June 25 - Trip to Barrow - Part 2

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

Anchorage – 2 pm
My flight to Barrow via Fairbanks doesn’t leave for two hours. Some Harry Potter DVD may be in order soon. Smile

When we came up to Anchorage, the mountain cover changed. Instead of snow-covered and glaciers, they became more brown and clear of snow. I wondered why. It is warmer near Anchorage some how? (It is warm here today, about 75 F) Is it drier (like a rain shadow) so there is less precipitation? Was there an undetectable (from the air) elevation change? Interesting.
The airport in Anchorage is having construction, so we got off the plane on a rickety stairway. I did see both of my bags unloaded, though, so I know that they, like me, made it THIS far. Smile

Anchorage – 3:20 pm
Well, I have run down all the batteries on my computer and on my phone, now. So I am back to nothing to do. Hmmm, bored munchies sink in.

Anchorage – 4:10 pm
The flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks is delayed. The airplane that we are using just got in about 10 minutes ago, so we are not leaving until approximately 4:50. Flight to Fairbanks is supposed to be an hour and then about 1 ½ hours to Barrow. Will be close to 8 pm ADT by the time we get to Barrow – a full 12 hours of travel plus.

Anchorage to Fairbanks
We have just left Anchorage and the plane is very different. It is a 727, but the front part is blocked off with cargo area. We boarded on stairs from the back of the plane and there are only about 12 rows. The front of the first row faces a blocked off wall.
We have passed Mt. McKinley (Denali). It is incredible!

The rivers beneath us are very squiggly. There are lots of twists and turns and old oxbow lakes that are now dried up and just green treeless areas.

It is 82 F in Fairbanks. Wow! It was only about 60 F when I left Seattle.
As we flew from Anchorage to Fairbanks, I noticed a change in the landscape. It was very flat and coastal floodplain like landscapes near Anchorage, then the incredibly high Denali range. Then as we crossed the mountains it became less steep and not as tall. The hills and mountains looked more like metamorphosed sedimentary rocks. I could see some bands of red rock and various other colors. It made me wonder about the geology of Alaska. I know that there are volcanoes in the Aleutians and extinct volcanoes on the coast near Sitka and Juneau. But Fairbanks is again on a plain. I don’t know the elevation, but it is relatively flat near here, just some rolling hills. They seem older, either the hills are formed by folding or they are very eroded.
The rivers near Fairbanks indicate that a lot of erosion may be occurring in this area. Even this “late” into summer, the large river near Fairbanks is full in its banks and full of mud and silt. Just completely light brown in color and opaque. Plus throughout the area around the river, there are lots of former river courses that can be seen from the air. Either the rivers that made them changed course or they filled in with silt or some combination of both. Their twisty remains can be seen snaking all over the floodplain, like little worm tracings in a piece of wood.
The trees around Fairbanks indicate that it snows very heavily here. All the evergreens are tall, but skinny. They have short branches making them look chopped off. Instead of the branches getting gradually longer as they go down the tree, and looking like Christmas trees, they look stretched out and tall. I have seen trees like this in the passes of Washington. Long branches would hold not be strong enough to hold all of the snow that would build up on them, so the trees grow with shorter, broken off branches.
When we landed in Fairbanks, they did not let the Barrow passengers off. We were only on the ground for about 25 minutes. Now that we will soon be beginning the final leg of my journey to Barrow, it seems like I going to finally be starting!