Marty’s photo of the day #3643: After Deb and I canoed across the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (going south to north), we continued out onto the Arctic Ocean until reaching a tiny village on Barter Island. There we enjoyed hot showers and soft beds before flying back to Fairbanks the next morning. This photo shows the Barter Island Airport (built by the US military). What you can’t see is the gusting wind. Had the wind been blowing that hard at any city airport, all air traffic would have been grounded. But in the arctic, pilots are used to the wind. As we took off, the heavy gusts threatened to flip us over!