Day 57: The Ultimate Car-Trapping - Continued

June 10, 2014

Today was the day. The day we were going to the Arctic Ocean. We had been talking about this possibility for probably a year or more. Don't really know what the fascination was but we just wanted to experience it – the Arctic Ocean. We were awake very early. (We all slept really well.) Of course the 8:00 bedtime last night probably had something to do with that – but we were excited too. We were up and had Scout walked and breakfast long before the 08:15 muster time for the tour. There were a total of 11 people in our group. Our tour leader was Branden and he is ¼ Native Alaskan. This was a real advantage for us because along with interesting information about the oil drilling and site, he shared some of his native culture with us as well as his knowledge of various birds/wildlife.

Toward the end of the tour we finally went to the Arctic Ocean and there we were, ankle/knee deep (depending on which one of us it was) in ice, standing ON the Arctic Ocean.

It was so neat! We had talked about sticking our hands or feet into the ocean but had never thought about it still being totally iced over in mid June. Evidently it is sometime in July when it partially thaws most years. Then just as we were starting to leave the ice a red fox came walking up. It was amazing. It came quite close. Close enough that Branden actually became concerned and scared it away a distance. He then revealed he did this because almost 100% of the red fox in this area have rabies. It is usually dormant but if they become stressed due to lack of food or something else it can become active. Well that was a sobering bit of information. All of a sudden that little red fox wasn't nearly so cute.

Also, it was interesting to us that we only had permission to walk on a certain path from the van to the ocean and back. We were not allowed to walk on any of the tundra or in the direction of any of the equipment or buildings. We could however take pictures of anything except the security check point.

The tour lasted about 2.5 hours and then we said our goodbyes, climbed in the truck for our 15 hour drive home. There was still the construction and we had some rain so the mud was even worse than the drive down.

However, we also had some blue skies at times and the wild life viewing was amazing. We saw king eider ducks, common loons, the red fox, arctic terns, cackling geese, a short ear owl, black jager, another owl we think was a great gray owl, lots of caribou at multiple locations, moose, a huge grizzly bear and the MUSK OXEN. We couldn't believe it. We had pretty much given up on seeing a musk ox in the wild and had even mentioned going to the research facility at UA in Fairbanks to see them. We were about out of what we had been told was their range, and had also been told if we saw them they would just be little brown lumps on the ground far away. Then, there they were – about 25 musk ox. Even better the musk oxen had babies. And we have pictures!!!

 

 

 

 

We made it back to Fred about 1:30 am Wednesday. We were tired but still excited about our adventure. For us it was indeed a success. We started trying to summarize of feelings and views of the journey. We agreed that the trip revealed in no other way we have experienced the true vastness, remoteness and wilderness of the state of Alaska. You would go extended periods of time seeing no other vehicles. You could see for miles and miles. While the road was indeed bad at times we all agreed it really wasn't as bad as we had feared. All the horror stories about the truckers taking up the entire road and throwing rocks into your windshield, from our experience are just that, – stories. The majority of the truckers on seeing that we were slowing or pulling over and stopping would pull over as far as they could and slow down, too. We are very thankful that we made the trip with no known damage to the truck - no cracks or dings in the windshield and no flat tires. Now it was so covered in mud when we returned that our neighbors in the RV park were taking pictures of it, but it will clean up.

There is one group we agreed we really would not recommend the trip for and that is the bicyclist. We met numerous males and females – solo and in groups - making the trip on their bikes. While we are indeed amazed that anyone can make that trip - climb those mountains on bikes - the road conditions are such that it really seems unsafe – in our opinion. Later in the summer when maybe it is not so wet – maybe then it would be safe.

Would we we do it again? Absolutely!