Midnight Sun – I’m here to tell you, all that stuff about the sun setting in the west and rising in the east doesn’t work here. At 1:30am I went outside and looked due north, I saw the sun sitting low on the horizon, and it was moving toward the east. Our Toyhouse is parked in the parking lot of the Arctic Caribou Inn, and this is what it looks like a 1:30 am.
By the way, it was about 30 Degrees outside.
We had our blackout screens on the roof vents and the main door, we also put some towels over the windows just to darken it some more in the ToyHouse.
Awake again at 6:30, uploaded to the web site before the speed crashed and got time outs.
The tour started with a nice intro from our guide. The guide showed us a 10 minute video that describes the operations at Prudhoe Bay, then everyone on the bus for a two hour tour of the oil fields and a trip 12 miles north to the Arctic Ocean..
First stop was the “Prudhoe Bay National Forest”. Then around to some of the crew “Camps”. They look kind of like 50 of those FEMA trailers bolted together, Each company has their own facilities (Camp)where they house feed, sleep, for the crews. Basically, there are no permanent residents here, everyone is temporary – 2 to 3 weeks at a time, and there are just shy of 10,000 people here at any time.
They don’t drill or explore in the summer, only the winter. Summer is for maintenance and getting ready for the next season
ARCTIC OCEAN 🙂
One of the main goals was to swim (wade) in the Arctic ocean, Well, that wasn’t going to happen because its still frozen over, but we did get to “Walk” on the arctic ocean.
After the tour, we ate lunch in the Toyota Diner. Jodie needed to pick up a couple items from the store and I needed to fill the fuel tanks before heading south.
HEADING BACK SOUTH
We left Deadhorse about 1pm, and planned to stop around Coldfoot. On the way up we scouted several good candidates to spend the night.
We did see a see a herd of about 20 Musk Oxen along with three calves grazing beside the road.
We stopped about 40 miles north of Coldfoot, on the Dietrich River. This was about 500 ft off the road so we didn’t get a lot of road noise. The place we set up camp had signs of a Bear, there were bear prints in the shore line and and do-do around the site.
Fortunately, we didn’t see any bears that night.
Again, it was the same deal with the sun set, There was none, It was light and the sun was up all night.
Sleep tight, I’ll post more when we get a WiFi connection.
(Posted from Walmart Parking lot, Fairbanks Alaska)
John and Jodie
Thank you for your explanation of a wonderful adventure. I plan on doing a similar trip in my 40′ DP with no toad in late June 2023.