Pastor Mike's Corner: Day 22

Wednesday – After a long day yesterday and being on vacation, we did not get an early start today. Debra needed to get our clothes washed and I needed to get the blog up to date so it was about 10:30am till we left the campground. We had a nice trip to Fairbanks and after shopping at Wal-Mart and filling up with cheap gas($2.899@ gal.) we decided to go to the Arctic Circle. This trip consists of a 71mile drive to the Dalton Highway and then 115 miles of dirt road north on the Dalton Hwy. After driving about 50 miles on dirt road we had a tire that got tired of it and distorted the sidewall and threw some tread off which messed some things up. This was the opposite side from the last time but did not do any internal damage. We drove to the Yukon River at the only place you can get gas for 118 mile and parked for the night. I knew I needed to fill up with gas to make it to the Arctic Circle and had to pay $3.699@ gal. On the trip up at one place we had to stop for 20 minutes for construction and I got to talk to a trucker who runs one trip a week all year long from Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay and back which takes about 60 hours. He also stopped at the same place we did and I got to chat with him, (Cliff Baker) for about an hour. Keep Cliff in your prayers as he makes this trip every week with temperatures as low as -80. The company he works for hauls a lot of equipment to the bay for the oil companies. Some of the grades are very steep and the worst one we drove was a 9% grade for 2 miles. In the valleys there are 30 and 40 foot fills 2 lanes wide with no guard rail. He drives a 4 axle Kenworth with a 550 cat which is the standard company truck (seen a lot of them) and some loads they haul north are so heavy that they sometimes need to use 4 trucks pushing behind the trailer. We did see one empty lowboy going south with a pusher truck helping him up the hill. Cliff said he helped to push that truck up last week with a small load (only 205,000 lbs). He also wanted to know what Mennonites are.