June 28, featuring us in the Arctic Ocean, and some muskoxen

Was a great, "red letter" day. Got to stand in the Arctic Ocean with Ann! May not sound like much to you, but it is a LONG way away from our normal lives and was a highlight I hoped to have on this trip. Ann agreed to brave the rigors of the Dalton Highway to make it happen, and now, we have to brave those rigors again as we retrace our steps back to Fairbanks. Google Maps says it is 491 miles from Deadhorse Camp (a place in Prudhoe Bay where we took the Arctic Ocean Shuttle to the beach this morning) to our hotel in Fairbanks. With a little road construction and possibly a delay due to a forest fire, we hope to make it back by mid-afternoon Sunday. We'll have to hustle, since it is hard to average more than thirty to thirty-five miles an hour.

In addition to seeing some muskoxen on the way south, we saw some Caribou today, two groups, and got to see a lot of beautiful country being absolutely pelted by rain.

Some pretty flowers at our campsite.

Enjoy the show!

Couple of guys on motorcycles, all the way from Virginia...

Some oil field facilities. Place is huge.

Speaking of "huge", how about these mosquitoes in the van!

Where I got gas yesterday. Not your ordinary Shell station, for sure. And, again, $7.499 a gallon.

There is a well head in each of these protective shelters...

More big facilities. All this equipment came up the Dalton Highway, and someday it will all have to go back down the Dalton Highway. Even the gravel used to build over 400 miles of roads.

Two types of birds in the same nest; apparently it doesn't happen very often...

Was not as cold as the stream running right outside our rig right now...

Without Ann, I wouldn't be here!!!

Some pebbles for my grandkids...

Ann, with nothing behind her but the North Pole, about 1,200 miles away...

The musk oxen herd we saw on the way today...

A few flowers by our truck...

Tomorrow, we head back over Atigun Pass at least to Coldfoot, where we'll inquire about some road closures due to fires that could impact our timely return to Fairbanks.

Hope you had a great, "red letter" day, too!

Best regards,

Davis, Ann, and Tuck