THE FOLLOWING ARE NICK'S WORDS: Permission for vehicles and team was granted and we were escorted through the gates to the shores of Prudhoe Bay. Access to the Beaufort Sea is heavily restricted and even though we had some wonderful folks helping with arrangements, an email check this morning said it didn’t look good. News like this might have turned some folks away but not our team. The wonderful staff of the Prudhoe Bay Hotel helped us call field security and luckily they had heard we were coming. The efforts of our sponsors at Mobil 1 made this happen and the security company mentioned seeing us in the newspaper as well. Usually the oil field workers are the only folks allowed out here but Purcell Security hooked us up by sending Bill, Randy, Linn, and Robin out to accompany the team through the restricted areas to see the Arctic. Strict regulations put in place in the last few years require that our escorts also drive our vehicles and all had to wear safety glasses. After a short briefing we headed to the ocean, but before we could get out of the vehicles, one of our escorts explored the ice on foot and used binoculars to scan the area for polar bears. This is where they live and it’s not unusual to see them way up here. It’s tough to tell the ocean apart from the land, since the entire landscape is nothing but white snow, so we dug down through a foot of snow and found ice which makes the journey official. The only thing stopping a fellow from driving further, out onto the ice, is permission but we were plenty satisfied with pictures, and tried not to freeze while admiring the view. During moments like this, it’s easy to get caught up taking pictures so the team took a few personal moments to survey the area surrounding the northernmost road and then it hit me. One year ago, almost to the day, we stood on the shore at the other end of the Pan American Highway (southeast of Ushuaia, Argentina), and stared out toward the South Pole. Now it’s time to turn our convoy south and, once we reach Sunnyvale, Calif. we will have driven the absolute length of the world’s longest motorable road.

(N.B.)