Utqiagvik (Barrow), AK

Wednesday, July 16th - Barrow Here We Come!

We slept in and then broke camp. Jess headed out to do the Coastal Bike Trail with the E-Bike and off to stay over with Kit. We headed off to the Aiport and onto Barrow. We saw another beautiful view of Denali as we flew over the park. We landed at Barrow, got a ride to the hotel and Mike did the polar plunge with Johnathon and his son Ethan from Illinois! It was fantastic and the water temp was 29.2 degrees.

We ended the day with a meal at the hotel

Thursday, July 17th - Town Tour, Farthest North Point in the US, Polar Bear footprint and Whale Graveyard

We began the morning by taking a walking tour of the town. In 2004, there were about 2000 people, but there are now about 7000 people. They expanded to a new block, called Block A. We stuck to old town Barrow, which is pretty much the same as it was 21 years ago. There is definitely more gentrification than there ever was and the saddest thing was that there was a lot of grass and flowers. This made me so sad as there was nothing living there 21 years ago - climate change is real.

We saw the local attractions including the Will Roger’s memorial, the Alaska Company Store (Mini Walmart started in 1897), the historical village, the fur shop, the cemetery and other buildings.

At 1:00 we boarded the Point Barrow tour bus. It was a souped up Excursion which had 6 doors and fit 12 people. We headed past Point Barrow (farthest point north). It used to be a Naval Base and now there is just an antenna. Our tour guide Ben had been out in the morning seal hunting and saw a 10’ Polar Bear at the end of the spit (called Plover). That is how we knew where the polar bear foot print was. After Point Barrow to Plover it was the whale graveyard. The Inupiq people were allocated 25 Bone Whale permits. The museum administer is the wife of a Captain and she told me they got 7 whales and missed 7 whales which left them 11 for the fall. The Inpuiag people then harvest the whale and put the carcass back in the ocean. These carcasses are then stripped of the remaining meat and blubber and wash up on the spit. We were not allowed to take pictures per Ben. When we stopped at the end we also found a Bayleen(the teeth that are like filters for the Bow Whales) but we could not take a piece with us, but it was really cool).

Polar Bear Footprint - Our tour guide “Ben” saw this Polar Bear as he was seal hunting. He was skinning a Ring Seal and asked his cousin if they should go after the bear, but he said “no” we need to finish our seal. Ben said he was at least 10’ long - a big guy!

Point Barrow (farthest northern point in the US is the pole on the left. Ben’s Uncle was seal hunting as we were out on the spit.

After our return we walked to the airport to pick up our plane. We found a a few cool photo ops (below) nd Johnathon had found a Walrus that had died and washed up on shore. The tusks were gone, but the walrus was there. I took a picture off of his phone and it was massive.

One last shot of Denali before we head south.

We headed back to Anchorage, picked up the camper and headed to grab the jeep from Jessie as she was at a BBQ. We got the jeep and boon docked about 1 1/2 hours out of Anchorage.

Friday, July 18th - Drive, Drive, and Drive some more.

We got up and continued to drive for 500 miles. A normal drive this would take about 7 hours, but it took us 13 hours as the AlCan was a mess. We drove the same road a month ago, but it had deteriorated terribly. We came very close to several wild fires which was pretty scary. We made it to Destruction Bay and stayed in a hotel/gas station parking lot.

We were glad to get to Destruction Bay and boondocks in a parking lot :)