Anyway, we got there, and our B&B was GORGEOUS! It's a long yellow and blue train, with little porches between each of the cars, and a dining room in (of course) the dining car. There were flowers and colors everywhere. There was even a separate 2-car red train (a float left from a Pioneers' Day Parade), all decked out in tinsel and "diamonds". The B&B also sports a friendly yellow dog named Daisy, who promptly made friends with Natan.

Much better to go the way we were going -- by air with a tiny 8-passenger Navaho plane. and Natan got to sit in the co-pilot's seat! He had on the co-pilot's head set, and was in constant communications with the pilot.

We saw the pipeline from the air. It wiggles gently a lot, in order for there to be give, since the ground is constantly moving because of the effects of weather conditions and the permafrost layer. Also, anything you put on the permafrost causes it to melt some, so the pipeline has to be aboveground, on pylons that are built to float on the permafrost, and are full of a liquid substance that turns to gas as temperatures rise above 25 degrees F, so they act like refrigerators to cool down the local permafrost. We passed over Wickersham Dome, the Yukon river, the Arctic Circle, and landed in Coldfoot, where we refueled and picked up lunch. We took a picture of the lonely post office. Then we flew over the Brooks Range of mountains through the Anaktwuk Pass.

Unfortunately, north of the pass was solid cloud, so we didn't really see too much of the tundra. It is much drier here. "Anaktwuk" means land of many Caribou droppings, showing that it is rich in caribou. Annual precipitation in the coastal plain near Barrow is only 5 inches per year, but permafrost seals the ground, so water remains on the surface, creating a vast, rich shallow wetlands where insects (and the migratory birds that eat them) thrive.

Barrow is 1,200 miles from the North Pole. We went to a welcome sign, which was a road sign commemorating where Will Rogers died in a small plane crash, and showing mileage to many places. We also went to the Inupiaq cultural Center where we saw a couple of welcoming dances, toured their museum showing their life-styles and their whaling expeditions, and visited their arts and crafts center, where they made objects out of baleen, walrus tusks, caribou bones, polar bear teeth, walrus whiskers, and various furs. Natan wanted to buy a pair of walrus whisker and ivory earrings for Mia, but I thought they were a bit too pricey ($25) so we passed them up.

We then drove to Pepe's, the most Northern Mexican restaurant in the world, and drove out to Road's End (still 1.2 miles from the actual point Barrow). On one side of the point (the westward side) is the Chukchi Sea, which is part of the Arctic Ocean, and on the east side of the point is the Berring Sea.

Ryan had also taken us to see the only three trees in the Arctic -- PALM trees! They were made up of driftwood trunks and baleen leaves.

One of our party of 7 brought his swim suit and went to completely submerge himself in the Arctic Ocean, in order to become a member of the Point Barrow Polar Club. We watched him do it, and Natan got his hands wet in the Arctic Ocean. That water was ICY! It is below 32 degrees F. We then raced to get back on the plane in time, and Natan left his baleen on the bus. Luckily, Craig, our pilot, was able to reach Ryan and get him to bring the baleen in time to the plane.

Flying back was pretty quiet. You remember how I said that it was like a cold desert? Well, it is like a cold WET desert. There are sand drifts and dunes, but the place is covered with tiny lakes, because the little precipitation that falls cannot leak through the permafrost layer, so it remains on top of the land. Sometimes the lakes consist of a necklace of little round ponds connected by a single silvery stream.

Flying back, you could also see more of the ice-wedge polygons that we saw flying to Barrow. These form when the ground freezes, contracts, and cracks; the cracks fill with snow or water, re-freeze, crack further, and eventually forms thick wedges of ice that push the soil into geometric ridges.

Flying back over the Brooks Range, the peaks were all breaking above the cloud layer. This morning when we set out for Barrow the peaks were all covered with cloud.