2016 Epic Road Trip - Days 66-68

Day 66-68

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday July 18-20

Nome, Alaska and surroundings

Another excursion!  We caught a flight Monday from Anchorage, AK to Nome, AK which is inaccessible by land, except in the winter, and then only accessible by sled dogs.  With a rental car from the Dredge 7 Inn, we drove to both of the  outlying towns -- Council and Teller, and then flew back to Anchorage.

Apparently, these 3 lucky Swedes found the gold, or at least staked their claim.  This brought about 40,000 more gold seekers to Nome back at the turn of the last century.  Today, Nome is a small, run-down town, not modern in any way.  Mining and fishing are the only industries.  The towns of Council and Teller are impoverished.

The old Dexter Inn, built by Wyatt Earp and a business partner.  He came to Nome when the word was out that gold was discovered and determined that he could make more money "Mining the Miners" than by mining for gold.

Anchor Inn was the scene of a brawl on one of the reality TV shows about gold mining in AK.

The Safety Roadhouse, about 20 miles from Nome, is the last checkpoint of the Iditarod race before reaching the finish line in Nome.

The finish line, which is moved to the center of the street during the race.

At the scene of "The last train to nowhere" outside of Nome.

"The last train to nowhere," abandoned and junked between Nome and Council.  Originally planned to be used for transportation between the two towns during the gold rush.

An operating dredge in the Bering Sea.

A historic dredge left where it was used 100+ years ago.  There are six old ones from the gold rush left in place around Nome.

The Nome Small Boat Harbor and some of the questionable seaworthy dredges....

The Au Grabber dredge sits in the Nome harbor.  It is featured on one of the reality TV shows

The Christine Rose dredge, also shown on the TV reality show.

An old dredge abandoned alongside the road to Council, AK

If you look really hard, you might see Russia from Teller, across the Bering Sea.

Back 10,000 years ago, the Bering Strait was solid land from Russia to the Alaska territory.  After the latest ice age, the lands were separated by water, and they are presently about 100 miles apart.  Little Diomedes and Big Diomedes islands are out in the middle of the strait, Little Diomedes being part of Alaska and Big Diomedes being part of Russia.

The hospital in Nome serves also as a local art gallery.  Cool picture of the iditarod.

Musk Oxen became extinct in western Alaska back in the 1800s.  In the 1970s, about 30 were reintroduced to the Nome area.  Today there are about 2,000 of them running amok on the roads and nearby.  They look like woolly mammoths, which also lived in this area many years ago.