We SURVIVED the Dalton haul road and made it all the way to the Arctic Ocean!
The trip to Prudhoe Bay was probably the most amazing road trip we have ever taken. There is no way the photos can convey the actual experience. The scenery and wildlife combined with the miles of pipeline and haul road were a work of art. The pipeline itself is just beautiful. Half of the 800 miles of it are buried underground, but most of what we saw was above, floating on the support stands and snaking it's way up and down mountains, through canyons, across raging rivers, etc. The haul road runs right along the side of it all the way. It is SO hard to explain the experience. Just WOW!
We left Fairbanks and headed north, expecting to spend the night at a camp ground close to Coldfoot, which is about half way up the highway. We did stop there for gas and lunch around two, but it was way too early to stop and camp. We continued on, and as we got further up the highway decided, what the heck, let's just make a run for it! The scenery and wildlife kept us entertained. We arrived in Deadhorse in Prudhoe Bay 18 hours after we left Fairbanks. The entire drive was beautiful, and other than road construction crews and a few brave travelers, there was nothing but scenery and wildlife. Of course, the sun never set.
We rolled into Deadhorse at 12:30 a.m. looking for fuel. It was so weird. The sun was still high in the sky, but the entire town was sleeping. We didn't see anyone other than a few of our fellow travelers that also wondered around looking for fuel. We spent the rest of the night sleeping in the car out on the beach of some river (ice flow). There are no RV parks, and actually NOTHING at all catering to tourists. This is an industrial village with one purpose, to service the oil fields. We did take the one thing offered to visitors, and that was a bus ride to the Arctic Ocean with our assigned Homeland Security officer who was more interested in bird watching than offering any information on the Pipeline operations. We had applied for and passed our security check earlier. WE DID put our toes in the Arctic Ocean! How many people can say they have done that? The water was right at 32 degrees, and we were lucky it was thawed at all. Not too far off shore, was the giant ice flow. We got the picture to prove we did it, of course.
One note about all of those months of preparation..... We were ready for the mosquitos! Our creative netting for the car worked. We actually slept in until 9:00 a.m. one morning at the Marion Creek Campground near Coldfoot on the way back.
This IS a haul road with continuous repair work and we dodged rocks from the trucks all the way up and back. Some truckers were curteous and slowed down, others just blasted us with a spray of rocks. The car is filthy, and we now have 4 rock drills in the windshield. We have tape and silicon repairs, and are hoping it holds for the remainder of the trip.
And now, we are off to Denali. We have to be back to Anchorage to get our rig in storage and catch our flight home Friday the 28th. It is hard to believe we are getting to see so much in just 3 weeks. We will have to watch our own slideshows later to remember where we have been....
