I'm gonna be honest: at the end of two weeks of quarantine, I was sad it was over and could easily have done two more weeks. But okay, okay, I know: the thing I was in quarantine for to start with and then needed to leave to actually go do is very awesome, so just roll your eyes at my wish for more quarantine.
Regardless, as planned, on Tuesday morning my solitude was done and I got a ride to the Toolik Field Station garage at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and we packed up this beast for the drive north:
Two others (a fellow contractor going to work on station maintenance and a research scientist conducting a study on Arctic ground squirrels) and I then hit the road out of Fairbanks toward the...
Lucky duck and spoiled traveler that I am, I have been on this road once before, southbound from Prudhoe Bay/Dead Horse to Fairbanks with my mom as tourists in 2010. But it was still a joy (the 9-hour drive from UA-Fairbanks to Toolik went incredibly quickly) to see it again going in the opposite direction, over the Yukon...
...through sweeping, snowy landscapes...
...stopping for pit-stops only in COVID-safe spots like outhouse toilets (though really, if there's going to be snow IN the bathroom, I'd much rather just pee al fresco!)...
...into the Arctic Circle...
...into even more striking landscapes...
...past the remote outpost of Coldfoot...
...and into the gorgeousness of the Brooks Range!
Once we went over Atigun Pass (only about 5,000 ft of elevation, but at this latitude it makes for a very intense landscape!)
For the whole journey (of course, since it is the reason the Dalton Highway even exists), the Alaskan oil pipeline kept us company, sometimes ducking under the road and popping up again on the other side, but always there somewhere.
After Atigun Pass we were technically heading down "the slope"--the gradual drop from the pass all the way (eventually...like 6 hours later, and we weren't going that far) down to the Arctic Ocean.
But we stopped a couple hours north of the pass when we pulled off the highway at Lake Toolik and arrived at Toolik Field Station, my home for the next 2+ months. More on that in the next post....
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