Dalton Highway

Terry has always had an interest in driving the  Haul Road (Dalton Highway) to the Arctic Circle.  The tours that you can take are so outrageously expensive (no 2 for 1 coupons in the Alaska Tour Saver Book) so we decided early on that we would not do this.  However, we decided just to drive a few miles on the road to the Arctic Circle just to see what it was like. 

  

We started out at 5:30 am in the hopes of seeing some wildlife and we did see 7 moose in the morning.  Well the road was really good--not half as bad as the horror stories we had heard--so we kept going.  We made it to the Yukon River Crossing and we stopped at the Ranger Station which was a big mistake.

  

The ranger was way too excited and shared a scenic side road to take just 30 miles down the road with panoramic views.  So we decided that would be a good lunch stop to have our picnic lunch.  The view was everything the ranger said it would be and we had our lunch--in the truck because the mosquitos and bugs were soooo bad. 

 

Looking at the map it was only 30 "more" miles to the Arctic Circle and the road had continued to still be good.  How could we not continue on to the Arctic Circle when we were so close!  Yes, we managed to make it to the Arctic Circle by 2 pm. and then we had to drive all the way back--it was a long day.

The pictures are here.