Travel Reference
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facedly in the bushes, before heading up the road to the remains of the Petersen dredge
near the Ophir placer mine. The dredge, once a gravel-chewing monster three stories high,
is now a deserted hulk stranded in the middle of its own tailings. We climb a stepladder
missing a rung and walk carefully around gaping holes in the floor, kicking over rusting
nuts and shackles, the familiar detritus of every gold rush dredge that has been picked
over by human scavengers and left to dissolve into a sad pile of splinters and rust.
Saturday Norton Sound is making itself felt on the seawall in the form of rolling
combers, so we drive north on the Kougarok Mountain Road to Pilgrim Hot Springs. We
skirt Anvil Mountain, turn left at Wyatt Earp's roadhouse in Dexter, and follow the Nome
River into the Kigluaik Mountains and over the Nugget Divide. Peggy spots a musk ox,
and we all see the very large behind of a grizzly going very fast in the opposite direction.
At Pilgrim Hot Springs stand the weathered and not entirely stable remains of a Cathol-
ic orphanage, church, dormitory and outbuildings, in business for twenty years back be-
fore World War II. The real attraction is the sulphur hot springs out back, where the hot
water is captured in a hot tub, and in which Sharyn, Rhonda, Peggy and I immediately im-
merse our feet. The current issue of the Nome Nugget (“Alaska's Oldest Newspaper”, the
original publisher of which, J.F.A. Strong, went on to become territorial governor of
Alaska) tells the story of the man back in the 30's who jumped into Serpentine Springs,
another hot springs farther north with a mean temperature of 200 degrees. The story
doesn't say if he immediately died. It does say all his hair fell out.
Pilgrim Hot Springs are hot enough to turn Sharyn's feet what Peggy calls “humpy
red.” A moose watches us with incurious eyes as he munches his way through a stand of
willow. A flock of geese passes overhead in a perfect V formation, which reminds us all
that winter is not far away. Peggy tells us that Nomeites visit the hot springs all winter
long on snow machines. “It takes about an hour, hour and a half. You don't have to go by
the road, you can cut straight across. And if the water's too hot, you just throw in a chunk
of snow.”
We run out of time before we make it to Teller, although Peggy tells us that when we
get to Teller we really need to get someone to take us across Port Clarence to Brevig Mis-
sion, because that's even prettier, and…
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