We have a Barrow of fun.

Fairbanks AK

High 70    Low 46

Mostly Cloudy

Winds 4 MPH

chance of rain 0%

Length of Day 20h 38m

Barrow AK

High 55   Low 34

Cloudy

Winds 30 MPH

chance of rain 40%

Length of Day 24h

Barrow is 340 miles above the Arctic Circle, the northern most point in Alaska, and therefore the US.  A visit is our anniversary gift to each other.

At 6 AM we pile in Dave and Karen’s truck (they are a farming family from Ohio) along with Ben and Marcia W (retired teachers from Iowa) and head for the Fairbanks airport.  Alaska Airways serves Barrow, thanks to the continuous need to circulate oil workers on and off their work schedules (two weeks on, two weeks off).  Our plane is a 737, but a “combi” – the forward half is walled off to carry cargo, and the passengers occupy the rear in normal airline seats.

The weather is decent.  Going north we see nothing but flat tundra and the small community of Dead Horse, which hosts the airport serving Prudhoe Bay; Prudhoe is the northern terminus of the Alaska oil pipeline, and looks appropriately functional.  Trucks can reach Prudhoe, but tourists must fly, the last few road miles being private.  We disgorge and take-on passengers and freight and fly on to Barrow, with ice floes visible, landing about 10:30 AM.

Dead Horse or Prudhoe Bay

Tundra between Dead Horse and Barrow 

Coming in to Barrow

Barrow this time of year has no snow or ice, and today the ice floes are far off shore because the wind is blowing opposite from the usual direction.  (Later in Anchorage, my barber tells me of her only visit to Barrow 10 years ago in a very light July snowfall.  The ice floes were close to shore.  They took a ride beyond the end of the road and actually saw a polar bear.)   

Ice floes off Barrow, in the Beaufort Sea 

Do you see polar bears?

The Barrow airport terminal is one room about half the size of a basketball court.  We go outside where it is windy and cool.  A van soon picks us up and takes us to the office of Tundra Tours.  We are given maps of Barrow, questions are answered, and we are told to return about 1 PM for the tour.  In the lobby are some Coast Guardsmen and a woman that turns out to be a Senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, apparently staying at the small hotel, also operated by Tundra Tours.

KarenA, MarciaW, Ben, MarciaM, Dave, and a guy we meet later.

Your intrepid reporters.

We walk about the town of 4500, most of whom I believe are native persons with feet in two cultures – they still engage in traditional whale hunts, but receive oil revenues that allow them to own snowmobiles and trucks. 

In Alaska there are more caribou than people; in Barrow I’d guess there are more abandoned and decrepit cars, trucks, and houses than people.  There is no practical way of disposing of junk, and perhaps reluctance to part with anything that might be needed for parts someday.

Color, in Barrow.

Maybe Santa will bring a new snowmobile.

As in much of Alaska, everything is on permafrost.  They only pavement is the airport runway.  Everything else is hard-packed stuff that looks like decomposed granite.  Pavement absorbs heat and melts permafrost, causing roads and buildings to sink, a major maintenance problem for the airport.

We walk to the Beaufort Sea but I am unsuccessful persuading Marcia to dip her toes in the water, as she had done traditionally at other major water landmarks; we settle for a finger.

Japanese man's memorial to his family, lost in a private plane crash here.

There are very few people anywhere outdoors.  A couple buildings are partially burned with no signs of repair, or plan to demolish.  We see one area containing many shipping containers that our guide says hold items stockpiled by Shell and its partners as they prepare to do off-shore drilling.  The locals look forward to this as the Prudhoe Bay revenues are way down from the peak.  Our guide says Prudhoe is 22 hours away by the ice road.  Supplies - everything - normally comes to Barrow by barge, after the ice breaks up.

