Arctic Circle

One of the things on our bucket list was to “stand” on the imaginary Arctic Circle. Well it happened this past weekend. My original thought was that I would really like to bike to the circle but let’s be honest biking in Alaska while the break up is going on is pretty wet , muddy and cold ordeal especially on the road which is littered by crazy truck drivers. After all, I also did not have the time to do it by bike so I chose to go by car.

I believe, the only drive able route to Arctic Circle in Alaska is via the Haul road or officially Dalton Highway. It’s about 550 miles from Anchorage and about 200 miles north of Fairbanks. Our plan was to leave Friday right after work and just drive as far as we could that day and see what happens.

Well the first hole in our plan was that we did not leave Anchorage until 8pm on Friday, which caused that by Denali National Park I was ready for bed (my usual sleeping time is 10 pm-I know, I know very boring). I was so tired that we just stopped and slept in the car until 6 am on Saturday. J (the second J out of JJ) woke me up screaming that there is an animal digging a hole next to our car. I just brushed that announcement of by something between the lines as “let the animal dig” while trying to catch couple more minutes of sleep and thinking it’s probably a small tree moving in the wind or something of that nature. Well J was very determined to wake me up and take her seriously so I peeked out of my sleeping back and there it was about five feet from the car, fox digging a hole!

Off we go to Fairbanks, surprising a herd of caribous crossing the highway. Here is the hole number 2 in our plan, there is no gas service or any kind of service past town named Fox, which is about 10 miles out of Fairbanks. So we had to go buy two 5 gallons canisters for extra gas to make it back from the circle. Once we reached the Dalton highway (about 85 miles out of Fairbanks) that is where the adventures start. 

Haul road is heavily used by truckers to haul crap to Prudhoe Bay oil fields and these guys just don’t give a single shit about your little Subaru. They haul ass on the mostly dirt road up and down the hills like nobody business and it’s up to you to not get mowed over.

The drive itself is very entertaining as you are crossing several mountain ridges and going from the forest to tundra, while following the pipeline. The Arctic Circle crosses Haul road 115 miles in. There is a sign and little deck to take the views in, Ohh and also two outhouses! Who does not want to take a dump above Arctic Circle!

We traveled with 2 dogs so we took quite a bit of stops to throw some ball with them, which I really liked. It made the trip very chill and less exhausting than if we would be driving without any breaks. The temperature differences were noticeable as we went from 50 degrees in Anchorage to 20 degrees on the ridge tops on Dalton highway. The actual temperature at the circle was 32 degrees and sunny. It was helluva weekend in my books.