Monday morning we left on a journey to the far North oil fields at Prudhoe Bay. The group we were with were two couples from Columbus, Ohio and one fellow from New Zealand and our mode of travel was an eleven passenger E350 Ford van. It took two long days of driving to get there and two hours of flight for the return. The road started out a good blacktop surface and soon became mostly gravel surfaced with occasional patches of blacktop. The route followed the oil pipeline and a major portion of the most northerly section was built to provide access to the construction of that pipeline. There are very few roads in Alaska and only about 30% are paved. The primary mode of transportation is small airplane. Our first night's stay was in Cold Foot camp. There aren't any residents that live there and the camp only provides services for construction workers and travelers. Our second night was in Dead Horse camp with a similar story except that it is right in the oilfields and most of the folks that use it are oilfield personnel. They are mostly contracted to work two weeks of 12 hour shifts and then two weeks off. All of the area around the camp is dirt and they keep it watered for dust control which wasn't necessary while we were there as it showered off and on. Due to the constant presence of mud everyone is required to remove their shoes/boots at the door and there were paper booties to cover our shoes if we didn't want to pull them off. In both camps we slept in one building and ate in another which here in Dead Horse caused us to constantly have to deal with our shoes. Wednesday morning we had a bus tour of the oilfield facilities with a stop at the Arctic Ocean for a chance to stick a finger in and check the temperature. A little after noon we boarded a 10 passenger airplane for the quick trip back to Fairbanks.
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