Day 15 Back in Barrow

We woke up early yesterday to pack things up and drop them off at the tarmac.  Of course the plane wasn't on time and we had our stuff out there for a while. The plane finally left Atqasuk, two hours late. We arrived in Barrow and dropped all of our gear at our huts. The smell of rotting meat is still here, and our neighbors still want nothing to do with us. Home sweet home. The rest of the day was pretty easy, Frida and I went to Freshwater Lake to take measurements. Frida is taking these measurements as part a project she's started. She's taking gas measurements to observe methane content of the lakes over time. We do this by placing floating chambers on the surface of the water and extracting the air inside to use for the samples. Frida and I got soaked on the choppy lake, the raft isn't the best with dealing with waves. We went back to our huts and got warm again and then went out for dinner. We went to the "Top of the World Hotel" (Barrow isn't the top of the world in any regards.) The food was the cheapest we've had and the Cheeseburgers aren't bad. In other news, a cruise ship was outside of Barrow yesterday. Ships are able to come through this area for the first time, since the sea ice isn't blocking their path. This brings up and interesting debate on whether this type of over-consumption is what broke up the sea ice. Anyway, the tourists are funny to watch.

The cruise ship. They were shuttling tourists ashore, who would then stand around wondering what to do in Barrow. Not much.