Caribou Hunt

This is the caribou that Jake spotted on our hunting trip to northern Alaska.  Our family and another family just got back from a trip to the top of Alaska.  It took us 17 hours to drive there.  It was a lot of fun.  We passed the Arctic Circle and the Yukon River.  We drove north of Fairbanks for about 450 miles, most of which was on dirt road.  We went in search of caribou that the guys could shoot with a bow and arrow.  The hunt up there is only open to the bow unless you hike 5 miles off of he road and then you can use a gun.  This proved to be a bit of a challenge since you have to be pretty close to get off a good shot with the bow.  Jeremiah and Cameron (our friend) spent 4 days stalking up on many caribou only to have the animals spook just when they were getting close.  Somewhat frustrating but they definitely learned a lot for the trip next year.   We saw 100's of caribou, some wild musk ox and a lot of other little critters.  The temperature up there was never above 40 degrees and mostly stayed in the 30's.  We woke up a couple of mornings to snow on the ground.  It was quite the adventure.  We stayed warm in our tents with little space heaters and some good sleeping bags.  The kids did awesome and want to go back.   They got a little bored on the long drive up and back but other than that we had a fabulous time.