I suspected that I would love the sunlight in the arctic circle because the constant presence of daylight would put the sun at a very advantageous angle in the sky. I suspected correctly. I prefer low suns to overhead suns. The sun has been joining us quite a bit lately. In fact, today in Atqasuk, it was hot and buggy. One layer of clothes and one layer of bug spray were all I needed.

Saturday started out as a work day but as the sun came out we stopped working and headed back to town for the first Nalukatuk of the season. Between the sun and the beach, where the festival was being held, I was pretty happy.

A Nalukatuk is held to pass out the meat and celebrate a successful whale hunt. These days are North Slope Borough holidays, so things close down and people fly in from all the next villages over. We didn’t go to the meat passing out part and we didn’t eat any whale, but this was merely the first one. This particular whale was killed about a month ago. I think there will be four more.

The party is thrown by the successful whaling crew. The part of the celebration that we saw was the blanket toss. A trampoline-sized seal skin is used to toss people into the air, and the goal is to stay on the blanket and keep standing and jumping with each toss. There are often injuries, but there is also candy being tossed by the people being tossed. Candy is exciting.

We’d had a full day that included going out for Thai food that was served by a woman from Vietnam by way of Ohio. She gave us lemon meringue desserts on the house because she liked our style. Mostly she liked Jean’s style, though Jean turned down the offer of an ear and nose massage.

Rob and I were not interested in watching a movie or going to bed before midnight, because he’d suggested taking an ATV out to Point Barrow and it sounded like a capital idea, especially given the sunlight situation. Point Barrow is about nine miles northeast of Barrow itself. Since our hotel and lab are already six miles out of Barrow, we didn’t have as far to go as all that.

We drove down a fairly narrow (maybe… i don’t know, it was less than a football field) dirt strip with the sea on either side. These Seas mean that the ocean we see on the beach every day is not really the ocean, but at the end of the point, it is. So we saw the Arctic Ocean and took pictures and kicked a piece of whale blubber and checked out the various bones adorning the beach.

Rob also instructed me in how to drive the ATV. This went about as well as could be expected.

The next morning we put Bob on a plane. Joining us for the farewell breakfast at “Pepe’s North of the Border” were a reporter and a middle school science teacher from Florida. Both were writing blogs about their experiences working with a research group from Florida International University. The former was here on her own dime and doing freelance writing for her paper, and she was getting on the same plane as Bob and going home. The latter is a part of the PolarTREC program for educators, and she has three or four more weeks of Barrow time. Both blogs are linked at the far right.

We don’t have our leader anymore, so we’ll have to be content with emailing him every other day until August when he comes to pack us up.