Wainwright, Alaska – Tundra Village on the Arctic Ocean
September 22nd, 2007
The Cessna Grand Caravan that I flew from Barrow to Wainwright was split down the middle: Passengers on the right, cargo on the left. At least I knew for certain that all 7 of my bags and cartons made the flight.
Wainwright is a village of about 500 folks – it seems a bit smaller than that. I’m sharing an apartment with a guy named Tex. He’s never been to Texas. The school is just 100 yards from my door, easiest commute in my life. Our living room window has a fair view of the Arctic Ocean, about 1/4 mile away.
Since the beach is so close, it’s the first choice for an after school walk. Sometimes some of the younger Inupiat kids join us. On the first day of school we had an assembly. While waiting for all of the students to file into the gym, I did a few simple tricks for the grade school kids. I am now known as Mr. Magic.
Dog teams have been replaced by snowmachines and 4-wheelers, but most folks still keep a few dogs around, but haven’t come across anyone that has enough of them to pull a sled.
A neighborhood family getting ready to head out to pick berries.
This morning I took a 10 mile hike to the DEW military installation with a couple of other teachers, Rusty and Emily and her 3 year-old son, Henry. Rusty brought along a gun in hopes we could bag a caribou. No such luck. As Em and Rusty had thought about camping at the now-abandoned base, they carried backpacks, and I was the lucky guy who carried Henry. We hiked along a lagoon before we had to cut across the tundra and came across this carcass of a seal that was shot in the head and left to rot.
Although we didn’t spot any caribou, someone in town had some recent success.
One doesn’t think of Barrow and the Arctic coast as a cruise ship destination, but this ship sailed to town last weekend. It originated in Greenland and was heading to Cold Bay on the Alaska Peninsula – a tour of the Northwest Passage. I chatted with a few of passengers. Most all were rich and retired Germans or Scandinavians and were all interested in this part of the world. Bleak and beautifully desolate were the most-often heard descriptors of their voyage.
It’s the first of September and the beginning of the the 3-day Labor Day Weekend. Slept in a bit – I usually have to wake up at 5:30 AM to get to school on time, so lounging in the rack until 7 and then some unhurried coffee was a treat.
Maybe I should post this in the forum here on Bootsnall, but I would bet my exit from Thailand and back home ranks up there with the all-time worst travel connections.
I’m at the age when it doesn’t seem to matter what time I go to sleep at night as I always wake up early. Througout SE Asia, even in most large cities, the roosters start the process around 4:30 or 5:00 AM. Earplugs can only block out so much.
Somehow I found myself in Chiang Mai, Thailand- it gets a lot of hype as one of the best places in this country, but it is just a Bangkok-north. Since it is the town I fly out of when I leave for home in less than a couple of weeks, it made sense to use it as a base for exploring north-western Thailand.
The trip out of Lao was an adventure – sort of the type that was fun in an uncomfortable way that makes great stories later. 
jpb