We are in the land of the midnight sun. The sun does not set this time of year. It was weird to get up in the middle of the night and look outside where there was bright sunlight. The sun is still 3 degrees above the horizon at midnight in this lattitude (70 North)

Our activity this morning was a tour of Prudhoe Bay. This is an enormous oil field. You don't see any drilling activity in the area, it is all production. They produce 500,000 barrels per day which heads down the pipeline to Valdez. Peak production from this filed was 2 million barrels per day. There is quite a bit of exploration and drillling on the north slope, just not in the Prudhoe Bay area. There is an enormous gas find about 30 miles east which will peobably not see production in our lifetime. The Greenies will see to that. One surprising thing was that there was quite a bit of wildlife to be seen out there. We saw all manner of ducks as well as a red fox living amongst the production equipment.

Our guide took us out onto the ice of Prudhoe Bay so that anybody who wanted to could dip their tootsies into the Arctic Ocean. Ginny, of course, availed herself of the opportunity to do that. I decided that warm and dry feet was more of a priority that a photo opportunity would be.

After our tour we headed back to the camp and had a nice lunch. The weather was unbelievably nice. Blue sky, mild temperatures and no wind. The locals were amazed at the conditions. During this whole month in Alaska we have been blessed with very nice weather.All our reading prior to the trip indicated that we should expect rain and drizzle as a constnt companion, but we hit it lucky and had very few rainy days.

After lunch we headed to the airport for a flight back to Fairbanks. We saw several 737 type airplanes arrive and depart. It is an airport capable of handling big airplanes for the oil companies and contractors. Our plane was a Dash 8 (de Havilland) which is a 38 passenger twin. The flight back was smooth and the weather was fine. I relaxed with a bottle of beer and enjoyed looking out the window for the 1 1/2 hour flight.

Back at our hotel we started getting our stuff together for the flight back to Houston. The issue is making sure our luggage comes in under 50 pounds. I ended up hauling back all the booty because I pack very lightly to begin with. This trip is similar to the Iceland trip we are heading out on in two weeks. I am going to pack even lighter because I had a number of items that just went along for the ride.