3rd Alaskan Stop - Prudhoe Bay

Well, we made a major decision on Friday to make a trip north to Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean.  Not by truck and RV, but on a tour.   I am going to just talk about the trip first and then post the pictures afterwards.

We traveled by plane (10 passenger twin engine Piper) with 3 other couples who were taking the same tour.  We left Fairbanks at 7:30 AM on Monday morning, flew to Deadhorse (not really a town because you can’t find it on MapQuest), where we would stay overnight.  Deadhorse is really just a staging area for all of the Oil Companies and contractors that are working at/around Prudhoe Bay which is about 8 miles north.  This is where the Alaskan pipeline starts and runs all the way to Valdez, about 800 miles southwest.  There are oil operations all across the area.  The oil is under pressure below the surface so there is no need for the pumps that you might see in TX or elsewhere.  They do have 4 pump stations between Prudhoe Bay and the Brooks Mountains to help pump it over the mountains, and, then there are 8 more on the south side that first slow the oil as it comes down from the mountains and then again to push it towards Valdez. 
This place is the busiest in the winter when the water and ground is totally frozen so that they can drive their equipment around.  There would be no rooms available then.

The weather here was COLD and WINDY, which is normal here.  The temp was about 35 F when we got off the plane with the wind blowing at about 30 miles per hour making the wind chill temp about 5 – 10 degrees.

Between May 10^th and August 2^nd the sun never sets and between November 18^th and January 23^rd the sun never rises.

Here are some pictures - I could not decide which ones to put in so you are getting most of them - sorry!  The first pictures from the plane were smokey due to the fire that was northwest of Fairbanks.  It had been burning for several days and they still had not contained it.

Here we are approaching the Brooks Mountain Range.  The pilot took the liberty to make several turns in the mountains to let us see the glaciers.

After we landed, we took a van to our hotel.  It was very dark and windy:

Our accommodations the first night were quite basic as you can see:

In case you were thinking that our rooms would be in the building on the right, you would be wrong!  Here they are:

Ours is on the left:

 The door is like a meat locker door.

Whenever you went into that building, you took your shoes off because of the mud, etc. and walked in stocking feet to the bathrooms or the lunch room.

The first day we had lunch in the dining room (kitchen is in the background):

The couple on the left were from Connecticut and those on the right were fromm Australia.

This couple was from Georgia:

We were filling out order forms for the breakfast the next morning and then ordered a bag lunch since we would be on the road on Tuesday.  The evening meal was buffet.  Total cost for the 8 meals:  $108 which we paid for in advance.

Later that day we took a bus to the Arctic Ocean so those who wanted to put their foot in the water could do it.  You cannot drive up there on your own – we had to check in with Security in Deadhorse and they drove us up there in one of their buses.  Unfortunately the ocean was still frozen but that didn’t stop some from taking their shoes and socks off and standing in the snow/ice! 

Judy was the brave one as you can see.  I opted NOT to do it (not on my bucket list!!).
You can see that we walked quite a distance from the bus and the wind was fierce to say the least!

We had heavy coats, gloves, mittens, stocking caps, etc and it was still cold!!

There was an abundance of heavy equipment sitting around:

We had planned to get up for the midnight sun, but it was cloudy so we didn't get to see it.

Day 2 later...