Up to the Arctic Circle…

A few days after our tour of Fairbanks, Dan and I took a tour van trip up to the arctic circle. This is just to satisfy our need to check it off our travel list…it is really special to be able to say you’ve been to the arctic circle. How many people do you know that can say that?

The trip started early in the morning around 7 and lasts all day. We got back around 10:30 PM. The first stop was just a few miles out of Fairbanks at a viewing station of the pipeline. First I took a picture or two out of the windows of the van:

This is a typical view of the countryside here in central Alaska:

A few flowers along the parking lot at a restaurant we stopped at:

Here’s a shot of our van and our tour guide. He’s a German, moved here back in the ’80’s, now owns a Bed & Breakfast that is way out in the boonies, you have to hike into his place, takes around 3 hours. He does have a lot of useful information about the area. Other then taking tourists to the Arctic Circle, he also does canoe trips and mid winter hikes and that sort of thing. If you’re interested, drop me an email and I’ll get you in touch with him:

The trees have withdrawn and left the tundra to it’s own devices. This area does not have the type of conditions that most trees can tolerate mostly we just see scrub trees:

Every once in a while there are lots of small trees like these:

After around 4 hours we cross the only bridge that crosses the Yukon River. One of the largest rivers in North America:

Note that the bridge decking is wood. That’s the only decking that will stand up to the cold up here. Cement and steel and blacktop all bust up quickly when it gets down to -30F for weeks at a time:

This is a major crossing place for the pipeline as well:

Some more wild flowers:

See the pipeline there on the right side? Snaking back and forth? that’s really the only reason for the road to be here, and the reason it isn’t straight is because if an earthquake happened it would break a straight pipe, it snakes back and forth to prevent that from happening:

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And here it is, after around 5 hours of driving (with a nice stop or two), the actual arctic circle, see the dotted line?:

And this picture proves we were there. Dan is on the Northern side of the line, I’m on the Southern:

Here you can see that it’s cooled off enough that we’re wearing long sleeve shirts and stuff:

Back at the river we stopped for dinner and this semi was trying to pull a trailer up the hill but didn’t have the oomph. Kept spinning it’s wheels. Gave us a good show for a while. They had to bring down a forklift truck to pull it up the hill:

Well, that’s the end of our Arctic Circle trip. We had a good time, not great, but not bad either. After having read about this area all my life, it was interesting to actually see the country, the Yukon, the pipeline and the circle. And all in one day. Got home, like I said, around 10:30 PM, it was still light out since this trip happened in late August. Next time you guys should come with me…