A couple of weeks ago, I took a van trip up Alaska’s Dalton Highway to the Arctic Ocean. The Dalton, also known as the Haul Road, parallels the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and was made famous by the TV show Ice Road Truckers. I saw many pieces of unusual heavy machinery, like this Euclid B70 dump truck. My ride was a Ford Econoline E350 with the V10 Triton. It transports people, bicycles, and canoes up and down the Dalton. My round trip fare was $500. Coincidentally, this van burns $500 of fuel for the round trip between Fairbanks and Deadhorse (1,000 miles total). Since the road was mostly gravel (and mostly rough gravel), we rarely exceeded 40 miles per hour. The steepest grade was 12%, at the Atigun Pass. Make the jump to see more. The Haul Road has two primary purposes– to help service the pipeline and to provide supplies to the Prudhoe Bay oilfields. As such, the tractor-trailers have the right-of-way. Because the road is dusty and narrow and has sharp drop offs, our highly experienced driver always pulled over to give oncoming trucks as much room as possible. The northern terminus of the Pan-American Highway is in Deadhorse, which is just south of Prudhoe Bay. Prudhoe Bay happens to be on British Petroleum property, so the public cannot drive all the way to the end of the road. More on that later. Every contractor that works the oilfields has their own camp in Deadhorse. I stayed at the camp belonging to CGGVeritas, a geosciences company. The company goes out on the frigid tundra, does what geoscientists do, and looks for oil deposits. That means their yard was chock full of awesome tracked vehicles! The Prudhoe Bay/Deadhorse complex is humungous. Thousands of vehicles and billions of dollars of equipment are spread out everywhere. There is a desalinization plant, cell phone and data reception, and Mexican pork rinds at the convenience store. These trailers on skis are essentially mobile offices and labs. Almost every vehicle up there had Lightforce brand driving lights. I have never heard of them before, but they seem to be very popular. This is just about the most badass bus I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of buses in my day. The following morning, I took a tour of the Prudhoe Bay facilities and to touch the Arctic Ocean, which was still frozen over. This is the walk back to the bus after walking on the ice. The gentleman to the right broke the record for riding a motorcycle to 49 states (excluding Hawaii) in 8 days 9 hours and 37 minutes. A little dark humor, courtesy of Halliburton. I spotted this truck at a rest area on the way back. With the bull bars and barren permafrost in the background, this truck had a very Mad Max feel. For those of you keeping track at home, I have now traveled 12,500 miles on the Pan-American Highway, using 20 buses, 8 vans, 2 taxis, 2 passenger cars, and 1 trolley. My goal is to finish the entire Highway next year, when I will ride buses from Lima, Peru, to Turbo, Colombia. The pro-peace talks president of Colombia just got re-elected, so my chances of being kidnapped by FARC rebels are at an all-time low. Images source: Copyright 2014 Hooniverse/Jim Yu