Three roads, 229 miles and 48 hours— road tripping around Nome

The mission: to traverse all 229 miles of the summer-only road system in and around Nome in 48 hours to capture the beauty of a Seward Peninsula summer while it still blossomed around us. To play tourist in our own area is an important indulgence, to bask in the wonders we pass casually each day, to put fresh eyes on daily drives.

Crossing all the fingers we could manage for a weekend of pleasant weather, we set off for Council on Friday, August 9 with furry companion Lolo, the yellow lab, in tow.

An invaluable resource for the journey was Alaska’s Nome Area Wildlife Viewing Guidebook from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Mile for mile, the book outlined the many sights and gave historical context to the remnants of the past that dotted the landscape.

It was a bumpy read.

Chasing the last of the summer sun, the passing of the calendar as displayed by fireweed was noted, only the last few flowers at the top yet left to bloom.

We found other travelers setting up a bonfire near the Last Train to Nowhere, pallets stacked high for burning. Families fishing and shrieking in glee as they raced on foot across the bridge that granted sweeping views of a pummeling ocean and the glowing tundra. We pondered putting explanatory signs in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. (Positive: encouraging education. Negative: worn signs are a blight on the landscape, and a sort of theme-park-ification.)

It’s important for road trip participants to abide by their clear duties. Driver: avoid as many potholes and sharp rocks as possible. Passenger: align tunes with vibes and feed driver snacks and constant information about surroundings from the Wildlife guidebook.

Rivers snaking toward and around the Village of Solomon guided us inland.

The nice facade of the bed and breakfast stood in stark contrast to the old Solomon Roadhouse leaning on its last legs beside the river. A testament to the tribe’s resilience in the face of repeated historic displacement.

Eventually the road evened out and with it the landscape opened. For miles past the Village of Solomon, remains of abandoned mining operations peaked out from behind verdant brush.

We let out a shout at Big Hurrah Creek, morale was waning but the anticipation of tree sightings motivated more mileage. As we crested Skookum Pass, vistas were revealed behind fast whipping high cirrus clouds. 

The sentimental passenger began a series of poetic observations with: “Doesn’t the heart just open up here?” The unsentimental driver plodded perilously down the road. Roadtrip alliances frayed. Lots of cherry seeds were furiously spit and classic rock shook the speakers.

Driven to darkness, we stopped for the night. The evening ended with us squinting at shadows of spruce. We shut our eyes, eager to open them tomorrow and reveal a new setting.

The patter of rain woke the earth gently, followed by an abundance of freshness for the nostrils.

There wasn’t really a plan for our arrival in Council. We passed a parade of parked trucks before the river. The Niukluk River crossing proved a challenge our rental truck couldn’t surmount. We considered borrowing a boat bobbing on the shore but thought better of it. Dead fish lay gutted on the river banks. With all the vehicles we thought we’d find prodigious activity but the moated community proved too exclusive. We saw smoke rising from homes and fresh American flags flapping in the distance. Rain pelted. We turned around.

Lolo was fed taco meat for breakfast. The winding, snaking, sliding turns on the way back from Council discouraged proper digestion. Her regurgitated breakfast became our air freshener, twice. Cleaned up and cushioned by fog the journey continued.
Confident in our acute observations we’d logged on the drive there, we fell into conversations of moral quandaries and dilemmas.

Just south of Shovel Creek, we caught sight of two teenage grizzlies with thick and ragged brown-blonde coats on the beach; one craned its neck on hind legs to gawk back at us. The passenger scrambled to grab her camera and capture the wildlife, urging the mildly vexed driver to stop in a spot where her shot was unobstructed by willows.

The coast appeared sooner than we expected.

We provisioned in Nome: Gas, pizza, clean socks.

Next up: Kougarok
We cut toward the mountains at the Beam Road and passed fog and familiar homesteads around Dexter. The sky cracked open here and there as we gained elevation. Swallows whirled around our whip like a tornado. Herds of musk oxen loped along either side of the road. We put on a podcast for the first time and were confronted with a quote from Chekov: “Every happy man should have someone with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show its claws.”

Heavy thoughts for a light road trip but a fine reminder to be thankful as we weaved through roads that few are privileged enough to ever see.

We took a break to fill water jugs with the cool crisp spring water flowing from an inconspicuous pipe around mile 36. Riding parallel to Salmon Lake a crop of the tallest fireweeds yet highlighted the shoulder of the road.

Determined to see the end of the maintained road, we begrudgingly passed Pilgrim Hot Springs, promising to return for a soothing soak to close the night.

Every few miles a car parked by berry pickers appeared. Inspired, we tried our luck at ripe akpiks around mile 45 where misty air enhanced the psychedelic pattern of the tundra.

Lolo was happy to stretch her legs with us, bounding across the taut mounds, getting lost in the maze of willows encasing the marsh. The salmonberries had been thoroughly harvested and blueberries weren’t too ripe but the break in the ride was necessary before the next leg of the cratered road bucked us toward bridges of the inland Seward Peninsula.

The overlook of the Pilgrim River took our breath away. A deep and seemingly endless expanse before us dredged up images of a savannah. Curving long ridges, we mused how a journey of giraffes wouldn’t be out of place on the horizon.

We cracked into the pizza, Hawaiian, at the Kuzitrin Bridge and marveled at the structure that originated in downtown Fairbanks under the title of Cushman Street Bridge. Built in 1917 across the Chena River, the bridge was disassembled in 1958 and sent on a unique expedition down Chena, Tanana and Yukon rivers, barged up the Bering Sea to Nome and trucked to its current location 67.5 miles up the Kougarok Road.

