Barrow

Barrow is the northernmost city on the continent. Like Nome, no roads lead to it. It's larger than Nome, with a population of over 4500. Gas here was $3.95 a gallon when it was around $2.75 back home.

Barrow is another treeless location. To a far greater extent than other places we visited, the ground at Barrow is wet everywhere. Everywhere. This is not flooding, it's just wet. All buildings are up on stilts. This cemetery is where the Dusky Thrush was hanging out.

In the residential areas, practically every yard is full of junk: broken down cars, piles of construction materials, etc. Any people that we talked to were quite nice and very friendly.

Here's where we saw the Red-throated Pipit. It really liked this spot, returning at least three times during the course of the day, until we finally got a good look at it.

Our hotel was quite new and very clean and comfortable. Here is the view from our hotel window.

As at Nome, the ocean ice pack was still in at Barrow, again very unusual for June.

Arctic Lousewort was blooming in some places.

On the flight out of Barrow, I had the good luck to be able to take some aerial shots of Barrow. Note water everywhere, and houses on stilts.

A row of lagoons right at the coast. Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean in the background.

Point Barrow is a long narrow peninsula. The Chukchi Sea is to the left, Beaufort Sea to the right. Nothing else out there but the North Pole (which is still very far away). We only went to the base of the peninsula. You have to go to the tip to see Polar Bears, but you can only go past the base if you have a vehicle that is capable of driving on the terrain and is Polar Bear-proof, and you have a permit. The one person who meets all the conditions charges $65 per person for a two-hour trip, so we didn't go. Viewing is apparently better in the winter anyway, and we heard from some who did go out that they saw only one very distant Polar Bear, so distant that they wouldn't have seen it without their spotting scopes.