City Life & The Dalton Highway Express
// June 28th, 2009 // 2009: Adventuring
On Wednesday, Cory and I finished our work day and were eager to venture into the big city of Fairbanks. Weather prevented us from making the 7PM flight so we waited until we could board the more vacant 11PM flight. We arrived in Fairbanks around 12 and chose to stay at the Golden North Inn where we stayed on our first trip into Fairbanks. We ended up having a conversation with the man at the desk who had once lived in Ellsworth, Maine. He reminisced about his times climbing Mt. Katahdin and hiking through Maine. It’s exciting and interesting meeting fellow Mainers up here.
We initially wanted to stay at the Go North Hostel to save money but we figured that their office would be closed at such an hour. Golden North was just as we remembered except $20 more expensive. We settled down in our $110 room and then made a hike to Safeway (open 24 hours!) to buy microwaveable food. After eating gourmet every night, it was a little bit of an awakening to eat microwaveable pizza and chicken nuggets but for how hungry we were and at such an hour, I think we did okay.
The next day, we bought food, pool cues and a whiffle bat at Fred Meyer. Occasionally, we have “sports night” here at Coldfoot where everyone gets together and plays kickball, basketball, and soon whiffle ball! And we do have a pool table here, a rather dilapidated one but it does the trick. We hoped to catch the 7PM flight back to Coldfoot but we didn’t have very high expectations. We stayed most of the day hanging out at Go North Hostel where we surfed the web (blazing speeds compared to Coldfoot!) and socialized with other hostel guests.
Go North Hostel
Later on, we walked a mile and a half to the airport to find out that there wasn’t room for us to fly back. Instead, they offered us a trip back via van the next morning. We walked back to Go North and reserved our two beds for the night. We rose at 5:30AM to begin our walk back to the airport where we would depart on the van. The van, also known as the “Dalton Highway Express,” carried three other passengers one of which was also going to Coldfoot. The other two were researchers, one, a University of Alaska at Fairbanks graduate student going to Toolik to research the ecosystem and the other, a very friendly older woman going to Galbraith Lake to study birds. We embarked on our first ground trip up the Dalton, what we thought would be a 5 hour journey.
Pond by Mountains
Patches in the hills where the pipeline goes underground
Sixty or seventy miles in, we stopped at Yukon River Camp, another camp owned by our employer. I had the chance to work there but opted not. There are some advantages like the closeness to Fairbanks and the great fishing on the river. As you can see from the looks of the Yukon, Coldfoot seems to be cleaner and the surroundings are more breathtaking. We helped our driver offload some supplies and set on to our final destination, mile marker 175, home sweet home.
Yukon River Camp
Yukon River Camp: Dining Area
We pulled into Coldfoot after 7 hours of driving! In that time, I could have almost made it from Maine to New York City! We averaged around 35-40 MPH. The whole time, our driver kept in communication with the truckers on CB radio, an essential for driving the Dalton. It was a long trip but I’m glad that I experienced driving the Dalton or at least half of it.
I intended to post this yesterday but due to the weather here, the internet has been down. It has rained for quite some time now. The weather when we first arrived was much nicer and sunnier. The bright side of constant rain is the lack of mosquitoes. However, a few sunny days would be nice. It’s hard to believe we only have 3 days off until our day off again. Time is really flying by here. Soon enough, we will be celebrating 4th of July up at Wiseman. The word on the street is that they will have live music! Maybe fireworks too but I doubt it. Never know though!
