The most expensive and weirdest trip I’ve ever taken, or will ever take, is probably Utqiaġvik.

America’s northernmost settlement used to be called Barrow, to make it easier for Anglophones to pronounce. But in 2016, the Iñupiat majority of the town were finally able to reclaim the village’s original name, Utqiaġvik, whose meaning is unclear but seems to be related to the word for “potato.” Even after getting back, it took me days to figure out how to pronounce it. (The ġ, I found out, is pronounced like a French R, gutturally. ʊtkiˈɑːvɪk)

A treeless tundra sits atop a layer of permafrost, and because of that the houses have to be constructed specially. You can’t build anything that heats up the ground, which means if you want plumbing, your house has to be constructed on pylons. The pylon method is expensive, so if you want to save money you’ll be building a small wooden shack with no running water. Your toilet is a “honey bucket,” or a five-gallon bucket that gets emptied by a circulating truck once a day. Grim.

Also, because of the permafrost, you can’t build roads. If you don’t have mud boots, say goodbye to your sneakers.

I’m used to zoning laws and building codes that make towns look as close to Mayberry as possible. But the presence of these wooden shacks everywhere made the whole place feel alien and impoverished. On the plane back home, Hayden said, “Guys I’m just realizing that the people in Utqiaġvik are living in poverty.”

The fact that I want to describe the whole situation as feeling “un-American” just goes to show how limited my visual grasp of America is. It’s easy to stay in convenient, manicured civilization and forget that much of the country lives in squalor.

We got an overpriced snack at the grocery store (everything here is expensive because it’s all barged in), and stopped in at the Iñupiat Heritage Center, a museum focused on the culture and history of the town. The detailed artwork, mostly done on bone and baleen, was super inspiring.

Trucks and ATV’s barreled past us as we walked around town, but pedestrians were scarce. Dogs are chained up at all the houses, to keep away the polar bears

We took a tour with a man called Mike Shults who runs the only independent guided tour in town. The amputee veteran picked us up in his Ford truck and drove us around for hours, the entire time monologuing in the most well-prepared and rapid fire way. The tour took us around town, to the graveyard out in the tundra, and up to Point Barrow. It’s impossible for us to go to Point Barrow because it’s native land, but he took us as far as you can go. We picked arctic cotton in a field, looked for snowy owls, and played soccer on a football field at the top of the world. (The last part felt like a fever dream.) If you’re ever in Barrow, look up Mike Shults and take his tour. $125/person may seem steep, but take it from a skinflint that it’s totally worth it.

The highlight of the trip was our arctic dip. When I say highlight, I mean it gave me major anxiety for most of the two days. Dreading it because I knew it was going to be freezing, looking forward to it because, what a flex! On our first day there, I was surprised how tolerable it was to stick a hand in the water. Maybe three months of life in Alaska readjusted my nervous system.

I stressed about the dip all night, and the next morning I put off getting out of bed as long as I could. I wanted to go for an arctic dip just as much as I wanted to skip it, but we utilized our group fomo to pressure each other into taking the plunge.

When we got to the beach, we went RUNNING into that water. There was lots of screaming. My legs were numb and my feet tingled in a way they never had before. I saw Bobbi dip her head completely under, while I was bobbing up to my shoulders trying to breathe. I’ll let her have the bragging rights on that one, I thought as I moved towards the shore. It felt a little bit like one of those slow-motion action sequences in a war movie, as I looked around at my compadres in various states of panic.

A taxi brought us shivering and muddy back to our hotel. That’s three oceans I’ve swum in, two left to go.

When people ask me what I thought of Utqiaġvik, I have to say I’m not sure what to say. Apart from being able to say you went to the top, there’s not much reason to justify the high price tag of going, and there isn’t much to recommend by way of an activity-packed trip. A muddy little town with no industry and no trees, but some people who seemed, for the most part, happy.

I’m reminded of that conversation I had with the Iñupiat stranger on my way to get dinner. When asked what it was like growing up in Barrow, she was at a loss for words for a second—probably because, how do you answer a question like that? After gathering her thoughts, she said she was happy, because she had family and friends. She had a community, and that made all the difference. And I kinda felt that.

The best times in my life have had little to do with surroundings, and a lot to do with who I’m spending my time with. I thought of my life in Alaska this summer, and realized that even though the scenery and weather were beautiful and the work was good, what really made it so special was the people I got to live and work with, and the friendships I made. You can be sad and lonely in a beautiful place, just as much as you can be happy in a gray-skied tundra.

So I enjoyed Utqiaġvik, but it wasn’t just so much for the bragging rights of having been to the tippy-top of America, or for the beauty of the landscape, or for the quality of the lodging. It was the people I went with that made it such a good trip. Jumping in the Arctic Ocean together, driving around town together, going through the airports together. Those are the things I’ll remember most about Utqiaġvik.