Two weeks ago we took a short road trip north of Fairbanks to Eagle Summit. When you take the Steese Highway north out of Fairbanks for eight miles, you come to a three-way intersection. Turn left and you are in Fox, go straight ahead and you are on the Elliott Highway north, which connects to the Dalton Highway, probably better know as the North Slope Haul Road, at Livengood. The Dalton goes all the way to Deadhorse and the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. Because we were hoping to catch sight of the migrating Forty Mile caribou herd, we turned right, going northeast on the Steese Highway. We did see quite a few caribou, but unfortunately we did not see the huge numbers that had been reported a few days earlier. The light wasn't the greatest for photos. Even though these photos were all taken between noon and 1:30, the sun didn't come up over the mountains.
The road follows the Chatanika River for a ways, and there are many creeks near the road. The area has a large number of hot springs, and even on a cold winter's day there is open water along the road. The highway crews have to keep a close watch because if conditions are right it can flow over the roadway, making it impassible. The header and the photo below show a view of the terrain along the road. If you enlarge the photo you will get a glimpse of some of the caribou we saw. The road goes up and down to the highest point at Eagle Summit, which is where we turned around. If you continue on, the road travels to Circle and the Yukon River. Circle was founded in 1893, and the whole area was mined extensively during the gold rush, and there are still a large number of operating gold mines.
The two photos above were drive-bys through the window, but we stopped for the next three shots.
I added ink outlines to the last photo to bring out some of the details.
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I'm linking up with Tricia's Watery Wednesday II.
