanks resident, who played a major role in the construction of the DEW Line that protected North America and Europe from potential threats from the Soviet Union and China in the Cold War Era.

Much of the 416 miles of road that reaches from the Eliot Highway to Prudhoe Bay is gravel. There are some sections that are paved--thanks to the rules that grant more federal dollars for paved road maintainence than gravel road maintainence, but those paved sections are more difficult to maintain and repair once frost heaves set in and are often worse to travel on than the gravel sections.

The road was built during the construction of the Alyeska Pipeline to deliver men and material to the work sites. It currently is maintained by the state of Alaska but still serves as a major access road for the Prudhoe oil fields and the pipeline's pump stations.

Oh, yeah, and the 50 Mile Per Hour speed limit that you see holds for the entire 416 miles...if you dare go that fast. I'm told a recent season of Ice Road Truckers uses the Dalton as its starting off point.

View from along the Dalton

The Pipeline parallels its supply line.

View from along the Dalton

The bridge over the Yukon River.

There's next bridge upstream is at Whitehorse and there are none down to the sea. The deck of the bridge is wooden planks. The river is about 1/2 mile wide at the crossing. We have sons celebrating the mighty Mississippi and the Missouri as gateways into the interior of the lower 48 yet so little is mentioned of the great river systems of the state of Alaska and the access they provided during the gold rushes (yes, it should be plural) of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Yukon, Tanana, Kuyukok and more served as THE highways to the interior. And still do.

Looking downstream from the bridge area.

The Ray Mtns in the distance and the Ray River in the foreground.

The pipeline continues along the highway.

View out over the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge

We crossed the Arctic Circle with all due pomp and circumstance.

And we got the certificates to prove it, too! One form the tour company and one from the Bureau of Land Management.

Coldfoot, Alaska

This was to be our final destination for us as well as the rest of our party. We learned that we would not be flying north to Anaktuvak Pass due to concerns about the weather. Instead, we had a little over an hour lay over before we would fly back to Fairbanks. We would get a refund of the difference in price between our tour ant that of the others--approximately $110 for each of us.

We spent that hour at the Interagency Visitors' Center.

The Visitors' Center at Coldfoot.

With millions of acres of Gates of the Arctic National Park, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, the Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, and so on and so forth, there are many agencies responsible for the surrounding area.

Piper Chieftain would take us back to Fairbanks.

Despite the turbulence, the ride back to Fairbanks was far less bumpy than the one from Fairbanks to Coldfoot.