Visiting the Prudhoe Bay protected area

My son Paul is a month into a five-month trip to Alaska. He called Sunday from a small campsite near Prudhoe Bay, where you can get to the gate but you can’t get in unless you have a permit or work there.

There are about 2,000 workers at the oil site, mostly Eskimos who reside in nearby villages.

The oil-and-gas site is expansive and the living quarters are huge, allowing for an influx of temporary workers.

It is claimed that the oil companies are highly sensitive to environmental issues since the big Exxon Valdez oil tanker issue in 1989.

A number of years ago, when I was in Kodiak, I went to the end of the island and witnessed the tragic oil spill on the shoreline there.

Paul arrived at Prudhoe after a drive from Fairbanks about 500 miles south of his current campsite.

Just in the past few days he reported seeing muskox, grizzly bear, caribou and fox. Well, that’s what he went for. He is pulling a 15-foot camp trailer along pretty bad roads.

Paul took advice and got new tires after hearing that some crushed rock roads were bad on tires. He said reports of holes in the road being over a foot deep were accurate.

He took five days to get to his first campsite and since has been to Anchorage and Denali National Park; now he plans to drive to the Arctic Circle.

No bad incidents along the way, the result of six months of careful planning.

Roads in the Prudhoe Bay area are so rough that car rental agencies won’t rent vehicles for travel there.

His hopes of seeing muskox were rewarded when he came upon about 50 near his current campsite. While roughing it seems a little strange to me, he says that’s why he recently retired.

Along the way, he is fishing for Arctic Grayling.

Now he faces more than four months of fishing and traveling throughout Alaska until he returns home in October.

His plan is to rough it from someplace in Alaska.

He is seeing grizzly bear but he says not too close. He is already planning a return trip to Alaska for 2025.