The Midnight Sun Could Drive Someone to Drink . . . but They Can't

 I am writing this at almost 1am and the sun outside the window is blinding. I need to emphasize that it is not even close to the horizon. Nicole actually thinks it's getting brighter. It's as if it has reached it's low point and is already beginning to rise. It makes the body clock extremely confused. We went for another walk in the afternoon to a different section of Barrow beach that was located near a cliff. Then we continued down the beach to the random whale bones section once more. With the sun still high in the sky, we didn't realize it was almost 9 pm when we were finally eating dinner.

As Barrow is not particularly large, we pretty adequately covered the town in the brief amount of time we've been here, so this blog post is primarily about some of the unusual things I've learned about this far north region that you don't really think about when you live in a warmer locale. And in the case of Barrow, "warmer locale" could include places like Wisconsin, so keep that in mind. All the streets in Barrow are dirt and unpaved. Why? All the land is thick permafrost.

Basically the maintenance costs for fixing constant cracks would be a major problem. Not to mention that any road construction and repairs would have a 60 day window once a year. Between our walks we turned the TV on in our room and something dawned on us. After an advertisement for a new movie and another for Budweiser aired, we realized that neither of these is possible in Barrow. There is no movie theater. And regarding the Budweiser, the sale of alcohol is banned.

I did some research to try and determine why and (not surprisingly) alcoholism is a big problem in
the far north villages of Alaska. Keep in mind there are months that go by without any sun. Apparently you can consume booze if you have a permit, but since the sale of it is illegal, it complicates things a bit. Basically, you would order it from a distributor in Fairbanks (500 miles away) and have an airplane bring it in. This is probably not very cost effective. Services like wifi and 3g are not very functional. The internet in the hotel is slower than dialup which required me to manually compress all these pictures, otherwise it would be uploading all night.

Things you would assume exist everywhere like car dealerships, fitness centers, McDonalds, or bookstores just simply do not exist. If you want something bad enough, it either comes in by plane (or if it doesn't fit on a plane and you're patient, it can come in by boat about two months out of the year). It is an entire way of life that is foreign to me. I just have so many questions, but I'm glad I came to this isolated outpost 3,000 miles away from LA. Tomorrow we are off to Fairbanks.