It was interesting but a far cry from the gereral idea of how eskimos live - snow, igloos, etc. It is just a village of bleak and mostly unpainted and rather dilapidated buildings altho some of the government and public buildings were quite new and modern. We got a certificate for flying over the Arctic Circle. The pilot warned us that we were going to cross it and then made the plane take an artificial bump which he informed us was due to crossing the circle. We flew back to Nome for the night.

I had gotten acquainted with another middle aged couple and a single woman on the flight in from Anchorage and to Kotzebue and return and had sat with this woman on the bus etc. So it was somewhat amusing to discover that she and I were assigned to the same room at the hotel. Altho this is amusing to relate actually there was nothing to it as both of us were modest enought to retire to the bathroom for the more personal stages of dressing. However, it was a different experience and would not have been possible if I had been wearing a wig. As it was we carried on quite a conversation while I stood in front of the mirror in my nightie and robe putting the curlers in my hair for the night.

That night we all had Reindeer steak for dinner in the expectation that it would be something different. In actuality it tasted very much like beef sirloin. The next day we drove back into the hills about 30 miles to the claim of an old prospector and his wife. We all panned a few pans of gravel and most of us got a few specks of gold to bring home as souvenirs. Not worth anything but interesting because we had panned them out ourselves. My description of Nome is, "the most densely populated junk yard on earth”. This is because people live there, but there are no trees, bushes, flowers, sidewalks (except a dilapidated board walk on the 5 block main drag). People don't paint their houses and what ever they don't want in the way of old boards, pipes, cans, broken machinery and misc. junk is just tossed into the side or back yards. The place therefore, resembles a junk yard with people. I guess it must be something about the arctic or the pioneer spirit or something. The people are very nice, friendly and interesting but they just don't seem to operate by the standards of the "lower 48".

Well, back to Anchorage and the next day on to Fairbanks. This is where Alaskaland is (see photos) which was

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