We had made it halfway up the Dalton Highway. It was time to leave the RV at the midpoint and get ourselves up to the Arctic Ocean.
Coldfoot up to Deadhorse, 241 miles.Again, we waited for a good weather window and hit the road at sunrise. We had reservations that same day on the 3:30 PM bus that would take us from Deadhorse to the Arctic Ocean.Again, the road followed the Alaska Pipeline.The first part of the trip went through the Boreal Forest. The Boreal Forest is the world’s largest biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces, and larches, that goes completely around the globe at this latitude. Here the forest is most spruce.Behold the Tundra!We had to go through Atigun Pass to get over the Brooks Mountain Range. This is the road leading up to the pass.I’m sure this guard rail had a story to tell. Actually, the guard rail’s story probably involved an avalanche. According to the Milepost Guide, this is a mount for an avalanche “gun”. The guns are used to intentionally cause avalanches (while traffic is stopped) that can be cleared to keep the road safe.We found a parking area closed off. But that sign on the left was intriguing.“Avalanche Safety Zone”…I think the sign took an avalanche hit!We also saw a couple of remote weather stations.Atigun Pass, elevation 4822 feet. It looks pretty harmless here in the summer. I can’t imagine driving this in the winter. But we were told a lot of the driver-owned semi trucks prefer to drive the Dalton Highway in the winter when the road is packed snow. The state of the road is easier on the trucks.Down the other side of the Brooks Range.This is one of the Pump Stations, used to keep the oil flowing through the pipeline.Tundra.The road was sometimes sprayed with calcium chloride to keep the dust down…and your vehicle a mess.More fireweed.Ironically, the northernmost 45 miles of the Dalton Highway is one of the best roads we have driven on in Alaska. You can thank the local river spilling over its banks in May, 2015 for that. The flood washed out the highway and it had to be rebuilt.The Franklin Bluffs….and snow in late July.Finally, we could see the town of Deadhorse and a layer of clouds over the Arctic Ocean shoreline.This is what Deadhorse looked like. Not very pretty.We had made reservations to spend the night at Deadhorse Camp. All the buildings in town were of this modular type construction.Our room for the night. This is what $225 will get you. By the way, the bathroom was down the hall.
We had some time to kill, so we drove around town a bit.
Each of those little buildings is an oil well head.The blue building (modular again) is housing for the oil field workers. We were told the workers were on a three week rotation. Most of them are based out of Anchorage. So every three weeks, they are flown up to Deadhorse, work for three weeks (for mega-bucks) and then flown back to Anchorage.EVERYWHERE you would see electrical cords hanging down. Plugging in the block heater on your vehicle is a MUST in winter here.I instisted that we follow the “don’t let your gas tank go below half” rule, so we topped off the truck. Only $7.29 a gallon for unleaded. Ouch.We could only drive around a small portion of Deadhorse. Most of the access was restricted. That is why you have to pay for a tour bus to get you to the Arctic Ocean.At 3:30, we finally were on a bus heading to the Arctic Ocean. It was happening! Before boarding the bus, everyone had to turn over their driver’s licenses (if US citizens) or passports to pass a security clearance. This is what it looks like inside the fence line….…lots of mini pipelines!After a 5 mile ride, we were there. Ladies and Gentleman, the Arctic Ocean! The tour provided towels for those that wanted to get in the water. You can see that the land bordering the beach is not pristine at all. It’s full of, um, stuff. We were told that when the pipeline shuts down, the oil companies need to remove everything. I hope so!!!!!This is the extent of my polar plunge. Those younger (and not wiser??) jumped right in. In fact, our tour operator gets in the water every time he does a tour, usually twice a day. And this was his thrid year leading tours. Brrrr. The water was 46 degrees (someone brought a thermometer).If you read our blog post about our attending an RV Rally in early July, I mentioned a Denali hiking guide named Trinidad came to give us a talk. Guess who was on our Arctic Ocean tour? Trinidad!!!! I got a photo with him to share with the rest of our RV Rally attendees. Alaska may be a big state, but it’s a small world.
I was surprised by the wildflowers that grew at the edge of the beach.
Another part of the beach had a bunch of logs washed up onto it. There is not a tree for hundreds of miles…where did all these logs come from????Wouldn’t you know it, this is where we spotted caribou, amongst all the “stuff” along the beach.
So we did it! We put our feet into the Arctic Ocean. Check that off the bucket list.
