Wednesday, June 18, 2008

There's No Place Like Nome, Except Perhaps the Pribs

Like your fog?

Ask a Nomeite, or a tourista trapped in Nome, or a Kotzebue person trying to get on a backed up flight along that route.

The isolation of off-the-road-system coastal Alaska is not just about the lack of paved or gravel surfaces. (Or in the case of Nome, paved and gravel surfaces that do not connect you to the rest of the road system.)

Word is, nine jets have not made it into Nome in the last few days (should be three days, with three flights a day scheduled in the summer) causing quite a back up in the system. A friend of mine up here in the land of OTZ sent several of her children down to Nome last Friday, planning to join them the next day. Here it is Wednesday, and she and the rest of her kids still can't get down there.

I'd guess if the fog is that bad, flights are backed up going into and out of the villages that use Nome as their travel hub. The month of June often plays hell with the best-laid plans of all those birders who have flown thousands of miles to bird out at St. Lawrence Island.

Of course, it's not as bad there as the Pribilof Islands. Where is? But I'm sure people are getting antsy down there.

I've always thought it was a mistake for local airlines to keep a coffee pot on on days like this. Bad enough that the tourist/birder folks are getting anxious about their travel/ticking plans, but giving them an unlimited supply of caffeine probably ups the impatience level, too.

I'm sitting here at a local airline in OTZ, waiting, you guessed it, on a weather hold.

2 comments:

Cathy said...

Anaatuq. You can keep the airport? Me? I'm sitting in my cabin on the Noatak River on my satellite internet. Spent the night at the boy's Ahna's summer camp on Paul's Slough. Ate some boiled Ugruk and ingaloqs, and washed it down with hot tea, yummy.

Sometime when your in OTZ again you should stop by and say hello.

CabinDweller said...

I will, I swear, absolutely, sometime when the Day Job doesn't make me run around like a crazy person from place to place.

Am running out of town. AGAIN.

See you in the fall.