Trip to the End of the World

I'm not sure what else I was going to put on here (I must have not been done, since I didn't publish it!), but I will just post it like it is...

The caribou hunting trip also included a day of going north as far as the road takes you, which is Deadhorse. We really wanted to see the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay but found out you have to make reservations and turn in your passports (for background checks, since you have to go across the oil fields) 24 hours in advance, and it also costs $40 per person. Needless to say, we didn't get to go :( We were only on a day trip, and most of the time it was also pouring down rain. You will see in some of the following pictures what a good portion of the road conditions were like, and we had taken the RV's with us (instead of leaving them parked somewhere like we should have), and they got pretty beat up on the trip up there -- we literally had cabinet doors hanging from broken hinges because of all the bouncing on rough roads!

This trip was a total of 1900 miles from start to finish....

The pipeline follows the road for much of the way - miles and miles of both :)


Pump Station #2. I believe there are 6 of these along the way..


Playing in the Yukon River










Tori scraping the mud off so we don't get so much in the truck when we climb back in -- and this was near the beginning of the trip!

The mud on the vehicles got really bad by the end of the trip -- between the 2 RV's, we spent over $40 at the car wash in Fairbanks on the way back -- but I forgot to take a picture first! :( Even afterward, they weren't totally clean!


The Arctic Circle



Coldfoot is about the only place to get fuel on this long stretch of highway from 'nowhere' to Deadhorse. It's located off the main highway (only got a pic of the old Coldfoot Camp on one side of the road, but none of the Post Office and restaurant/store/gas station on the other side).



On the other side of the highway is a nice information center with very helpful and informative staff.



This used to be the farthest north spruce tree, but some vandals killed it...

...However, there is another one about 10 feet further north, so they need to move the sign :) But, yep - that's the end of the line for the trees.... A little hard to imagine when you live where we do, surrounded by the giants!


Deadhorse is a 'portable' town -- it was built so that when the end of the oil is shipped through the pipeline, everything along the road -- buildings, pipeline, pump stations, etc. -- will be removed.





A couple of sunset shots...