June 27th... Made it to Prudhoe Bay!!!

A beautiful third day on the Dalton Highway. Most of the road was in superb condition. Not sure why the publications all make this trip sound like it is a dangerous undertaking, fraught with extensive risks, unless it is to keep tourists away and leave the road to the truckers. I guess if it was rainy and cold, the unpaved portions (which is most of the roughly 415 miles) would be nasty, but that was not the case for us.

It took about five hours of total driving time to go about 165 miles. Was 86 degrees about an hour south of Prudhoe Bay, so "pleasant" is an understatement when commenting on the weather. Sunny all day long. Even at about 9:00 p.m. as I am writing this. The sun is WAY high in the sky still. And, it will not go below the horizon tonight this far north. We drove around a bit getting a lay of the land when we got here. Very industrial, as you might imagine. Just about the "unfrilliest" place I have ever been. Makes Midland, TX (a big oil town) look ritzy to the max. Got gas (again $7.499 a gallon), but you can't call it a "gas station". "Fuel Dock" is more like it. All the pumps are housed in little shelters against the cold. Everywhere vehicles can be parked, there are overhead electrical lines so the vehicles' engines can be plugged into electric heating gizmos in the winter. Small icebergs were still in a few bodies of water around (and, if you look at a map, there seems to be much more surface area devoted to ponds than to dry land. The permafrost is thick, thick, thick, and the water that melts at its surface just hangs around in little ponds until it freezes up again.

Had dinner at the Aurora Hotel. No, not like any hotel you have ever been to. It is an industrial, modular building with rooms and dining halls for the residents/guests. Pretty much all you can eat or drink (no alcohol) for $25. Big buffet. Think about what the dining hall might look like on a remote Army base, or an aircraft carrier (no... that would be much fancier and cleaner than this place). Still, the food was more than decent and we didn't have to fend for ourselves for dinner. Found a flat spot to park the truck for the night, about a hundred yards from the road into and out of Prudhoe Bay. A big truck just rumbled by. I think they will occasionally do so most of the night, er, next ten hours of the day.

Enjoy the photos!

The view from our "bedroom" window this morning...

Looking north from our campsite last night...

Our first hint that the mountains don't go on forever...

When you see these guys coming, you move over and stop..

West view of the Brooks Range...

This time of year is when they go all-out to get the roads repaired. We saw MANY truck like this (double trailers) fully filled and off to some rough spot for some patching...

A view of the "Sag" river from a short rest stop...

The other direction...

Pump Station # 2...

A very interesting bluff-line that extended for maybe ten miles...

Pretty flat in the opposite direction (we are fully out of the mountains now!)

A relatively new housing block in Prudhoe Bay...

Hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment lying around in storage...

A not-so-new housing block, being used as the Aurora Hotel, where we had dinner. Note the overhead engine block heating lines...

Where we stopped for the night...

Need to be at "Deadhorse Camp", a building across the road from us, at 8:00 a.m. to take a two-hour long van ride through the oil fields to a spot on the Arctic Ocean. Not sure if I will join the "Polar Bear" club by a full-body dunking when we get there, but I will at least wade around in it for as long as I can handle it, and get a bottle of ocean water to go back and christen Tuck's Truck with it.

Thanks for your interest. More tomorrow!

Best regards,

Davis, Ann, and Tuck