Trip to the Arctic Circle – Conclusion

“Ward, I’m very worried about the Beaver.” – June Cleaver, “Leave it to Beaver”

I know it doesn’t look especially finger-y, but this is Finger Rock, at Finger Mountain. From another view, it looks much more finger-esque, but that photo wasn’t as good. I know that’s like showing you a picture I took of Mt. Rushmore from inside Lincoln’s nose, but, hey, you get what you pay for.

As we drove farther north, on the right I saw a rock that looked like a finger, jutting proudly out of the ground, as if some gigantic stone megalith man was attempting to free himself from the millions of tons of earth smothering him. It reminded me of what Mel Gibson feels his career is like right now.

We stopped a mile down the road at . . . Finger Mountain. In the rest of the free world, Finger Mountain would be a good excuse to put in a gravel pit, crunch up some rocks, and continue mankind’s attempt to pave the planet. At Finger Mountain, it was a good place to put some bathrooms and a few placards. The first placard described a local herb that grows in the tundra. Said herb makes a tasty tea, with the unfortunate side effect that it contains an incredibly powerful laxative. Where are the junior high kids when you need them?

This plant probably allowed many a native Alaskan to play some wicked practical jokes on explorers. “Tea, sure, we’ve got tea.” Snicker.

The best part about Finger Mountain is that it allowed us to get up and walk around a bit. We had begun to contour our bodies to fit the seats in the vehicle, and getting out and stretching felt good. For a five-year-old who’s normally extraordinarily active to be placed in a car and see . . . yet another batch of scraggly trees, well, Finger Mountain was good for The Boy’s soul. When’s the last time you were so happy you danced?

The distortion field is on again. Did nobody ever tell The Boy to not mix his camo patterns?

Looking north from Finger Mountain, the pipeline and the road stretched off into the distance, toward Prudhoe Bay and the sweet, sweet oil. If you look at the pipeline from the air, you’ll see that as the road curves up and around it again and again it makes endless $ patterns, like the one you see here. It also makes endless $ for Alaskans. I think that maybe a secret cabal designed this. It surely couldn’t be . . . coincidence.

Where money and oil intersect . . . oh, wait, that’s always. These are just road intersections with a pipeline.

As I said before, most of Finger Mountain would be gravel in your state, and, frankly I can’t why that’s not a bad idea here, as well. I think if we keep digging, we’d find that the Earth is made of . . . rocks. Most of ‘em just like these.

That’s the problem with Alaska. Have a random pile of rocks? Make it part of a national park.

As we closed in on the Arctic Circle, lots of things went through my mind, but the continually repeating one is that we were nearly 200 miles from the nearest spare auto parts and wrecker, and I’m driving a car that I maintained. The road continued to be good, and aside from the few times that I hit washboarding so bad that my car was essentially no longer rolling but bouncing from the tops of these (not so good for steering control) I’ve got to say that the road was far better than I’d expected.

Also, there were occasional signs to lighten the mood in the car:

Yeah, the sign really says that. No trees around here, either. Beavers musta got ’em. Either that or Meryl Streep clear cut the tundra.

NEXT: The Arctic Circle and Home Again

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2006

“It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.” – Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark

This one is the standard tourist shot, except for the Bermuda Shorts and black socks.

Up the road we continued, seeing the same pipe and the same tundra for miles and miles. The tundra itself is a very thin layer of usable soil, while underneath is a biological wasteland devoid of life. I imagine this is much like the surface of Keanu Reeves’ brain.

We finally, after traversing Beaver Slide, made it to . . . The Arctic Circle. Inexplicably, the road is again paved at about this point, marking the first paving in about seventy miles of road.

Most tourists take a picture of the front of the sign. We did, too. We also took a picture of the back of the sign. Seems like you should not allow certain people to have spray paint, but, what the heck. They didn’t mess with the front, so we could get a nice picture.

Even the vandals in Alaska are nice.

Most people stopped, got out, took a picture and left. Probably a good idea. I don’t think basking in the circleness of the Arctic makes you smarter or anything, even though the Arctic Circle line is moving about 45 feet (57 meters) a year to the north. It’s really a case of been there, done that. I emptied the gas can that I’d brought into the tank again, lamenting (slightly) that I’d brought a vehicle that had 137,000 some-odd miles on it. I reassured myself that I’d only have to push it halfway home, since each hill has another side, right?

We stopped at the Hot Spot Café on our way back home. Any other place in the world, the Hot Spot would be known as “three construction trailers.” In Alaska, it’s an outpost of civilization.

Think about it . . . the Hot Spot doesn’t have electricity from a utility, there’s no phone, there’s no mail delivery, and the credit card that I used may not be billed for some time, since they used one of those old-time card imprint machines to make the slip.

The Mrs. was looking at buying a shirt. The Hot Spot Café logo is . . . a naked girl in a coffee cup. I didn’t know that The Mrs. would approve of such a purchase, yet here she was buying a shirt with a nude chick on it. Hmm. Here’s what it looks like:

Okay, perhaps I made this out to be bigger than it was. But, women, coffee, and burgers. Is that heaven or what?

As you can see I bought the hat pin version. The Mrs., after seeing that she would be advertising unclothed women was a bit aghast, and put the shirt back on the shelf, like she had touched a lizard. I noticed that the shirt was stacked right under rack of sling shots with the Hot Spot logo right in the center of some silky material. In actuality, The Mrs. informed me that those weren’t sling shots, but thong underwear. I decided not to buy a pair because I thought they weren’t in my color.

Even bears like the Hot Spot.

I wanted to buy gas at the Hot Spot, but apparently the pump had been broken since Nixon was president, and they sent me down the road a half a mile to where the pumps were working. On the way I mused about what life would be like on the Yukon. The Mrs. indicated that I would die, lacking the Internet.

I bought gas on the banks of the Yukon at $3.79, only $1.00 more than in Fairbanks. The couple in front of us bought 220 gallons for their boat. I remarked that was a lot of gas, but The Mrs. pointed out that running out of gas on the Yukon River might be a bad idea, what with the starving to death and all.

If Indiana Jones had a boat, it would look just like this, and be right where this one is.

On the way home I ran into some folks that had thrown a tire. I stopped to help and saw an acquaintance helping out, so I lent my jack. Turns out my acquaintance had just stopped to help some people he didn’t know. Fairbanks is like that.

Finally, home. Cold beer.

Been there.

Done that.

The mud from the Haul Road covered the Wildermobile in a fine dirt patina, about a quarter-inch thick. If I did this trip a few more times, I could have a really dirty car.