The Road System & 4th of July

0Josh • 6th Jul 2005 • blog entries, nome., station life, travel

Its a Wednesday afternoon and the week has been going by pretty quick. As I mentioned in Fridays photoblog entry, I’ve been doing lots of fishing and getting ready for the salmon runs to start pretty soon. The pink (or humpback) salmon will run first, and then the Silver (or Coho) salmon will be around here in early August. After going out almost every night last week I only have come back empty handed twice. Once after three hours of not catching anything and almost leaving many times I got 4 within 20 minutes!
Over the weekend Lon, Irene, Lydia & I took a trip to Teller, the one area village that is on the Nome road system. There are three roads that leave Nome.

1 – The Teller Road goes 73 miles to Teller, a village with a population of about 250 people. It’s a trip that took us a little over 2 hours one way.

2 – The Kougarok Rd goes about 85 miles and while doesn’t lead to much at the end of the road, it provides access to Salmon Lake (mile 38) and to a airstrip…along with great views.

3 – The Council Road goes 72 miles to Council, a summer fish camp community. Very few people live in Council year round, but many people go there for the summer. Council is also about where the tree line begins so many people snowmachine to Council in the winter to get their Christmas trees. Also on this road is “the last train to nowhere” an abandoned train from 1907 that is just sitting on the tundra as a remnant of the gold rush.

Monday was fourth of July and because there are no fireworks shows in Nome (because it never is dark enough) the main festivities happen in the afternoon. There was a one oclock parade followed by community street games including foot races, egg races, a pie eating contest, and the Eskimo high kick. Prizes for each race were $5 for first, $3 for second, and $1 for third. Free ice-cream at the fire hall and an Eskimo blanket toss took the festivities up until around 5:00pm.
We had a great time going to all of these events and I think it brought back some old, old memories of doing these as a small child in Nome. It was fun to be a part of a small town and get that experience. There were also a lot of tourists in town, as there have been for a few weeks now. On the Coffee Crew morning show, Irene and I had our own fourth of July spectacular when I took the remote unit out to the beach and set off some fireworks that I had bought at the one fireworks stand in town. We played the 1812 overture back at the station with bottle rockets and firecrackers going off live from the beach….it was pretty fun.