Arctic Ocean

We woke up, sun shining and ready to get up. Look at the clock and it's 12:30am..... not time to start the day. 24 hour sunlight can really mess with you!! Back to bed until actual morning.

The mornings are cold in the arctic circle. Pack up camp and ride over to Deadhorse Camp where we will be taking a shuttle to the Arctic Ocean. In the parking lot we tried to get some breakfast going but can't seem to get the stove to work. I think we managed to get more gas on the gravel then anything.... they take their spills very serious in Prodhue Bay. This cannot be a good sign that our stove isn't working (yes we have used it before), we might be going hungry after day one. Giving up on the stove until after the tour, trail mix for breakfast it is!

There are about 14 of us on the tour. You can't go to the Arctic Ocean in Prodhue Bay unless you are on tour since you enter BP land and it's all private. If you love oil this is the area to go! All you have are oil houses, shipping containers as housing and whole bunch of pipelines going everywhere. They were having a natural gas leak in one of the pipelines so we got to see them burning that off.

We got to see the only National Forest in Prodhue Bay

After 45 minutes through the oil fields we reach the Arctic Ocean. It's literally a Shore of rocks and big open water... i thought maybe there would be a sign or something but just a gate so you can't drive your vehicle. The arrival was pretty uneventful and for all we know they could have taken us to the Bering Sea and we would have never known.

Within our group 6.5 people actually went swimming in the ocean. One lady went up to her knees so she only counts as half. As for us, we put our hands in and then finally got peer pressured into ATLEAST putting our feet in... so we did. When the air temperature is 37 degree and the water temperature is 33 degrees there is nothing warm about any of it!!! After a few pictures and lots of laughs we head to the bus and back to camp. One guy has rallied us up into making this an annual trip.... July 11, 2019 here we come (this time we will actual swim in the ocean).

Back at Deadhorse Camp we clean out the stove and try one more time to get her started.... this is the tell all. We will survive!!! We got her going and water is boiling for oatmeal. After we both force our last bites of oatmeal down (not another good sign) we pack everything to officially start our ride.

Deadhorse Camp is a couple miles down the Dalton from the start so to say he officially rode the Dalton i made us ride back the 2 miles to start at the beginning/end.

Day one and we are off.... only 240 miles until Coldfoot and 494 miles until Fairbanks. Within 3 minutes of our ride we see our first wild animal, Caribous! There is something about seeing animals in their natural habitat that is pretty amazing. 5 miles down the road we see some motorcyclists that we stayed with at Sven's so we chat and talk with them. They came from Coldfoot and the one guy was just exhausted.... and he has a motor on his bike :/

Once you go 3 miles South of DeadHorse, AK you have officially entered into big open vastness of nothingness!! You see no trees or anything green since we are in the Arctic and then maybe a stream here and there, brown dirt land.... and if you are lucky an animal. The only road in and out of Deadhorse is all gravel, when a semi-truck goes by you get a big gust of dust in your face unless you get some nice truckers who slow down when they pass or move to the other side where the wind isn't blowing that way.

I think adrenaline is wearing off because I'm not as excited as i was when we left. We had about 15 miles left to reach our goal of 50 miles a day and we run into "next 18 miles road work, loose gravel". Luckily it was after work hours but when they say loose gravel they had some loose THICK gravel that was horrible to ride through. I started to get emotional and a little overwhelmed, i think more because my arms, elbows, wrist, knees, hands.... everything was starting to hurt. We find a nice pull off near the river that we decided to call home for the night. Just in time for me to start crying.

We officially rode 46 miles today. Tent up, water filtered, mac and cheese for dinner (no food has tasted good yet), food stashed away, and into the tent to read we go. Jimmy and i start to really think what we got ourselves into. It's a weird feeling knowing you are riding in the wild with NOTHING around you, it starts to play with you mentally.