North Slope Trip Part Two

The second day we saw more operations from around the field.

The most exciting thing that we did was, of course, jump into the Arctic Ocean. This is called the polar bear jump. I couldn’t ever tell if this is just something that the old guys that have been around forever make up to get a good laugh or if it was for real, but either way it was fun. And extremely cold. I could only stay in for about a minute before I started to shiver. I forgot my swim trunks in the room, so I went in my boxers. Afterwards we dried off really quickly, and stuck around to take a picture.

Another funny thing that I saw was the polar bear cages. Sometimes the polar bears wait in front of the doors, so they put up cages around the doors so that you could go outside, check to see if there are bears around, and then exit. Luckily, the polar bears are only around during the winter…. primarily.

That water in the back there with the ice? Yeah, we swam in that.

Caged animal! Stay back…..