There is a Mexican restaurant nearby, and a Sushi restaurant.  We walk back to Pepe’s, which advertises itself as the northernmost Mexican restaurant, and I have no reason to doubt the claim.  I don’t believe there is alcohol available in Barrow, so you can’t get a beer at Pepe’s.  The local Indians, as with Indians in the lower-48, are very sensitive to alcohol, which was used for many years for trade with the Indians, and often deliberately as a way of breaking down their social structure and ability to organize and resist the whites.  We do see some genuinely friendly natives, but also others that call out jovially but appear to have had too much to drink.

Marcia and I each have water, a cheese enchilada, refried beans (no chips offered), tortillas, and a fried egg.  Our first Mexican food that I recall since California, and it is good (she says OK).  We sign a register showing that we have crossed the Arctic Circle and receive certificates.

Back at the tour office we clamor aboard an old school bus and begin our tour, joined by a twenty-year-old Asian girl from USC traveling alone, and another couple that also came as tourists.  Our driver is the manager of the hotel and tour company, and our guide is a guy in his twenties that has lived here since the 5^th grade.  He is very knowledgeable and achingly sincere about life in Barrow.

We drive for sometime north, past small homes that would probably be called, politely, weathered; similar in the lower-48 would be called weathered shacks.  Not all have plumbing but for those that do all the utilities are enclosed in a maybe 2’ diameter insulated pipe emerging from underground.  Where we are there is absolutely no vegetation, save three palm trees appearing to be made from metal.  There is a berm hopefully protecting the people from the Beaufort Sea and it must be constantly replenished.  We take photos in a freezing wind at the end of this northernmost road.

A bit windy in Barrow, our guide concedes.

The most modern structure we visit is a cultural center and museum where we encounter, again, Sen Murkowski from Alaska plus Sen John Hoeven from North Dakota.  They seem to be on a “fact finding” tour, perhaps related to promoting energy development and less government meddling, I conclude from a look at her website.  There is a camera crew that we are told is part of the Coastguard escort; there is also a four-star Coastguard officer standing around.  No obvious body guards but some of the civilian escorts do seem very serious.

Sen Murkowski in white, Sen Hoeven in green at back, gathering facts.

The senators leave with facts.

 Next we go to the one supermarket in town, described as like a small Super Wal-Mart because of the variety of goods carried.  We aren't sure why we are here as our guides have disappeared; I find the guy talking with a girl his age in a distant aisle.  Marcia manages to find a 49-cent Hershey’s Special Dark; not coincidentally I’m also checking for chocolate and finding only things like Snickers, for $1.29.  We make our Hershey buy and soon we are all gathered and the tour resumes, or perhaps continues.

We leave Barrow's supermarket.

The football field for the high school was a gift from the wife of an NFL owner.

A sled, traditional skin boat, and deep freeze storage outside a home.

Will Rogers and Wiley Post died in a crash near here.

Communications antennas have to point almost level with the earth this far north. 

It is now drizzling and blowing fairly hard but we stop several times at things like whale bone arches and our guides offer, again, to take our pictures.  But at one stop we get to add a snowy owl to our list of animals seen in the wild.  The girl from USC is very happy.

A snowy (or arctic) owl.

Eventually we are back at the offices of Tundra Tours with maybe an hour-or-two to kill before our flight back to Fairbanks.  The Coastguardsmen are there and somebody says anyone that goes out in the surf and completely submerges can get an Arctic Circle certificate, but the Coastguardsmen decline, as do we.  The older guy in our group says he will do it, producing a look of surprise from the young Coastguardsmen, as they now feel compelled to join.  Later I notice the Arctic Circle certificate they receive is identical to the certificates we got for eating Mexican food at Pepe’s.

The sun does not go below the horizon from early May to early August in Barrow.  It is quite light, but this does not help sightseeing on the flight back to Fairbanks because of the cloud cover.   We are back a little past 10 PM, all feeling the trip was worthwhile but Barrow is no longer on our list of potential retirement communities.

Our Airstreams, visible as we return to Fairbanks.