Day 13: Nome, Alaska

We did not get out the door until 10:00am; it was nice I will admit!  We stopped by the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve Visitor's Center to turn in Colin's Junior Ranger book; got the badge and set out for a day of exploring.  You always hear there's no place like Nome and well I think it should be all roads lead to Nome.  Which is true except for the fact there are only 3 and they don't lead all the way to other populated parts of Alaska.  The only way to reach Nome is by plane or a super long boat trip.  We headed out on Council Highway.  The entire drive is only 73 miles.  This should be easy and somewhat quick; hardly any vehicles out today except for two four-wheelers and a few road graders doing road work.  Our first stop was at mile 33 for the Last Train to Nowhere.

Continuing along the drive around mile 40 you see one of the old gold dredges . . .

I think we were the only explorers today.  Another interesting thing about the area is you will not see trees in Nome.  We finally saw trees!  That's right there aren't any trees in Nome due to the ground being frozen tundra.

It only took 3.5 hours to drive the 73 miles from Nome to Council . . .

. . . and the road ends so we turned around and did it again!  It was just as exciting the second time around!  The houses are pretty rustic and would be pretty harsh in the winter . . .

We knew we were getting closer to Nome since we were not seeing trees anymore . . .

As we entered back in Nome we saw a herd of Musk Ox hanging out in the distance . . .

. . . wish we could have gotten closer to just sit and watch them.  Wow, I was so tired from sitting and yawned the whole way back; thankfully the drive back was faster.  We left around 10:15am and got back to Nome at 4:00pm.  We were a little over ambitious with our plans and had planned to drive two roads today; that did not happen!  Of course we were starving and popped into Milano's to have lunch/dinner.  It was an interesting menu as they served pizza, pasta, American grill food, Japanese food, and sushi.  We ordered a pizza with pepperoni and mushroom but got pepperoni and sausage; I was annoyed but what can you do?  So we ate it.  It was back to the hotel to pack for our early flight and the next leg of our adventure.