Postcard from Nome: Roadtripping Off the Road System
By Colin A. Warren and Anna Lionas
A version of this story first appeared in The Nome Nugget.
The mission: to traverse all 229 miles of the summer-only road system in and around Nome in forty-eight hours to capture the bounty of a Seward Peninsula summer while it still blossomed around us.
Crossing all the fingers we could manage for a weekend of pleasant weather, we set off for Council on Friday, August 10, with furry companion Lolo, the yellow lab, in tow.
Alaska’s Nome Area Wildlife Viewing Guidebook from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game was an invaluable resource for the journey. Mile for mile, the book outlined the many sights and gave historical context to the ruins 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, with 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 were 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.
RECYCLED BRIDGE – originally a bridge from Cushman St. in downtown Fairbanks, the Kuzitrin Bridge was barged down multiple rivers and across the Bering Sea to find its new home on the Kougarok Road.
Photo by Colin A. Warren
We switched drivers. After fear was struck into the new passenger and muscles tensed, the new driver revealed a common thread amongst her passengers: “I always reach this point: when people fear for their lives.”
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 wildlife guidebook.
Rivers snaking toward and around the Village of Solomon guided us inland.
The newness 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 historical displacement. Reflection: blighted buildings look more beautiful in nature.
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 – for there were none around Nome – motivated more mileage. Vistas were revealed behind fast-whipping high cirrus clouds as we crested Skookum Pass.
The sentimental passenger began a series of poetic observations: “Doesn’t the heart just open up here?” The unsentimental driver plodded perilously down the causeway. Roadtrip alliances frayed. Many 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.
COLD WELCOME – a fridge at the end of Council Road offers free refreshments
Photo by Colin A. Warren
There wasn’t really a plan for our arrival in Council. It’s a summertime-only village at the end of the road and across a river with no bridge. 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 smashed and gutted on the banks. We thought we’d find prodigious activity with all the vehicles – at least some fisherman with poles out or people prepping their boats – 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 digestion. Her regurgitated breakfast became our air freshener twice. We pulled over and used a lot of paper towels and gave Lolo a short walk. 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 their 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 Road. We cut into the mountains and passed fog and homesteads around Dexter, and the sky cracked here and there as we gained elevation. Swallows whirled around our whip like a tornado. Herds of muskoxen lopped along either side of the road.
SLICING WILDERNESS - the Kougarok Road leaves Nome and dead-ends over 70 miles north of Nome
Photo by Anna Lionas
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 few are privileged enough ever to 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 highlighted the shoulder.
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 abandoned by berry pickers appeared. Inspired, we tried our luck at ripe akpiks around mile forty-five, 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 the blueberries weren’t too ripe. Still, 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 Hawaiian pizza 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 the Shena, Tanana, and Yukon rivers, barged up the Bering Sea to Nome, and trucked to its current location sixty-seven and a half 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.
On the way back to Pilgrim, the bard driver made an accurate, if not obvious, statement that effortlessly embodied the trip, “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-degree Fahrenheit 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 Kigluiak Mountains 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 that 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-degree Fahrenheit waters are piped directly to each tub (they reduce the temps to between 102-108 degrees Fahrenheit).
TUBS OF PARADISE - new cedar barrel tubs were recently installed at Pilgrim Hot Spring on the Seward Peninsula
Photo by Anna Lionas
There’s still some fine-tuning 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 Kigluiak Mountains came out, and a band of electric yellow to the horizon southwest announced that it must’ve been well after midnight.
We were the most blissed-out prunes on the entire Seward Peninsula when we ended the night. 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 was barely enough time to cover all the roads, and we were feeling the crunch of making it to Teller and back to Nome on time. We ran Lolo beside the truck for a while and then cooked back down Kougarok Road, passing Graphite One choppers slinging loads and a pack raft course being taught on the banks of the Pilgrim River.
Gassed up again in Nome, we headed Northeast on the Teller Highway. But not before we dropped off Lolo. She’s a decent road warrior but was showing overt signs of being sick of the bumps and jostling.
Bob Dylan joined us in her place, crooning to the tune of the peninsula's Western coast. We were thankful for a partial fog lift, which allowed views of Woolley Lagoon but was not quite clear enough to spot King Island.
A few were fishing at the Sinuk River Bridge, 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 left, 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 spit to check out all the fishing activity. It was sunny, and the 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 was the topic of discussion. The gentle rolling viridescent hills cradle the quiet village and calm waters, which may well see a bursting of activity in the near future. With an 80-foot deep entry and multiple spits of protection, the harbor proffers 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 twenty-one, we caught some higher elevation views and, to our surprise, a lonely muskox bull. He couldn’t have cared less about us crashing his party for one on the hilltop, continuing his unfazed graze even after minor attempts at catching his attention. After satisfying our camera’s memory cards, we headed out.
LONE BULL - a male musk ox hands out beside Teller Road on the Seward Peninsula
Photo by Anna Lionas
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 in the hot spring, were thankful for the guidebook, and were appreciative to have not killed one another. Road trips are essential to the American experience, a tradition of absorbing vast natural riches and human histories 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.