Hello: We had a nice visit in Nome. Apparently we had one of thier two nice days of weather this year, a bit cooler than we are accustomed to by now but not a problem. The people were very friendly and helpful especially the fisherman and waterway dredgers that we were anchored near. Adam of the fishing boat 'Anchor Point' came right over and suggested we tie to his boat when he saw us anchor in the harbour. Probably the first thing we noticed about the town was the dredges including a large one just north of town that are used for mining gold. In town there are several used buckets around used for decoration or plant pots. The area has a real gold mining background and alot of mining is going on now even just along the sea shore outside of town. Along the shore you don't need a land title and anyone can placer mine the gold found in with the garnet red sand. We were told one guy gets 5-7 ounces on a good day, good money at around $600 per oz, but no doubt alot don't make that much. We were told a happy story of a Czechoslovakian refugee/immigrant that found a 60 oz gold nugget where his son quit the boring shovel work to go fishing. There is a new commercial hard rock mine that is coming in called Rock Creek. We were also told that gold miners are not the most even keeled people out there (passion for the yellow stuff). The town had been called Anvil City until 1899 with the Anvil mountain behind it. Actually Nome was a spelling mistake from an 1850 British officer that had written "? Name" and draftsman called it Cape Nome. Others believe that it was eskimo for "I don't know" when asked for the name of the town. The population is ? with 65% being native. We were told 'half'-breed' is not a negative term and there is a basketball team by that name that resisted federal pressure to change its name. Nome's biggest claim to fame right now is as the finish line to the famous 1049 mile Iditarod dog sled race with mushers from all over the world. It also symbilizes the 1925 trip to get the diptheria serum to Nome before an outbreak. In Nome and perhaps other areas of Alaska the natives are referred to as Eskimos whereas in Canada it is Inuit, I didn't hear the work Inuit while we were in Nome. If I remember correctly Eskimo is an Indian word meaning 'raw meater eater'. Considering the excellent Japanese sashimi at the restaurant in town that sounds like Kurt actually. The famous Will Rogers had planned to visit Nome after Barrow in his tour of 1935 but died in a plane crash while taking off. Days before the crash he said "I prefer an honorable death in a plane, or falling off a horse.". Another famous person was the aviator General Jimmy Doolittle that spent some time growing up in Nome from 1900 to 1908. They have the largest basketball tournament in the US apparently with 2000 people in March. At one time the town was the biggest in Alaska around 1900. Storms and fires have removed alot of the old historical buildings though. Richard Beneville gave us a talkative 2.5 hour tour of the area and showed us around. The weather was overcast and rainy so we didn't get as good as view as possible and we didn't see the musk ox that are common close to town. We did see moose though. On our way back from Salmon Lake we drove through Dexter which across the road is the house that Wyatt and Josie Earp may have owned while they spent 4 years in the area with a bar. Roald Amundsen we know as he was the first to cross the Northwest Passage in a ship in 1903 but as a plaque in Nome shows he was also the first to cross over in a zeppelin from Iceland to Nome in 1926, something we didn't know. A lot of the tourists are bird watchers. Being so far west they are able to see some that are on other migratory routes as there is only 3 local native birds. Some souvenirs we saw listed 100 birds in the area. One thing we didn't see except for pictures were some rail engines that were originally designed for Chicago and New York elevated lines but because of their light weight were brought to Nome to run on the permafrost ground. www.nomealaska.org >From our experience in Nome and some of the other Alaska towns like Barrow it appears that there is more cultural diversity in the US north than the Canadian north. In Barrow we had a taxi driver from Asia that couldn't really speak English. People in Alaska including natives are more outgoing and less reserved than in Canada's north also. Just about every Alaska town has a Mexican restaurant, kind of like every town further south in Canada has a Chinese restaurant. There certainly are a lot of colorful people per capita in the north. I didn't realize that there are people on Little Diomede also, 125 with one white teacher. It is the most expensive mail run in the states of $5000 each trip with a helicopter. We are now in Kodiak and look forward to exploring the new area. For one thing we read that it was also the capital of Russian America for awhile. -- Brad, Ben, and Kevin Idlewild Custom Buehler 55 powered by a 55-hp Kubota Home port: Dunvegan, Alberta http://www.idlewildexpedition.ca http://dieselducks.com/Idelwild.html http://www.trawlersandtrawlering.com To follow Idlewild with Google Earth: http://tinyurl.com/ksnhg For the Trawler M/V JPEG version: http://tinyurl.com/ovdt7