Sitting with the fact that our journey could never come close to the one experienced by that hunk of metal, we headed for the “end” of the road, where maintenance stops and ATVs are encouraged. At Kougarok Bridge, before turning around, we made our mark in the form of a The Nome Nugget sticker that joined others in accessorizing a metal sign.

On the way back to Pilgrim, the bard driver made a true if not obvious statement that easily embodies the trip as a whole, “This is a pretty cool drive, huh?”

As we pulled up to Pilgrim Hot Springs the clouds were low but the fecund scent of voluminous vegetative growth and the playful exchanges of other visitors lifted all concerns that lay latent in our minds. Peacefulness reigned, irises and wild rhubarb and grasses of all greens abounded.

Local troubadour and Pilgrim Hot Springs maintenance team member Arlo Hannigan, checked us into one of the four cabins available to rent (there’s camping, too). We b-lined it to the hot spring pool, where we noted the new construction: Decking and changing rooms made access to the hot spring easier and cleaner than before. We floated in the 105°F waters and felt elevated. Soon we were chatting with UAF professors and youths from Minnesota, communing in the serene lushness occasionally tilting our heads to grasp the magnitude of the Kigs towering above us.

After 10 p.m., Arlo came by to test out a new and exciting project that he’s been spearheading for the last year: Three giant cedar soaking barrel tubs. There used to be soaking tubs in the 70s and 80s but they’d fallen into disrepair. They wanted, he explained, “to enhance amenities in a sustainable way” so they added the tubs. Last fall, Arlo found a cooper, or barrel-maker, in Anchorage who came out and constructed the extra tall cedar tubs now installed fifty yards to the west of the soaking pool.
Construction of the tubs was phase one. Phase two was the trenching and plumbing completed earlier this summer. Now the 180°F waters are piped directly to each tub and the temperature in the tub is reduced to between 102-108°F.

There’s still some fine-tuning to be done for the tubs to be fully operational, but they’re open now on an experimental basis. We were lucky enough to join Arlo on his very first soak in the tubs. Eager to share in the success of his labors, the satisfied caretaker beamed and bobbed beside us. The Kigs came out and a band of electric yellow to the horizon southwest announced that it must’ve been well after midnight.

When we ended the night we were the most blissed-out prunes on the entire Seward Peninsula. A plethora of birds made goodnight calls across the watery expanse.

After an early morning tour of the impressive agriculture developments at Pilgrim, we booked it out of there.

Forty-eight hours is barely enough time to cover all the roads and we were feeling the crunch to make it to Teller and back to Nome in time. We ran Lolo beside the truck for a while and then cooked back down Kougarok Road, passing Graphite One choppers slinging loads, a packraft course being taught on the banks of the Pilgrim River, and, at about mile 20, our boss Nils Hahn, far from home on his bicycle.

Gassed up again in Nome, we headed northeast on the Bob Blodgett Nome-Teller Highway. But not before we dropped off Lolo. She’s a decent road warrior but she was showing overt signs of being very sick of the bumps and jostling.

Bob Dylan joined us in her place, crooning to the tune of the western coast of the peninsula. We were thankful for a partial fog lift, allowing views of Woolley Lagoon but not quite clear enough to spot King Island.

A few were fishing at the Sinuk River Bridge, which is best described in the wildlife guidebook: “The magnitude of the valley, river channels, craggy mountains, and rolling tundra–all in one panoramic vista–is an impressive sight.”

The Kigluiak Mountains accompanied us on the right, their glacial features poking holes in the sky.

Twenty minutes in Teller gave us enough time to drop off a bunch of bananas and last week’s paper at a friend’s doorstep and loop the sandspit to check out all the fishing activity. It was sunny and town was empty of people, yet many could be seen in the surrounding areas subsisting in pads of sunshine.

Already feeling the accomplishment of our trip, we coasted on. For a moment, Grantley Harbor and Port Clarence were the topics of discussion. The gentle rolling viridescent hills cradles the quiet village and calm waters, which may well see a bursting of activity in the near future. Port Clarence, the place of a former LORAN site, is a natural deepwater port of refuge and one of the only natural spots for ships looking to hide from turbulent seas, and the region is poised for exponential growth of sea shipping traffic.

Before our eyes that were firmly on the prize (dinner at Airport Pizza), the ceiling of clouds we’d been under all day lifted. The way back to Nome was almost clear and we resolved to tackle one final experience. Pulling onto the turn off at mile 21 we caught some higher elevation views and to our surprise, a lonely musk ox bull. He couldn’t have cared less about us crashing his party for one on the hilltop and continued his unfazed graze even after minor attempts at catching his attention. After satisfying our camera’s memory cards we headed out.

Euphorically road weary and freshly showered, we debriefed over dinner as the closing ceremony for the Olympics flickered in the background. While we were happy to be back in civilization, the rawness of the landscape had worn off on us and left us grinning and reflecting on memories. We wished we had more time at the hot spring, were thankful for the guidebook and appreciative to have not killed one another. Road trips are an essential part of the American experience, a tradition of absorbing vast natural riches and human histories alike in quick order. Though limited in routes and destinations, the Seward Peninsula’s unpaved arteries proved that while all roads lead to Nome, the true wonders await beyond.