North - To the Slope!

Each summer, our company provides a fantastic opportunity for employees or guests of employees to tour the North Slope Oil Field and view/touch/swim in the Arctic Ocean. Because of the large number of employees and contractors doing work for us on the slope, we share Boeing 737's with another company making several flights a day. Yesterday, one of these flights was dedicated to a slope tour and Robert and I were lucky enough to get a spot on it.

Our pilots took us between Denali and Foraker mountains for some incredible viewing.



Here is a Reindeer near some of the pipelines. Unfortunately, we couldn't get off of the bus for pictures (we aren't supposed to bother wildlife on the slope) and my pictures of the four Reindeer with big racks under the pipelines didn't turn out. The big white bubble in the background is the US Defense Early Warning System.

Here's the Arctic Ocean. We had two people join the Polar Bear Club yesterday. Neither one of them were Robert or myself. Although, we did get our hands wet. Robert - step back just a couple more steps for a great picture... :) I actually have this same view from January - but you can't tell as it was dark when I took it!