I've Been Everywhere, Man
  • Our Travels
    • Alaska Stories
    • Flowers, Trees, Rocks & Skies
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog

Nome, Alaska on the Bering Sea

8/3/2016

3 Comments

 
Picture
A view of Nome from the air.
​There are no roads to Nome, Alaska, so we left the rig behind and flew to this small city on the Bering Sea.   The town itself was created after gold prospectors arrived in the late 1890s. 
Picture
The miners who settled Nome are remembered in this display in the town square.
​The gold prospectors found Native groups of Yupik and Inupiac who lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, hunting seals, walrus and whales and gathering berries, willow and other plants during the long, sunny days of summer and into the fall.
Picture
Reindeer -- and reindeer antlers -- are a big part of Native life.
​In the hundred and sixteen years since Nome’s founding, settlers and Natives have managed to develop a small economy but one still plagued by scarce resources and jobs.  To our surprise, the search for gold still attracts many people who scour the bottom of the ocean for bits on the precious metal. Vacuum-equipped boats and scuba divers have replaced the dredging machines of old.
Picture
This dredger would pull silt up from the riverbed and extract gold from the dirt.
Picture
Today, scuba divers go out into the ocean on these boats equipped with vacuums to suck up the ocean floor for gold.
​Food, clothing, vehicles and other supplies are shipped in via boat or plane. Scarce building supplies means the houses are slapped together with odds and ends, giving the town a rundown look.
Picture
Note the moose antlers and snow shoes on the wall.
​The presence of the Native people gives Nome a special quality.  In town, many suffer the consequences of alcoholism and unemployment while others work to keep alive their traditions of dance and carving spirits into walrus ivory and bone. We attended a cultural evening with traditional dancers and singers.
Vehicles are few and far between, but with luck, we rented a work truck and headed out into the tundra, broad rolling hills with no trees that is covered with lichen and moss and, at this time of year, acres of berries. 
Picture
A river full of salmon flows through the tundra.
​We did not see any bears but did find muskox, like this fellow on the roadside.
Picture
A musk ox near Safety, Alaska.
​At Pilgrim Hot Springs we explored an old Catholic mission and orphanage where many children lived 100 years ago after influenza and tuberculosis killed many of the adults.  
Picture
The old Catholic mission at Pilgrim Hot Springs.
Picture
A nun painted this mural above the altar in the church at the hot springs.
​The next day we drove 70 miles out on one of the three dirt roads connecting Nome to Native settlements.  The roads are not plowed in the winter and only snow mobiles are used for transportation during those months.  We drove through hills of tundra and rivers packed with salmon that were fighting their way upstream to lay their eggs.
​The town of Teller is a Native village, where people dry their fish on traditional racks on the ocean-side.  Many Natives still spend summer months in fish camps by the water, where the fish and berries are plentiful and where they can hunt caribou and moose.
Picture
Salmon is drying on a traditional rack in Teller, Alaska.
​Few people have cars, but most of them have snow mobiles and four-wheelers for getting around town. 
Picture
No cars but four snowmobiles at this typical Teller, Alaska home.
​Back in Nome, we checked out the music of the Salmonberry Folk Festival, where the Anchorage-based band Super-Saturated Sugar Strings led a music jam at the famed Safety Roadhouse, the Last Check Point of the Iditarod race.
Picture
A summer afternoon jam at the Safety Roadhouse.
​Four days in Nome gave us a glimpse of this remote corner of America and a way of life that harkens back to a way of life thousands of year old, when people learned how to survive in the frigid, but not really barren, land.
3 Comments

    Inspiration

     Listen as Johnny Cash & Lynn Anderson tear it up.
     We'll be singing their song when we come home. 

    Picture
    Listen here.

      Follow us as we go everywhere!  
      Enter your email address below.

    Submit

    Where we are today.

    Archives

    November 2020
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    Categories

    All
    Backpacking
    Grand Tetons
    Maine
    RV Life

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Our Travels
    • Alaska Stories
    • Flowers, Trees, Rocks & Skies
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog