The Northern Most Point, Barrow, AK.

Well, Alaska has helped me accomplish another goal. Not only did I get to check off my 50th state, but I can also check off the last of my "Extreme points". Barrow, AK is the Northern Most city in the US and this weekend I got to experience all that Barrow had to offer... and it wasn't much.
There are actually a lot of things that Barrow could have offered I just didn't get to experience them.
The week before we got there the hotel that we had reservations at called and told us that they shut down due to fire damage. Turns out the most popular restaurant in town (and the one I wanted to try), which was right next door to the hotel, literally burned to the ground and the smoke damage from the fire caused the hotel to have shut down for repairs. As it also turns out that hotel was the only place in town that handed out the certificate you can get for going above the arctic circle. Bad luck!
Then, there was the man who turned his house into a make shift museum with all kinds of amazing stuff in it. He had a stroke a few weeks ago, so that was a no-go as well. Two down.
I was also hoping, since we were a lot further north and there are no trees to block the view that I would be able to see the northern lights better from Barrow, but wouldn't you know it the fog was so complete and so dense we almost couldn't even land the plane. Which is a whole other story...
So we leave Fairbanks on a normal Saturday morning and start flying to Prudoe Bay where we were going to drop off some passengers and then continue to head to Barrow. After flying over the Brooks Range we can no longer see any land. All we could see were clouds for as far as the eye could see.

When we began to descend through the clouds I knew the plane was getting lower and slower with each second, but the fog was only getting thicker. I am looking out the window and there is no land, only fog... going slower... no land...grayness... going slower...
And all of a sudden the engines rev back up and we are ascending again as fast as we can until... pop... we come out the top of the clouds again. The pilot had aborted the landing and at this point everyone is thoroughly unnerved. The pilot comes on and says that the fog is too thick and we cannot land in Prudoe Bay and due to our limited gas we are going to have to continue straight on to Barrow. Thankfully, it was only a half hour trip because the whole time all I could think of was what if the fog is too thick in Barrow too?
Well, we get there and the clouds are just as thick as we begin to descend. As we begin go slower and slower my heart is pounding and my eyes are glued to the window straining to try to see something, anything below us besides the unending gray. Finally, at the last second a shadow of water... oh, its a lake... oh, there is some ground... and there is the runway. The visibility was only slightly better here then in Prudoe Bay, but it was enough for them to land.
(I found out later that the ILS (instrument landing system) was broken in Prudoe Bay. What a way to start the trip.)
Thankful to be on the ground, Shuling and I began our little trek to the place we were going to stay. I know this post started out with all the things that went wrong, but our accommodations did work out well. Before we found out about the fire damage at the hotel we had found an apartment online that was available for nightly rentals. It was going to be a lot cheaper so we had planned to cancel our reservations anyway. I just felt bad for everyone else who planned to stay there because the other hotels (all 2 of them) were completely booked. Apparently, there are so many people that go up to Barrow to work on construction projects and various government work that the hotels are always full. It is easy to make a lot of money in that town because nobody wants to go out there. You wouldn't know it by the look of things, though. I assume the outsiders send there money somewhere else and the people that live there have other things to spend the money on besides cleaning up and fixing up their houses. It is extremely expensive to live in Barrow. One of our first stops in Barrow was the grocery store where we gawked at the high prices. I especially liked the fact that they have Florida's Natural Orange Juice stocked on their shelves.

 

 
The cost of food, housing, and literally EVERYTHING else is at least double if not more than in Fairbanks. We learned that just to get a car shipped up there is $5,000! Its no wonder they just leave cars sitting around in their yards; its not worth it to pay to have it removed, and they can be useful to get parts out of if the next car starts acting up. 
Considering the cost of cars it was surprising that the guy who we rented the apartment from was willing to lend us his car for the day. It was not the nicest car and it didn't always start the first time, but I was so happy I didn't have to walk around all day in 34 degree weather with 20 mph wind. We drove all around town and took a little walk out to the Arctic Ocean. I got to feel the 28 degree water that covers the north part of the world. Oddly, it looked just like the water from the Pacific. ;)

We got to drive out to the "northern most point" sign and check out the whale bone monument.

We were hoping to try some muktuk or ugruk, which means whale and seal meat respectively, but the few people we had to opportunity to ask did not have any for us to try. :(
The flight out was just as eventful as on the way in since the fog had not lifted, but we made it safely back to Fairbanks and now I have a whole new perspective of "out of the way."