In the back of Johnnies mind, it should have been a Piper Cherokee 6 skimming over the craggy snowcaps of the Brooks Range. Engines whining to gain altitude, then sputtering at the top to hang for a moment, the light plane might then ease back on the power for the long glide out to the Arctic Ocean. This wasn't a movie, though. Alaskan Air flew two roundtrips per day from Fairbanks to Barrow, both on 737s. Delphine no doubt breathed a sign of relief to see the enclosed gantry from gate 4 out to the big airplane at Fairbanks International. That was after she edged around the waiting area trying to snap a photo out the window of Mt. McKinley, shrouded days ago for their whole stay in Denali.

The town of Barrow consisted of wood buildings on stilts and Quonset huts along with the odd masonry building. Bunna said the stilts were necessary because normal concrete footings would sink into the tundra. Then he pointed out vehicles along the way, a Humvee, this and that truck and one boat in particular: his own pride and joy. The Humvee, he said, would prove to be important to certain ones of the group, but he wouldn't jump ahead to what that might be.

Bunna liked keeping his tourists in suspense. At one of the town cemeteries, he pointed to the most prominent grave and asked if anyone could guess the occupants. Getting no responses, he saved that for later as well.

Normal aspects of the town figured into the tour. The guide explained about the grade school, junior high and high school. Oil money definitely played a major part in their building, and the high school was state of the art and cost $70 million. Passing a grocery store, Bunna went into the relative cost of things in Barrow. Gas came in at $3.00 per gallon, milk was $7.00 per gallon and bread was $2.00 a loaf. (Little wonder that the Inupiats, fully modernized in many ways, clung to the subsistence way of life.) Commenting that this proved local people had a wonderful sense of irony, the driver rounded a corner where the courthouse shared the same building with a QuickStop convenience store.

Not surprisingly, many of the people on the plane were slated for the Arctic Tour. J and D descended stairs at the back of the plane onto the tarmac. Bunna, the native-born Inupiat driver and guide, greeted his new charges at the bus outside. Armed with every corny quip imaginable, he charmed the day-trippers with his genuine love for his job.

A monument close to the airport had been erected in honor of Will Rogers and the famous pilot Wiley Post. The men went down in 1935 thirteen miles outside of town. Neither of the signs shown are about these men but are instead milage markers, a cute idea, if somewhat overused.

Naming the scenes that passed the windows of the old white bus hardly describes what Barrow was like. Pictures don't work well either. Looking out across the endless tundra, breathing cold air in summer, especially feeling the isolation, all this gave Barrow a strong flavor of exotica.

Stopping by a dirt mound beside the icy ocean, Bunna told what archeologists had discovered beneath the mound, a mother and children crushed inside their hut. All that ice out beyond the mound had been open ocean a week or so ago, Bunna said. Then the wind had shifted, crunching it back in. Usually that's the way it was in summer as the ice melted. Sometimes it all went and sometimes it froze back up. If it came back, however, it usually moved slowly. On a fateful day four hundred years ago, probably with her husband out foraging for food, the Inupiat wife sat with her children in their hut as the ice suddenly piled back ashore and crushed them all. That family was the one buried in the tombstone from earlier in the day.

The other mystery was cleared up soon after that. As they stopped for lunch, Bunna said that some of the group would be splitting out for most of the afternoon. They would take a fast path around in the Humvee. One of the things they'd see was Point Barrow, four miles further than the white bus would go.

Lunch was great. PEPE'S North of the Border served delicious Mexican food. Fran Tate, owner/operator, moved through the crowd with her wait staff, insuring everybody felt at home. After the meal, J and D walked down to the ocean, felt the cold water, then came back to the hotel. They couldn't resist the cliche of sending a postcard from Barrow.

In fact, the Top of the World Hotel served as the rendezvous point after lunch. Bunna gathered his own tourists on the bus, said so long to the breakaways, and started out. He'd seen seals on the other side of town during lunch and rushed over. There the furry critters sat on the ice flow offshore (too far for pictures.) Further along, the bus paused to watch a hunter fire at a seal out on the ice. He missed, then seemed to be having a problem with his gun.

In the afternoon, the tour stopped for over an hour at the Inupiat Heritage Center. Johnnie and Delphine walked around with the other tourists through the exhibits while the native dancers got ready. Then they danced and sang several songs. Johnnie couldn't interpret any but the most obvious movements in the dance, but an interesting style was apparent. Each song

began with the drummers tapping lightly on their shallow, shield-sized wood and skin drums. At some point in every song, the drumming became very loud and the dancing frenetic. Female dancers hurried more in the loud parts, but the increase in pace was barely noticeable. When men danced and the drums got loud, the motions were furious, and each men wheeled on his left foot while stomping his right foot fiercely.

Last on the native program, an elder woman of the tribe described the making of boots from caribou hides. She told how to make the fronts and backs and bottoms and how to stitch the whole thing together. Also, she showed how thread was made from sinew.

Bunna drove back to the hotel to pick up the breakaways from his group. It was at this point that four young people chose to join the polar bear club. Emerging from the hotel in swimsuits, a young man and three young women walked ceremoniously to the ocean. Then they ran out and dived under the water. Their exit and return to the hotel was less ceremonious and much more quickly in the 42 degree F arctic air.

"Better them than me," Johnnie said.

The plane ride home was a warm and sleepy thing. Back in Fairbanks, Pumpi basked in the 72-degree heat and waited. Instead of joining the other couple on the shuttle ride back to the RV park, J and D rented a car and drove back. They'd need the car for the rest of the week.