Well, took a few days to get something up but, back from that quick visit to Nome. It was another pretty good one. The original plan was to fly out early in the AM on Alaska Air and return on the late flight but Larry thought I was shaving it a bit close (9.2 hours of work 9.6 hours of ground time) so, it turned into an overnighter. That was sweet. Much like how alllllll of the cars are still rented out for the next couple weeks the first three hotels I called were full. So, settled for the Polaris. Sweet. More on that later...
So, the work went well. This guy Tim from the hatchery shuttled me around. That actually ended up being pretty fun since he took me to his hatchery among other places. The hatchery's on a year-round flowing stream that's mainly groundwater fed so that's pretty neat. Here's a picture of the creek:


The hatchery is pretty small but they have high hopes. This winter was their best yet since GW helped them get up and running with radio telemetry and then Ken and I maintain the data link and download data for him. Pretty much they just grow fry but they have a cool system, check it out:


The other cool part about the hatchery is that it's located pretty close to where Jessie and I saw the momma and three cubs back on the helicopter trip. You can also see one of the channels used to bring water from the interior of the peninsula to the coast during the gold rush.


So, that was pretty cool. Here's been another trip when I'm kicking myself for not bringing along a telephoto. I was thinking I'd be all business out there, no time for animals... figures. Here's a heard of 25 - 40 musk ox that were just chilling out off the Kougarok road *sigh*. We tried getting close anyway but they were a little jumpy.

Tim the hatchery guy played a big role in the early 70s getting the musk ox moved to the Seward Peninsula from Nunivak island. That was pretty cool. From 51 or 71 animals there's now several thousand.

So, that was pretty fun but the day didn't really start until rolling back into town around 10:30. I was staying at the Polaris, one of the more notorious hotels in the state. My first three choices were all booked up. I guess if I was thinking I would have gone the bed and breakfast route... oh well. Yeah, so the Polaris is pretty sweet. Has a large permanent tenant contingency plus other folks generally of the drunken variety floating through. The people I met there were all very nice. The lobby attendant took pity on my large load of gear (despite the overnighter I still had 150+ pounds of gear) so put me at the top of the stairs. Very nice I thought. The catch it turns out is living above the lobby. So, the door crashed on a regular basis. Up until 12:30 I thought it was my neighbors down the hall partying it up but sometime after midnight till 4ish the crashing was pretty active with the return of the bar patrons... So, the hotel doesn't actually look that bad. Here it is from the outside:


And really, I came away happy. It's pretty funny, I came away happy despite this list of oddities:

• No working lights.


• Room right above the lobby


• No blanket


• A window that wouldn't close


• Drunken Yelling

The plush interior:


Finally, the million dollar view out the window:


And of course, what trip to Nome would be complete without a bit more uniquely Nome features. Check out this classic typo in the Frontier office. Can you believe they misspelled their own website?!


More bush rules:

And really, why the quotes on cake? Like it's secret code for something else.

So, I finished the trip reviewing a paper for Molly in our storage unit since the library didn't open until Noon. Nice chilly and rainy day for hanging out and doing nothing...


Well, more to come.