NORTH TO ALASKA!

It's finally here! We have had our first day in Alaska. First we had to do this...
Then we did this...three times! Ontario to Seattle, Seattle to Anchorage, and Anchorage to Fairbanks. Our sense of time got thrown off by how light it was...we ended up having dinner at 11:00 p.m. ! It looked like maybe 5 or 6 p.m. At 12:45 A.M., this is what the sky looked like: Official sunset was 12:48, sunrise was 2:39, It never got comletely dark, just lilke twilight. Tomorrow when we go to Barrow, it will be light all 24 hours of the day since it is the summer solstice. This morning we got up and had an expensive breakfast at Denny's -- food is not cheap in Alaska! Then we went to Wal-Mart and picked up a couple things we forgot. After that, we coated ourselves with mosquito repellant and drove to the Large Animal Research Center. There we saw musk oxen and some caribou...We learned that caribou and reindeer are pretty much the same animal -- reindeer is a domesticated caribou. So, what separates the two is just a fence. Caribou in the wild, reindeer in captivity. In the photo below, Mike is holding one caribou antler -- it was HEAVY! From there we went to Creamer's Field, which is a refuge for migratory waterfowl. We saw lots of crane, and other birds. We took a hike through the boreal (0r northern) forest, in hopes of seeing a moose. The forest was beautiful, we saw lots of fern and wildflowers -- but no moose. Darn. Here is a picture of Mike and I in the forest: From there we drove to see part of the TransAlaska Pipeline -- which carries millions of gallons of crude oil from Prudhoe Bay in north Alaska to the port city of Valdez. It takes the oil 9 days to get from one end of the state to the other. It is elevated along part of the route (like it is here) so it doesn't melt the permafrost which lies under the soil. Tomorrow we are off to the Arctic! Barrow is the northernmost town on the North American continent . Hope we have better luck spotting some polar bears than we did with the moose! Oh, GREAT weather today. Scattered clouds, and 80 degrees! It's 10:20 P.M. and looks like 4:00 in the afternoon. So strange! We're going out to the patio to enjoy the midnight sun. Goodnight!