Relyea'sAdventures: 6-26 and 6-27-2013 Barrow at the top of Alaska

We headed out for the top of Alaska about 11:00. When Don had made the reservations our flight was a couple of hours. With changes in scheduling, it ended up being about 6 ½! We flew on a Boeing 737 Combi, the front half of the plane was containerized freight and the back was passengers. We walked out on the tarmac and entered the plane through the rear door. Hadn’t done that in a long time.

Flying down to Anchorage we flew over Denali and Mt. McKinley. When we got to Anchorage, we picked up our first load of oil patch workers. Sharon had the middle seat. They were heading in for their time up north. On my left was a 71 year old gentleman from Loren?? TX going up for his 3 week on, 3 week off stint. He’d been raised in Sitka, AK and moved to TX to commute back up here. Never really did get a good answer for that. The “boy” on my right from Tulsa, OK was summer help and would be working 6 weeks and then done for the summer. There was a LOT of drinking on that flight as the oil patch is “dry.” When we got up to Dead Horse, Pruedoe Bay all but 7 of us got off and then loaded up with the workers heading down for their time off. The guy I road with from Pruedoe to Barrow, shared a lot about life on “the island.” As we passed over it, he pointed out the caribou along the runway and his work area. He showed me pictures of the polar bears and arctic wolves right near their area. They were beautiful. He said there are guys whose only job is to watch for bears to keep the workers safe. If they fall asleep, it’s immediate dismissal. He did 2 on, 2 off and had moved his family to southern Alaska so he doesn’t have so long a commute. The guy we road back with commuted all the way to Charleston, SC and it would take 2 days to get home for his 2 week on, 2 week off!!!

You just don’t happen upon Barrow, you have to want to arrive there. It is the furthest town in the north of Alaska. Remember the map from the last blog? The only way there is by boat or plane. What arrives in Barrow stays in Barrow. When you arrive at the airport it like stepping back 40 years in time. When you step out of the airport take another 50 years off the calendar. Initially we did not know what to really expect. We soon discovered Barrow is really the last frontier. We will let the pictures speak for themselves.

The weather when arrived was perfect, blue skies in the mid fifties, and hungry mosquitoes. Our hotel was within walking distance from the airport, across the street. When you enter the hotel there is a sign at the front entry way asking that you remove your shoes. There are no paved roads in Barrow and they have a water truck that sprays water on the dirt roads to keep the dust down, so then you have mud. I was checking out all the different kinds of shoes laying all around on the floor, maybe I could trade up to a better pair. I decided not to pursue that idea due to the fact that there is no place to hide in Barrow. You would just go around in circles trying to escape.

After unloading our things, we decided it was time for dinner. We found this restaurant nearby the hotel, didn’t look like much but then again most of the town did not look like much, so we debated momentarily if we should give it a try. Let me tell you it was some of the best Asian foods I have eaten in all of my travel throughout the world. Only thing that would have made the dinner better was a cold beer. You cannot buy alcohol in Barrow. You have to apply for a permit to purchase alcohol. So there in no alcohol for sale in Barrow, nothing for us visitors. Now once you have been deemed worthy (which required a background check by the police department and a $100 permit fee) you can have shipped in 5 bottles of whisky, 20 bottles of your favorite wine and 5 cases of beer, per month. For a couple, it’s twice that amount. Remember the days are long in the summers and the nights are longer in the winter. Bootlegging is one of the part-time jobs.

After devouring our dinner, we still had plenty of light it was 7 pm. We walked down to the monument that was dedicated to Wiley Post and Will Rogers. Their plane crashed about 15 miles south of the airport on an expedition flight to find an air route to Siberia.

After that, Sharon and I decided to walk to the Presbyterian Church. We could not find it right away. The Presbyterians were some of the very first missionaries to arrive in Barrow.

We decided to see if we could arrange for a tour guide to show us the sights with a little history thrown in. The hotel clerk hooked us up with a gentleman named Mike Shults. That’s a good Alaskan name isn’t it? Mike picked us up at 8:30 pm and proceeded to give us the first class tour. See Mike had been there for 40 years so he was nearly a native. There are two parts to Barrow, there’s Barrow and then there is Browerville. I would estimate that the whole city is about 2 miles square. There are 4800 inhabitants of Barrow. When Mike moved there 40 years ago there was 2400.

As you drive around Barrow you begin to notice that nothing ever leaves Barrow once it has arrived. So there are a lot of discarded things all over everywhere. There are no zoning laws or building codes. We saw seal pelts and caribou meat hanging out to cure. Many of the houses are not painted and do not have running water, which means they do not have toilets. They collect their waste in a 5 gallon buckets and the waste dept picks it up and discards it for them.

One of the things on the girls’ bucket list was to put their foot in the Arctic Ocean. So Mike took us to the farthest point that he was allowed to go. Point Barrow is native burial grounds, so you have to be native or have a permit to go beyond where we were, plus a heavy duty 4 wheel drive would be advised. So the girls took off their shoes and reluctantly stepped in the waters of the Arctic Ocean. Needless to say it was very refreshing and cold as ice. (See the ice floating behind us?) They were troopers and accomplished the goal. Oh yeah, they also had their Key West sweat shirts on as well. We had traveled to Key West Florida about 18 months ago when the girls turned?? (not allowed to tell ladies age publicly), so they decided that the sweats shirts would symbolize the journey from the southernmost point of the US to the farthest northern point. The reason we had sweat shirts in Key West is that it got so cold we needed something warm to wear. Little did we know at the time how they would play a role in our trip to Alaska.

