Alaska Tourists - Part 12

We got up early on the morning of July 8th so we could head north to the Arctic Circle.  It was a wet rainy morning.  So rainy that when we got to the Dalton Highway Junction, we didn't stop for the usual picture of the sign - hopefully it would be better on the way back down so we could stop.

Instead, we stopped at the Colorado Creek Trailhead for a few minutes.  The Milepost states that there are lots of mosquitoes here.  

(someone needs to clean that story board)

I took pictures of all the story boards at our first stop so we could read them later - the Milepost was correct, way too many skeeters out for blood this morning to stand outside the truck and read them now.

This is our view through the front windshield for many miles.

rain rain rain...

followed by construction

The road had washed out earlier this spring from the rain - not sure if it was in this area or not.

We finally reached the Yukon River and drove across the only bridge spanning the Yukon River in Alaska.  That may change in the future though as there is talk of building a road from Manley Hot Springs to the village of Tanana (I guess only time will tell if that is actually done or not).

The river was running very high.  From what we've read since the day we crossed, the normal depth of water under the bridge is 39' but on this day it was 42'.

We stopped for a few minutes at the visitor area then drove on.  We would stop back by here on the return trip south to pick up "I Crossed the Arctic Circle" certificates for Suzy and Morris.

As we drove along, we were in awe of how purple the hills were from the fireweed.  It was everywhere.

But it was still rainy and the clouds were low on some of the hills.

We stopped at Finger Hill area to see if we could find the geocache that I had found a couple of years ago.  It had been replaced and was no longer in the orange bucket but we didn't have any luck finding it.

It was very wet there and was still raining.

We drove on up to the Arctic Circle and for the first time ever,we were the only ones there.

Suzy put her do-rag on to get a picture of it at the Arctic Circle.

I decided John and I needed a new picture at the Arctic Circle too since it had been a couple of years.

Suzy and Morris did a little geocaching and found the bag that Morris is holding below:

Sadly, there is a note in "The Real Arctic Circle" geocache that says it is not a plastic bag - so apparently a lot of people are finding the wrong thing.

The Arctic Circle is just under 200 miles from Fairbanks.  It was early so John decided we would drive on up to Grayling Lake which is where the outfitter took off to fly him to the Brooks Range for sheep hunting last year.

We parked here and ate lunch.  It was still raining.   After lunch, we went back to the wayside area for the lake and made a pit stop.

There were a couple of story boards there so I took more pictures.  You can see in the picture above that water is dripping off the bottom of the board.

More fireweed on the way back down.

Connection Rock is near where the people building the pipeline from the south connected to the pipeline coming from the north.

When we got back to the Arctic Circle, we had to stop again.  For the school, Suzy had done a little thing called "Where Will your Red Solo Cup Take you this Summer".  So, we had to get a picture with our red solo cups.  We had bought lots of ice and soda to enjoy on our trip up the haul road but it was cool and so wet that none of us were extremely thirsty.

The Beaver Slide is best known from the tv show Ice Road Truckers.  Everytime we drive the road, I'm just grateful  that I'm not having to do this on a snow packed icy road.

We stopped again at Finger Hill to see if we could find the geocache.  Still no luck.  Maybe we needed abenanna to help us look.

It is still hard for me to believe that Finger Rock is as tall as it is.  Too wet to hike over there this time around though.

As we left Finger Hill (yep, I vary between calling it Finger Hill and Finger Rock because there are two names on various things in that area - not sure why but I digress),  John and Morris started talking about white fireweed.  Now, I had heard that white fireweed existed and that it could be found in a few places but I had never seen it myself.  They said there was some back where we'd stopped.

Instead of making them turn around, they found some for me and stopped so I could walk down the hill to get a picture.  The first group of flowers I came to had some of the light pink in but no white.

When I got to the white ones, I found that they were quite a bit smaller than the pink colored ones.

But they were definitely white.

A little later we had to stop and take more pictures of the purple hills since they were just so amazing.  I don't know if they would have been more dramatic with the sun out or not but today was a cloudy day so we will be happy with the view we got.

My favorite time of year on the haul road has been fall in the past but with all this fireweed, I'm thinking we need to drive it next August to see if I've changed my mind.

All of the dead trees were from a fire in 1991.  With the permafrost in so many areas, it may take ions for the trees to return.

Back at the Yukon River, we stopped to look around a bit.

We walked the short trail down to the view point adjacent to the river and stopped for a few pictures.  The story board above explains how they laid the foundation for the bridge.

John and I discussed how high the water was and how much debris was in it.  It would not really be a good day to have a 17' boat out on the Yukon.

The above picture shows the pipe line connecting at the bridge to carry the oil across the Yukon River.

Suzy and Morris got their certificates plus an extra one for the Red Solo Cup and we headed further south.  Over the next 15 miles, we passed something like 6 of these huge tanker trucks carrying fuel up the haul road.  While all of the oil comes from the far north, there is no refinery there so instead what happens is that the oil flows through the pipeline to Valdez where it is shipped to Washington - refined into fuel which is shipped to Anchorage and then trucked up to Deadhorse.  Totally ridiculous.

We stopped to take some pictures and Morris checked out the equipment parked there.

Finally we arrived back at the Dalton Highway Junction and since it wasn't raining, we took some pictures.

Notice how much taller this sign is than it was last July when we drove the haul road with the Granddaughters:

I wonder if the sign was stolen and they thought if they moved it higher it would be safer or just what the reasoning is behind raising the sign so high.

We drove on down the Elliott Highway towards Fairbanks but I was insistent that we stop at Joy, AK to check out what they had.  We had stopped there last year and bought some t-shirts but I couldn't remember what else they had inside.

At first, John thought it was closed which wouldn't be surprising as we've tried to stop there a number of times in the past and all but one time they were closed.  The door was open so we went in.  There was a young "lady" at the front counter but she was watching movies on a computer or looking at pictures or whatever.  There was a 3-4 year old girl that followed us around and tried to show us things.

Not one time did the lady at the counter even acknowledge our presence.  We were probably in the store 15 minutes with the little girl following us here and there.  She even followed us when we walked outside.  Needless to say, we didn't buy anything and it will be the last time I stop there as it was just way too weird.

We drove on home with it raining off and on.  Arrived at home and heated up the "Pimalada" sauce that I had made the night before.  The rest of the world calls it "Frito Pie" or something but since they always served this at the Pima Halloween Carnivals, to us it is "Pimaladas".  Basically you take some tomato sauce and el pato sauce and mix it into browned hamburger.  Then you serve it over Frito's and top off with cheese, onions, cilantro, avocado, lettuce and anything else you think might taste good.

We then worked on a few things such as going over pictures and figuring out the things that we needed to do on Monday, July 9th - then off to bed as we were all very tired.