MyDreamWalk

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

Midnight Sun

Day 3
The local newspaper is full of statistics:
Length of day 18 hours 50 minutes 28 seconds
Daylight lost 6 minutes 30 seconds
Sunrise 4 AM
Sunset 11:51 PM

This is what the world is like when you race walk through the high Arctic. The earth is tilted very close to the sun during the summer season creating virtual daylight for nearly 24 hours.

I creep northwest and by the end of the day I am only 10 miles from last year’s ending point, the Dalton Highway.
Parked along the road in my camper, and kept awake by the still blazing sun, I thumb through the Alaska guide book learning that Alaska’s M. McKinley occasionally visible in the distant horizon at 20,000 feet is the highest peak in North America.
Restless and, tired of peanut butter sandwiches, I drive fifty miles back in the direction of Fairbanks to get a hot meal at the only restaurant along this lonely, yet somehow romantic, road.

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