As we continued our journey around Barrow, Mike explained that whaling season had been a wash for the natives this year due to the fact that the ice was so bad this spring. They had not caught a whale all spring. They normally catch 12 to 14 whales in the spring and another 12 to 14 in the fall when the whales are migrating south for the winter. There are 52 whaling crews in Barrow. Although there is a ban on commercial whaling, the natives are allowed to hunt with very generous limits. They can hunt seals, walruses, salmon, caribou, whales and any other wild game that is available.

Many of the houses do not have electricity; they may have gas plumbed to it for heating. They dig deep ice cellars beneath their house where they store their food. See, the permafrost is only a few inches below the surface. They have difficulty burying their deceased as well. Every few years the caskets are pushed up by the ice and they have to go back out and put grandma back in the ground. It’s a very different way of life in Barrow.

The price of food and gas up here is very, very high as you would expect. Gas is $6.20 per gal. and milk is $10.00 per gal. The barge that brings the gas to Barrow comes once a year. It will arrive in August. There is not a port for the barge to tie to so they push it on shore and offload the fuels by hose to each of the large tanks.

Anyway back to whaling. When one of the whaling crews does harpoon a whale all of the other crews pitch in to assist getting the whale back to shore. Each of the crews will get a portion of the whale for helping. This is actually seal season for the natives. When we were standing on the shore we heard that they had spotted a whale when they were seal hunting. Didn’t think much of at the time but little did we know that they would get their first whale of the season while we were there. The buzz around the town was electrifying. The excitement kept building as people heard the news. Everyone began to gather at the beach. As we were about to leave the beach, the news had been confirmed that they did in fact get one.

There was one of the village people standing on this mound of dirt looking out across the ocean.

I was taking pictures of the gang under this archway of a Bowhead Whale when he said “mister, they are bringing in the whale.” I climbed up on top of the mound and he showed me the convoy of boats bringing the whale to the shore. They were quite a ways out. He said that it would take about 2 hours to pull the whale in. They would have to find a break in the ice. There were 5 or 6 boats each having 8 to 10 people aboard. They hook each boat in a chain to develop enough power to pull the whale through the water. There is one boat attached to the tail of the whale with a float in the middle to keep the whale floating so it doesn’t sink. Mike told us there would be about 1000 villagers that would be waiting on shore for the arrival of the whale. Now mind you it was about 11 pm. So the whale was not going to be ashore until after 1 am. It was very exciting to observe this event. We did not stay to see the arrival of the whale, but we did by the luck of the Irish, get to see the whale in the morning!!!

See the 6 boats in the lead, a space with the float, and the last boat guiding the tail.

We had decided to walk to a Sam & Lee’s for breakfast. It was a little ways from the hotel. It was raining but the walk was good (someone once told me that when you are on vacation you walk in the rain) so off we went. This was to our good fortune, because when we arrived at Sam & Lee’s our tour guide was just coming out of the restaurant. He was the one that recommended the restaurant to us the night before. He was stopping in to see if we had taken his advice. He was delighted to see us and offered to take us to the whale site. We decided to defer breakfast until later.

Off to the whale site we went. What an experience! There were locals all over the place still working on adrenalin from the night before. The pictures that we have included in the blog maybe distasteful to some of you, but this is the way of life up here. This is how they have lived for many centuries. This is the process that they live by. To us it may appear very savage like, but to them it’s normal. They “eat off the land and sea.” As you can see, they are dividing up the shares of the whale and it will be distributed throughout the village. They share their good fortune with all. On Friday, the captain of the whaling crew that caught the whale will have a big celebration and cook out at his house for the entire community. This event takes place after every whale is caught.

The baleen, which is what the whales strain the water through to get their food, is almost like a black, hairy curved piece of plexiglass. There are 600 sections of this in the whale. (talked to a man last night, said baleen in Fairbanks is $150-200 a piece, in Barrow it was $20)

We were so excited to have been on hand for the event. When we were coming back from our evening tour the manager of the hotel had closed down the check in desk so that he could take his family to watch them bring in the whale. When I was checking out of the hotel the next morning I asked how the evening had gone. He had taken a few pictures and some video. I asked if he would mind sharing them with us and a few other guests. He was happy to do so.

Here are a few details on the whale that was caught.

54 ft long, estimated to be approx 150-200 years old! They would prefer that the whale be 30 to 35 ft long like the one we saw in the museum. They say the meat is much more tender. But for this late in the season, they will take what God has provided because before long winter will be setting in.

After they have harvested the whale, the jaw bones will be left on the beach to dry. The rest will be taken up the beach to collection areas to keep the polar bears away from town. Another fact of life in Barrow, dogs have learned that if there is a polar bear in the areas they do not bark. Polar bears like to eat dogs. So when you get up in the morning and there are no dogs barking, beware the polar bears may be close at hand. This is the truth!

It was really hard to leave the beach! But, Mike dropped us up at the Inupiat Heritage Center. It really made an impression and helped us get the perspective when we learned the whale in the museum was 35 feet long and the one on the beach was 54 feet long!!!

Our first impression when arriving to Barrow, “what are we doing here?” Our lasting impression is “we are very happy that we came to meet the wonder people of Barrow and to briefly get a view of their daily life.” All the people we talked to would not trade their life in Barrow with any other place in the world.