Amanda's report
Amanda wrote this report of our trip north and back to Fairbanks. She captures the mood nicely.
"We are now back in Fairbanks after going right to the tippy top of Alaska! It was a 4 day round trip from here to there. We had heard all these horror stories about how hard the road was, so we had made some preparations, including checking on the air in the spare and wrapping and packing everything in the back of the camper with extra care. Then when we arrived in Fairbanks before heading up, we saw a sign in our RV park (what they call caravan parks here) saying that the Dalton Highway was going to be closed the next day - the very day we needed it to be open! We double checked and sure enough, it was closed 7am to 7pm about 100 miles up from where we were. So we had a lazy morning in fairbanks, went to a musem and cooked scrambled eggs for breakfast and headed up to get to the blockage at around 4, with the hope that they might open early.... They didn't, but we ended up chatting with some people from the other 20 or so cars and trucks waiting there, and typically, the party ended up being right outside our truck. It's possible that this happened simply because we were about middle in the line, but i feel like it was more to do with Mum's amazing ability to talk to everyone. While we were waiting I also picked a whole heap of blueberries which were growing by the side of the road and we had blueberry pancakes the next morning! That night we camped on the artic circle and got in at around 10 at night! crazy.... ever crazier was that it was still light. On the way up, at different points we saw caribou, Musk-ox, Dall sheep and lots of artic ground squirrills - no moose though. and when we went over the pass which is the highest point on the road I ran over and made a couple of snowballs from some snow that hadn't melted yet (this in summer!). We also found some really cool rock formations which I liked (obviously), and got a flat tyre. shame really, cos the roads were really not bad at all! everyone was kicking up such a fuss but it was a much better road than everything we've faced that's dirt in Australia.
Once we got to the top, we stayed in a hotel/camp thing - it sas like a camp where the workers stayed but for tourists, but pretty basic facilities. Still, it was warm and dry and as outside was wet and probably the coldest night to date, we didn;t mind too much. It was crazy arriving up there though cos about 30 miles from the coast was this wall of fog that we drove into, so you drive out of a beautiful blue day into the sea fog drifting over the land. It means the whole time we were up there you couldn't really see much, but I don't know whether there was much to see so that's ok I guess.the next morning we did a tour - as the land up there is all owned by different oil companies, you can't actually get through to the sea without getting a tour. It was cool though, the tour guide/security officer told us a bit about everything and we saw heaps of different birds around the place which he told us about. Then we were at the Arctic Ocean, we all touched the water, Dad and I went for a paddle (but not mum - too cold) and some crazy people from our bus actually went swimming! I was wearing too jumpers so that didn't sound like fun to me. We saw some grizzly footprints on the beach, and on our way back in the bus we saw a grizzly and her cub! she crossed right in front of us on the road, got some great photos!
Anyway, then we left and came back down to here again! It was kinda rainy and cloudy the whole way.You should see how dirty the car got! thick mud too. We gave a cyclist a lift today, cos it was rainy and hilly. It meant I had to sit in the back but I didn't mind at all - in fact I wish he'd wanted to go further cos I got super comfy and was just getting ready for a nap!
That's all for now. Heading to Denali National Park tomorrow for a couple of days - North America's tallest mountain is there but apparently like cradle mountain is very hard to see cos of the weather. Maybe we'll get lucky! It's also supposed to have a massively high number of wild animals in the park with a strong possibility of seeing them so that's cool. Then after Denali, going down to Anchorage, then to Seward, Homer south of Anchorage"
