We got an early start this morning. Although it is only 241 miles from Coldfoot to Prudhoe Bay, the driving is slow and it takes about 8 hours. The weather was snowy most of the way and the road was pretty rough gravel along many parts. Our first stop was in Wiseman. If you have watched "Life Below Zero" you would have heard of this. It is where Eric Salishan lives. We got a tour of the town (population 12) from a lifelong resident. It was interesting to see how people exist in this part of the world. There were a few modern houses but mostly log cabins of an old vintage. An interesting side note is that they order a lot of stuff from Amazon and get free delivery. That saves them a heck of a lot of money. While we were there it continued to rain lightly. That seemed to add to the atmosphere.

Back in the van we headed up the Dalton highway. This road is the only way to get supplies to Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay. We saw quite a few big trucks passing us on the return haul from the slope. You can imagine that things are expensive in this part of the world. Fuel comes all the way from the Kenai Peninsula by truck.

We really kept on driving from this point on. We had a little stop so that we could eat our sack lunches, but for the most part we kept on trucking. We made a short stop in the Atigun Pass to play in the snow. As you can see from today's photo, Ginny quickly got with the program. We met several bicycle riders who were on their way from Prudhoe Bay south to destinations unknown. They didn't have an appearance of enjoying themselves as they slogged up the hill in the snow.

Once past the mountains, we headed out across the tundra to Deadhorse. I had forgotten to mention that the Alyeska Pipeline runs along the same route. It was constantly in sight except for when it went underground. They built that thing in 3 years. Working in the winter time must have been quite a challenge.

Finally, we rolled into Deadhorse. What you can see is mostly work facilities with tons of machinery sitting around. There are lots of contractors up there providing all manner of services to the oil production companies. We checked into Deadhorse Camp and dropped our stuff in the rooms before heading out to dinner. This was more rustic that Coldfoot. The "facilities" were down the hall. Ginny wasn't too thrilled by that, but it didn't bother me. the whole camp was clean but old. These buildings have probably been there for thirty or forty years. We had a very nice dinner. One thing for sure is the food is good and plentiful.

And so now we are in Prudhoe Bay. That is pretty cool. Another one of those bucket list items.