Day 8 (Monday, June 13, 2016)

Happy Anniversary to Andrew and Cheryl!!!  What an amazing celebration of 35 years!  What an amazing 35 years. J  We are sleeping this evening in a town called Coldfoot, Alaska.  It is about ½ between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay (Deadhorse), which is on the Arctic Ocean.  This was not a normal road, to be sure.  It may or may not have ever been a normal road.  It is part paved, part rock patching parts that are no longer paved, part mud because they grade it and then wet it down to where it is thick mud, part missing due to the many, many pot holes that you have to careen around or bounce really high.  Poor Ruby Tuesday—yes, we finally named our truck.  We felt we needed to as she is going above and beyond for us these weeks!  She is no longer ruby colored, but brown and tan with maybe a hint of her original color.

We encountered bicyclists.  Who in their RIGHT mind would want to bicycle on this terrain?!? Holy Cow!  These hills are not just little hills, but HUGE mountains!   And this road is hard for a normal vehicle to traverse let alone two wheels without a motor engine!  We’ve noticed, by the way, that most of the bikers thus far are woman, and not just very young ones, but quite a few older ones. 

We encountered motorcycles.  I can’t imagine doing this on a motorcycle either, especially the muddy parts that wanted to just suck you down!  One motorcyclist was a young woman who always wanted to come to the Arctic Circle.  She was in town for a week (she shared that she was a competitive swimming coach so was in town for a seminar/training) and since she couldn’t convince anyone to ride with her, she rented a very nice motorcycle (a BMW) and rode as far as the circle.  She needed to get back to Fairbanks to return the bike and head home—just over 200 miles!  She said that she would have had to pay $500 more if she wanted to drive past the Arctic Circle!  We took her picture so she had her “proof.”

We met a very nice couple from Oregon that come up to Coldfoot each summer and take time to sit at the Arctic Circle to answer questions, take pictures, etc.  She said they’ve done this for about 7 years already and just love it.  The Arctic Circle isn’t manned every day, they send someone a few times a week so we lucked out today.

We encountered TONS of what we can assume were work trucks.  They were also covered in dust and mud.  Semis that were full or empty, some hauling other trucks!  It just is unbelievable that they can maneuver so carefully over these roads!  Most, we think, were hauling to and from Prudhoe Bay.  Many of the vehicles were part of the road fixing crew and we think another bunch were part of the Alaskan Pipeline maintenance crew.  The Alaskan Pipeline is amazing in and of itself.  It is just there, oil burrowing down from the Arctic Ocean, that big pipe propped above the ground, zig-zagging up and down mountains and through the plains, over creeks and rivers and often under the ground as well.  It just disappears into the ground and pops up later. What an engineering feat!  I feel I need to research this more.  I didn’t realize that this road was finished in 1974, the Alaskan Pipeline in 1977, and the road was only opened to the “public” in 1994! 

We opted to eat out for our anniversary and they have the Trucker’s Café in Coldfoot.  We are staying in converted workers barracks and the restaurant is across a parking lot, as are two gas pumps and some Quonset hut-type buildings, as well as a few trailers.  There is an amazing Nature/Visitor’s Center here too which I am assuming is where our new friends from Oregon hang out when not at the Arctic Circle.  The food was so INCREDIBLE!  There was a salad bar but it was the good lettuce and included nuts and three different olives.  The main course was a “buffet” but that only referenced you could eat as much as you want, not that there were tons of offerings as they only offered one meat, one potato, one vegetable, and several vegetarian entrée options.  There was a flat iron steak with a Dijon sauce, portabella mushrooms with humus, garlic mashed potatoes, asparagus, and some pilaf and other vegetarian options.  They had pumpkin truffles, mini angel food cakes with strawberry/rhubarb sauce and “peace” cookies which were heavenly multiple chocolate ones!  All small-sized so not too much guilt.  The place was packed with people eating, assuming many of the workers for the road and the pipeline.  I will need to research what everyone really does in this area.  It probably is the perfect spot for truckers as they can’t drive but so many hours in a day so this is a natural ½ point!  There isn’t much else here!  It was a booming gold mining town in the late 1800s but then gold was discovered 11 miles away and everyone moved out. 

We left North Pole very early this AM (Alaska actually has its own time zone so we are now four hours “behind” home).  We camped at the Cheno Lake Recreational Area.  I think we may have been the only campers.  The sites were very roomy, actually able to accommodate groups of campers like families that want to camp together, which is nice.  We were going to camp at Delta Junction but it was raining.  There wasn’t rain forecast for North Pole so we went ahead and added those few hours onto our trip.  We got our tent up and it started to drizzle!  It was only 30% but we had it all night long!  To luck our tent is fairly rain/wind proof.  We only had a bit from the zipper and I just read that to prevent that, you rub chapstick or Vaseline on the zipper once in a while.  We will have to try that next time. 

The one thing we have noticed is that, unfortunately, there is more trash in the USA.  We literally saw no roadside trash anywhere in Canada (to be fair, we were on a less-traveled road); of course, they provided litter bins at their very frequent pull-outs and they advertised their bins from the road.  Most if not all campgrounds provided dumpsters on your way out but you had to keep your campsites clean for fear of bears.  We were barely in Alaska and there is trash in the ditches, along the road, and in our campsite.  Small things like crayons and food wrappers that could have so easily been picked up.  Some trash they dumped into the fire ring!!  What about rogue bears they warn you about???  Don’t you think he/she may want that half-eaten apple or candy wrapper??  Ironically, our campsite wasn’t far from a trash can so it would have been easy to hike it across the road.

 

We stopped for a few hours in Fairbanks.  We needed to make some reservations ahead for our next few days, our excursion into the Arctic Ocean—you can’t just walk up to it as that property is owned by the gas companies.  We also wanted to do some hiking and sightseeing in Denali and those require advance reservations as well.  Tonight was our only planned night in a hotel but we landed up booking one for tomorrow as well.  The reasoning?  Well, everything we’ve researched strongly discouraged tent camping in Deadhorse due to grizzly bears and polar bears.  Polar bears?!?!  So we opted for another night in a hotel. I am not sure hotel is the right word as where we are staying is also converted barracks.  But away from bears so we are good! 

We drove over a wooden bridge that spanned the infamous Yukon River and saw a caribou slowly making her way down another creek. 

We are looking forward to the Arctic Ocean tomorrow; we’ll keep you posted!

We had zero cell phone service today!  And this evening’s Internet is satellite and must be paid for.  So we thought we would buy an hour’s worth to let family know we’ve made it this far and post our blog.