We’ve been visiting our friend Carmen in Barrow Alaska the last several days and are planning on heading back to Chevak tonight. I am mainly posting some photos because anything I say cannot do this place and experience justice.
For the first time the weather was clear enough and not too cold in Chevak so that I was actually able to take some photos while we waited for the plane to arrive. That yellow boxlike thing is what Tom had to ride in to the airport, while I was fortunate enough to actually ride the snow machine. That’s our plane in the background – one of the larger ones we have landing here. I guess it carries around a dozen people. The flight to Bethel was uneventful, thank goodness. We then flew to Anchorage, from there to Fairbanks, spent time shopping and mailing supplies back to Chevak and attending a library conference. We stayed at the Princess Lodge – very nice. Mary and Charlie, if you are reading this, I of course have lost your phone number and could not remember the last name! We will be back to Fairbanks – it is such a beautiful place.
We enjoyed tooling around Ft. Wainright – I loved the commissary and PX – smaller than Elmendorf and therefore quicker shopping. Stayed at the Princess Lodge in Fairbanks. We ordered out one night and then ate in the bar the next night – best hamburger I’ve had in years. I’ve posted a photo of a street at Wainright – as you can see it is quite cold and snow is really blowing. Sometimes the snow was blowing so fast and furious that we could not see the road – but it blows away quickly.
We enjoyed seeing the ice carvings around town and at the park and got a few photos. When we got out at the park we realized how cold it was and that we were not going to stay very long. We went fast forward through the whole thing snapping photos and shivering. I enjoyed it though – the ice carvings were beautiful.
Here I am in a large igloo carving.
Here is an amateur ice carver getting a start on a block of ice. If you look you can see the model of the end product in the bottom right of the photo – looks like a Madonna statue.
Here’s Tom with a wolf outside the Princess lodge.
Okay to Barrow we go…. Carmen is our friend from Chevak, our next door neighbor in teacher housing, our Dancing With the Stars co-watcher, and our tea drinking buddy. We visited her and her husband in McCarthy this past summer and were anxious to see her and Barrow!
The photo of the car is interesting – Carmen’s friend took us on a tour of Barrow in that vehicle. People don’t even cut their motors off when they go shopping because the motor will freeze. You can see his plug-in hanging down from the front of the car – vehicles have be plugged up to a heater or they stop starting. Also notice the windsheild – the rocks in the summer pop up from the road and hit the car windows – a large percentage of cars have broken windshields. I have posted photos of us at various photo op spots in Barrow.
The large flat place behind me in the photo is of course the Arctic Ocean.
This is the football field with the snack bar sheds at the back.
That is Carmen in front of her school – the schools are all real showplaces – huge facilities with indoor playgrounds, imported tiles from Italy, etc.
Tom and I went shopping at the AC Store – quite a treat – they have snowmobiles and four wheelers in the aisles among the food items.
Here are two photos of me and Tom standing at – or close to Point Barrow. You can only go so far, the road stops and we were in a car. Carmen loaned me her sealskin hat.
And, a snowy owl!
The photos show the herd in the way off distance, and then a few up close of the MuskOxen they actually killed. The hide of the animal with the fur is worth about three grand. 
