In total we spent 19 nights above the arctic circle. It sure was super cool. The Alaskan arctic is pretty different than the Canadian arctic, and we are glad we got to see both. We had bumped into several people before we drove the Dalton that said that driving the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay “wasn’t worth the trouble,” and at this point we are just completely confused as to what they were talking about. It was a beautiful area and totally worth driving the rough road to see. Maybe in a lesser vehicle it wouldn’t have been any fun, but the truck handled it great and we were super comfortable. We guess that’s why we have the truck, anyway. We had also heard horror stories about how aggressive some of the freight truck drivers were, but we found them to be very friendly and there were fewer of them on the road than we expected. There were a lot fewer overland people on the Dalton than we expected. We saw quite a few adventure motorcycle riders, but only 2 other expedition rigs. The Dempster Highway had many times more overland people.
We are still continuing to find great camp spots on public land tucked away in the wilderness. We still haven’t found the need to stay in any campgrounds, but there aren’t really any campgrounds up here anyway. The wildlife has been pretty great recently. We were walking along a river bank right near the truck one evening, and looked over into the bushes to catch a glimpse of a large wolf watching us from nearby. It vanished into the undergrowth as soon as we turned toward it, but it was pretty cool. After dinner, we sat in the truck looking outside hoping to see a wolf again, and we spotted a very large grizzly on the opposite side of the river eating berries (we have found and eaten both wild raspberries and wild strawberries ourselves). We ended up listening to an audio book and watching the bear from afar for about an hour.
We also spotted several large herds of musk ox on the tundra north of the Brooks Range. We had previously been able to see to 2 older males, but we were able to view a group of about 30 that were resting on an island on a river. They were super chill and we enjoyed several hours of just sitting and watching them from nearby. It was neat to get to watch them do their thing (sleep, mostly). 🙂
The Brooks Range is a really beautiful place. We especially liked the area that is about 120 miles north of the arctic circle (along the highway) just north of the Atigun pass. It’s definitely one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever been. Sheer rocky mountains covered in moss and tundra. Not bad.
Other than just being chronically covered in mud these days, the truck is running really well. We seem to have daily little mechanical maintenance items (tightening bolts, resoldering some wiring for the turn indicator, chasing a gear box leak), but it’s all going well.
Wabi-sabi Overland 