The Artic Circle

Thursday August 9th 2012

It was catch up time again. Steve and Sandy were in Fairbanks it was about 600 miles from Homer.  We spent one night in the parking lot of Fred Meyers store in Soldotna, the next night about 80 miles south of Denali Park and we woke up to sunshine and the most amazing view of the mountain, Fairbanks was a mere 231 miles for there.  The next day we all drove in Sandy and Steves car to the Artic Circle which was a thirteen hour trip there and back. I think about 440 miles round trip, most of it on a narrow wash board dirt road. 

   

The Dalton Highway runs north to Prudhoe Bay the beginning of the pipeline, It ends in Valdez.  I,m not sure how long it is and I don’t have internet access tonight to look it up.

  

We stopped for lunch, and after lunch what do you do nap.  The last picture is were we got gas, one pump in front of the white tank.  The old cars were driving all the way to Deadhorse on Prudhoe Bay at least a 2 day trip.  Hope they all make it, and only one way back the same road you went in on. 

  

Crossing the Yukon River, which we have done many times this trip.

 

Everywhere you go there is road construction.

  

The pipeline does not go in a straight because of expansion and contraction.  As you can see from the pictures there was some blacktop on parts of the highway believe me not much.

  

The road is in the back ground of the first picture.  Some points of interest on the road.

  

We did a nice certificate stating that on Aug 9 2012 Sandy and Mike Bubar crossed the Arctic circle in the land of the midnight sun.  Why did we do it, not sure just something that had to be done so we could post it on our blogs and you guys would think we were pretty cool.  How many other people have crossed over to the Artic Circle that you know .Kind of like when I went sky diving and parasailing, and white water rafting in Colorado, hot air ballooning in Spain, Ziplinning in Alaska and all the things I would never admit to, because my kid read this blog.  We like to have fun.

Mike is pointing to the spot were we are.

 

We went 20 miles past the Artic Circle to a place called Gobblers Knob.

Steve's truck after the trip 2 inches of mud on the running boards.  

We have driven 6477 miles since June 4th leaving Washington and if you count from the time we left AZ to drive to Washington it was a total of 8127 miles.  I did not keep track of the mileage for the truck, but pretty sure it has to be about 1000 miles. 

The most we paid for gas was $5.62 a gallon in Prince George BC.  The least was $3.72 in Fairbanks.  What we spent on  gas from AZ to Washington was $1201, from Washington to were we are now and I’m not sure were we are just a turn out off the highway $3992.  I may not know were I’m at right now but I know we are going to Stewart and Hyder to watch the bears eat the salmon out of the river.