Nome (part 2)

Early Tuesday morning, Mr. X and I packed up some groceries and called a cab to take us to the airport.

We arrived at the airport and walked right up to the TSA security podium...only to discover that I had left my license at home. The TSA agent offered to accept other i.d., but worried I wouldn't be able to get back to Juneau, so I hurried out to the parking lot to hail another cab.

The driver got me home and back to the airport within 15 minutes. The poor guy got his tip in quarters.

We had an uneventful flight to Anchorage and after a short layover we were on our way to Nome.

Anchorage airport

Our plane to Nome was a 737-400. The front of the plane is for cargo and rows 16 - 27 accomodate passengers. Mr. X and I sat next to Dawn Weyiouanna who regaled us with stories of living in Nome, Shishmaref, and Barrow. Her husband is an itinerant art teacher for the Barrow school district. She's a retired math teacher who taught 13 years in Shish. She and her husband Dick were on their way to his home village for a funeral.

Dawn told us about her mother-in-law who grew up as the daughter of a reindeer herder. When the Mother-in-Law came to visit them in Fairbanks one winter, she commented that the lights of the city reminded her of the glistening light reflected in the eyes of the reindeer at night. She had never before seen city lights.

We landed in Nome and quickly met with Mr. X's local contact who took us to the hotel and out to lunch at Airport Pizza. Afterward Rich dropped me off on Front street for some sightseeing while Mr. X went to meetings.

I visited the Nome Visitor's Center, library and city museum. Mr. X found me checking out displays on dog sledding, the northwest passage and gold mining. After a dinner of Mountain House spaghetti, we went for a walk along the frozen, but breaking up Bering Sea. We stopped to look at a gold dredger.

Everywhere we went people told us this summer should be crazy with everyone out looking for gold dust on the beach. Several stretches of land specifically excluded mining.

In case you were wondering. We took these pictures of Nome at 9 pm. The sun didn't set until after 11 pm. We had light snow in the afternoon and then brilliant (i.e. blinding) sun all evening.