Monday, August 20, 2007
Nome
First of all, I think Nome is a great placename.
Nome is located on the Seward Peninsula, in northwestern Alaska on the Bering Sea. This is the penisula where the state comes the closest to Asia. The peninsula is the location of the Beringea land bridge.
You must fly to Nome (or go by water). Alaska Airlines has 2 flights daily in specially fitted planes that have about 1/2 of the passenger seats removed to make way for cargo. The only roads are 3 local roads that are each about 70 miles long that go to nearby villages. Nome is located far enough north so that no trees grow nearby. One of the reasons that people like to go to the end of the Council road is because there are trees there.
The town seems desolate and forlorn without snow. I imagine that WITH snow is it white and forbidding but less tattered looking. The tattered appearance may be due to the lack of trees to shelter the buildings. After the inital shock of the treeless landscape I really liked it. I felt like I was on the edge of the world.
Nome became a boom town during the Alaskan gold rush when gold was found on the beaches. There are abandoned gold dredging buckets sprinkled around town as a reminder of its gold-obsessed past. Gold mining has recently been revived. There were "miners" living in tents all along the beach. They had various kinds of makeshift dredging devices. I spent part of an afternoon wading around in the Bering Sea panning for gold. I have a few flakes for my trouble.
Nome is also the end of the Iditarod, the 1000 mile dogsled race that begins in Anchorage. The race milepost says 923. It is located near the Safety Roadhouse about a dozen miles from Nome on the Council road.
Nome is located on the Seward Peninsula, in northwestern Alaska on the Bering Sea. This is the penisula where the state comes the closest to Asia. The peninsula is the location of the Beringea land bridge.
You must fly to Nome (or go by water). Alaska Airlines has 2 flights daily in specially fitted planes that have about 1/2 of the passenger seats removed to make way for cargo. The only roads are 3 local roads that are each about 70 miles long that go to nearby villages. Nome is located far enough north so that no trees grow nearby. One of the reasons that people like to go to the end of the Council road is because there are trees there.
The town seems desolate and forlorn without snow. I imagine that WITH snow is it white and forbidding but less tattered looking. The tattered appearance may be due to the lack of trees to shelter the buildings. After the inital shock of the treeless landscape I really liked it. I felt like I was on the edge of the world.
Nome became a boom town during the Alaskan gold rush when gold was found on the beaches. There are abandoned gold dredging buckets sprinkled around town as a reminder of its gold-obsessed past. Gold mining has recently been revived. There were "miners" living in tents all along the beach. They had various kinds of makeshift dredging devices. I spent part of an afternoon wading around in the Bering Sea panning for gold. I have a few flakes for my trouble.
Nome is also the end of the Iditarod, the 1000 mile dogsled race that begins in Anchorage. The race milepost says 923. It is located near the Safety Roadhouse about a dozen miles from Nome on the Council road.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Alaska!
It's hard to appreciate just how big our 49th state really is unless you try to drive around it. And this is a fairly difficult task because there really aren't that many roads. I read somewhere that 40% of the state is wilderness. There aren't even trails in most of the national parks.
I'm not going to replay our whole 5-week trip in this blog. I think I will talk about a few of the highlights in successive posts.
Alaska is a big state.
The Dalton Highway goes from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. (Actually, it's not called the Dalton Highway until about mile 74.)
The road was built as a service road for the oil fields on the North Slope. The pipeline parallels the highway for most of the way. It wasn't opened for ordinary traffic until 1994. It used to be called the haul road because it was intended for huge trucks to carry supplies to the oil fields. It wasn't intended to be scenic and the trucks travel as fast as possible making it dangerous for smaller vehicles. The rock was very big. I was lucky that it didn't get through the windshield because it would have hit me in the chest.
The majority of the 411 miles are unpaved. Since it is the only road, if you commit to driving up you have to go back along the same route. The other thing about the road is that there are no services. Gas can be obtained at Coldfoot and at Deadhorse but in between it is all wilderness. Much of the wilderness is tundra, of course. There are a few "tourist" sites along the way. There is a roadside at the Arctic Circle and a nice viewpoint at Atigun Pass that looks down on the North Slope. We saw the fox, a herd of caribou, a herd of musk ox and a number of arctic birds. My favorite part of the journey was the last 100 miles from the pass to the North Slope where we saw the fox.
Being in Deadhorse was like being in somebody's workspace. The "hotels" are really housing for the workers with 3 meals a day cafeteria style.
The midnight sun was really neat. That clock reads 12 midnight. Look at how bright it is outside. I think the sun stayed at least 20 degrees above the horizon. Work goes on 24 hours a day. It becomes harder and harder to decide when to go to bed when you don't have the sunset to guide your biological clock.
I'm not going to replay our whole 5-week trip in this blog. I think I will talk about a few of the highlights in successive posts.
Alaska is a big state.
The Dalton Highway goes from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. (Actually, it's not called the Dalton Highway until about mile 74.)
The road was built as a service road for the oil fields on the North Slope. The pipeline parallels the highway for most of the way. It wasn't opened for ordinary traffic until 1994. It used to be called the haul road because it was intended for huge trucks to carry supplies to the oil fields. It wasn't intended to be scenic and the trucks travel as fast as possible making it dangerous for smaller vehicles. The rock was very big. I was lucky that it didn't get through the windshield because it would have hit me in the chest.
The majority of the 411 miles are unpaved. Since it is the only road, if you commit to driving up you have to go back along the same route. The other thing about the road is that there are no services. Gas can be obtained at Coldfoot and at Deadhorse but in between it is all wilderness. Much of the wilderness is tundra, of course. There are a few "tourist" sites along the way. There is a roadside at the Arctic Circle and a nice viewpoint at Atigun Pass that looks down on the North Slope. We saw the fox, a herd of caribou, a herd of musk ox and a number of arctic birds. My favorite part of the journey was the last 100 miles from the pass to the North Slope where we saw the fox.
Being in Deadhorse was like being in somebody's workspace. The "hotels" are really housing for the workers with 3 meals a day cafeteria style.
The midnight sun was really neat. That clock reads 12 midnight. Look at how bright it is outside. I think the sun stayed at least 20 degrees above the horizon. Work goes on 24 hours a day. It becomes harder and harder to decide when to go to bed when you don't have the sunset to guide your biological clock.
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