Our Arctic Alaska Adventure included ten plane rides, mostly on very small planes. Here were our flights:

1. San Francisco to Anchorage

2. Anchorage to Kotzebue (above the Arctic Circle)

3. Kotzebue to Gates of the Arctic National Park

4. Gates of the Arctic to Kobuk Valley National Park

5. Kobuk Valley to Kotzebue

6. Kotzebue to Cape Krusenstern National Monument

7. Cape Krusenstern back to Kotzebue

8. Kotzebue to Kaktovik (on the northern edge of Alaska)

9. Kaktovik to Fairbanks (below the Arctic Circle)

10. Fairbanks to San Francisco

We all know that Alaska is a huge state. Most people only visit the southern portion of Alaska. So because we visited the far north and because so much more can be seen from the air, I expect to make quite a few posts from photos taken from our plane rides. This will be the first of my aerial posts from this trip.

We spent most of this trip above the Arctic Circle. The land consisted of arctic tundra, alpine tundra, boreal forest, and lots of permafrost ground. I enjoyed seeing so many different biomes and plants. I had to do some studying at the visitor centers that we visited to try and understand some of what we had seen on this trip.

These photos are from our commercial flight from Anchorage but as we were nearing Kotzebue, which is about 33 miles above the Arctic Circle. I believe that we are seeing arctic tundra and permafrost ground. Permafrost is ice mixed with soil and rock. It can be from inches thick to thousands of feet thick. At high latitudes, this layer can stay frozen at some point in the ground. In summer, the top portion of the permafrost will melt but the frozen portion below will prevent the water from filtering into the ground. This causes the water to pool on the surface creating boggy habitats and more lakes than you can count. You can see this in the first three photos and especially in the third photo. Aside from the rivers in the photos, I think this explains the rest of the surface water.

The next two photos are coming into Kotzebue, Alaska. This is arctic tundra territory.

You can see most of where we went on the attached map. Kotzebue is just above the arctic circle on the west coast. Kaktovik is not on the map but it is on the northern coast in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge about two-thirds of the way from Prudhoe Bay to Canada. The two national parks, a national preserve and a national monument that we visited are there, in yellow.

The last map is more specific regarding each place that we visited on this adventure.