ATW Retro-blog: 1997-06-13 (Day#26)
The team awoke to … well, Friday June 13th again (having crossed the date-line the previous solar day)
[This presented your ‘retro-blogger’ with a bit of a challenge, but it’s solved by posting twice within 24 hrs]
The team arrived at the airfield to take stock, anticipating setting-out later on an initial leg to commence progress across North America. A local operator offered to clean the team’s Chipmunk spark plugs in their new plug cleaner, and was rather taken aback when Dave Gill happily accepted their offer and handed-over 56 plugs! The aircraft were cleaned and waxed, and a chipped prop replaced with the spare which was stowed on the Islander [Everyone has a spare prop, right ???]
With Eielson as the intended destination a launch at 13:30 was aborted when one of the Chippie generators failed and required replacement, by which time it was too late to depart. Local newspaper reporters took advantage of the delay to interview the team members, and the team in turn took advantage of another night in Nome to explore the history of this pioneer gold-mining town.
Nome accommodation – perhaps basic, but everything worked!
Rusting gold mining equipment, left where it was last used, when the mining operations became no longer commercially viable.