It was back to the camp for some dinner and some sleep. It turned out that the day were were in Deadhorse, July 27, was the last day of 24 hour daylight for the season. It also turned out that the window of our overnight accomadations faced full on west. That meant we went to bed with the sun trying to sneak thorugh the blackout shades. We did not sleep well. In fact, we were both up before 5:00 a.m. and decided to skip breakfast at the camp and just start heading back south to the RV.
The day of our departure was rainy, but it did give us a nice double rainbow to see us off.The Franklin Bluffs again.Rainbow over the Tundra.The sun peaking in and out made for some great vistas.Alaska’s state bird, the mosquito, was out in full force. We started donning our mosquito head nets when exiting the truck at our various stopping points.This is Atigun Pass a day later. What a difference 24 hours can make!There are culverts all along the highway. We started seeing pipes on either ends of the culverts. See that pipe to the left of the culvert, supported by a wooden post?These are steam pipes!The steam pipes run the length of the culvert.
We found out that the pipes are filled with antifreeze as winter approaches. When a culvert freezes up and water can no longer flow through it (and probably flows over the road instead), a steam truck comes along and fills the pipe with steam. The hot steam thaws the ice in the culvert to let the water start flowing again. I searched for a video of how this happens, but didn’t find anything. Regardless, I’m going to file this bit of information in my brain under “Who knew?”
We had done it!!!! We had driven the Dalton Highway to the Arctic Ocean and survived!I’m not sure the truck will ever be the same. What a mess!
We arrived back at the RV and waited for another good weather window to continue our southern journey back to Fairbanks. No pictures of that, the trip would be just the previous blog post, only in reverse.
We could have filled up the RV with diesel in Coldfoot or at the Yukon River Camp for $7.49 a gallon, but opted not to. We had 10 gallons of extra diesel fuel with us. As we neared Fairbanks, we still had fuel in our 120 gallon tank, but it was getting low. So we decided to get the fuel cans out.Putting another ten gallons of fuel in the RV gave us a comfortable safety margin to get the rest of the way to Fairbanks. We still had 1/4 of a tank left, but we had learned the hard way that sometimes a 1/4 of a tank is not what it appears. The story of how we ran out of gas in the mountains of Colorado is here. Plus, when you are paying an extra $3.35 per gallon for fuel, and you need 100 gallons, that is a $335 premium, and that is a significant amount of money. Nope, we’ll just use our fuel cans.
James had some choice words for the new, modern, improved spouts on fuel cans. What a pain and what a mess. The spouts are supposed to prevent fuel spills. They do quite the opposite.
So that is our adventure to the Arctic Circle and back. We are very glad we did it, but this adventure is not for everyone. It takes some planning and confidence in your vehicle and driving skills. And thank you for making it to the end of this long blog post!!! Big adventures = big blog posts!
Our poor truck took the brunt of the muddy road spray as it was towed behind the RV. We spent $20 the next day at the car wash getting it presentable again. They guy managing the car wash took one look at the truck and said “Haul Road dirt.” He knew.
What an amazing experience! Mountains, yes; tundra, beautiful in its own way! And to say you waded in the Arctic Ocean – pretty special! Thanks for the extensive photo tour! (and all the planning to make it happen!)
Woohoo! Thanks for the heads up. That room looked like a dream… HA! But I’m sure it was “affordable” way out there. So how would it have been if you just drove the RV all the way? Just curious.
So glad you got a chance to do that. It’s odd the things we do for that bucket list, isn’t it? A one-night trip to dip the toes in an ocean. You guys have seen and done some amazing things and I’m so glad you’re sharing it. Really makes me want to start planning.
And now, I’m going to read the lessons learned about that 1/4 tank of gas 🙂
Congratulations!!!! Glad that you made it up and back. Nice pictures — thanks for sharing them!!!!
BA
What an amazing experience! Mountains, yes; tundra, beautiful in its own way! And to say you waded in the Arctic Ocean – pretty special! Thanks for the extensive photo tour! (and all the planning to make it happen!)
Woohoo! Thanks for the heads up. That room looked like a dream… HA! But I’m sure it was “affordable” way out there. So how would it have been if you just drove the RV all the way? Just curious.
So glad you got a chance to do that. It’s odd the things we do for that bucket list, isn’t it? A one-night trip to dip the toes in an ocean. You guys have seen and done some amazing things and I’m so glad you’re sharing it. Really makes me want to start planning.
And now, I’m going to read the lessons learned about that 1/4 tank of gas 🙂
Oh, and by the way, Love the hair net!