June 25 - Trip to Barrow - Part 3

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 74 Location: Barrow, AK

Fairbanks to Barrow
North of Fairbanks the land is just WET. There are tons of lakes and streams for a bit then they just stop and the landscape returns to the hill and mountains and the sharply graded streams. As the sun is right of the wing now on my side of the plane, it causes the hidden streams and lakes to suddenly appear glinting and bright and then they disappear again as it passes.

We have passed one of the many forest fires burning here in Alaska. They cannot fight the fires due to the sheer inaccessibility of the fires, the manpower required and that there are few if any houses or people threatened by them. So they just let them burn mostly. It is beginning to get cloudier again, especially to the west and north – toward the coasts.
Finally, we began our descent into Barrow and it is still cloudy. Couldn’t see any tundra until just before the end. Weird stuff, tundra. All puddles and rivulets. Still some patches of ice in places, mostly on the small lakes. The ground has a strange turtle-shell appearance to it. Lots of water and no place to go – too flat to flow, too frozen to absorb.

You don’t see Barrow until just before you land. It’s all brown and gray – dirt and wood. The buildings are all wooden framed and on stilts above the permafrost. There is no grass in town and certainly no trees.

Barrow – NARL Hotel #12 – 10:36 pm ADT
We had to wait a bit for our luggage. For how few people there were on the plane and the lack of other flights, I was surprised. The temperature is quite moderate. I didn’t even need my coat, just my sweater. Finally, Kim and Jenny showed up to take Kirstin, who was coming back from Ivotuk on my same flight, and me to NARL. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed and tired. More about NARL later.
ON the way to NARL, some Inupiaq men were butchering a walrus on the beach. The tusks were huge, probably about 18-20 inches. We were too nervous to go look up close, but could see enough from where we were.
After a short tour and making a plan for the next day, I returned to my room. It is hard to feel sleepy when it is not dark, yet. I finally realized I was waiting for it to do so . . . oh yeah, it’s not.  Tomorrow, my first whole day in barrow and the Inupiaq whale festival, Nalukataq.