Today is the fine, fine day when we cross paths with our good friends, Lance and Nora Demers along with Nora's brother Darwin and his wife Sharri. But not only are we meeting up with our peeps from Iowa, we are spending nearly the entire day together. First, it's the dogsledding with hounds who have ran the Iditarod, then lunch, and finally we drive Northeast from Willow, Alaska to get on ATV's and do silly stuff! This post focuses on the hounds...
So let's get started!
I woke up around 3:30am with the light shining in under the blind in our bedroom and hopes that it might be 4:30 - 5am. No dice. I went back to sleep for short times for the next hour or so...
Regardless, we were up in time to get the critters organized and on the road in time, despite my brides ordering of a crepe that must have taken 40 minutes to produce! On top of that, if I recall correctly, it was some nonsensical lemon thing and not something with eggs, bacon and sausage in it. Useless...
I did my best on the road to make up time for the "lost crepe" and we got there a minute or two after the Demers and their travelling crew.
Silly as these things are, we missed the driveway the first time by. We drove down to the next driveway to turn around. There was a large tanker coming down the road so I just waited before I backed out. It turned out that when we located the correct driveway, and proceeded up it, the Demers clan was walking towards the "check-in booth".
For the lads in the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit, today, as with most every day on vacations, it's a mystery and therefor somewhat exciting as Mama plans everything and we have very little clue as to what is coming up. Today is even more exciting due to the recent rain.
Alaska has been getting some much needed rain as the wildfires have burned around 2.7 million acres as of July 13th, 2022. As a result of that rain (and weather reports!), I was worried a bit that the excursion would be cancelled. If not cancelled, I was then nervous about driving the ATV's thru swollen rivers as I am not all that experienced with these things.
We start with the sled dogs. We get some blue'ish rain gear to put on and we first meet Lindsay. She was originally from Ohio but her and her hubby moved to Anchorage. They both quit their jobs as teachers and went to work for Justin at Snowhook Adventures. Justin has over 60 dogs does the Iditarod every year.
We, as a group, talked with Lindsay for a while until Justin, who owns Snowhook Adventures, showed up and gave us some instructions about what we were about to do and answered any and all questions. He also taught us how to approach the dogs when we FINALLY get to meet them and how he feeds them when he's doing on the Iditarod.
FINALLY, he took us "out back" to see where the sled dogs live and we were turned loose to go pet/meet all/none or some of the dogs. This was such great therapy for the SMCU as we were greatly missing our two dogs back at home! Caleb fell in love with Hutson while George won over Rob's heart. Each dog had their own personality (like kids!) and it was simply amazing to experience.
And, somewhat stinky, unless you love wet dog smells.
 |
| Look at that smile!!! |
 |
| Lance, Nora, Mama & Papa Chaos. |
 |
| Organized chaos as the dogs were ready to go!!! |
 |
| Our crew minus the driver. Mama and I in the front seat. Lance, Sharri and Darwin in the back seat and Caleb, Robby and Nora standing in the back. Shhhhh... don't tell OSHA. |
 |
| The dogs know the whole drill and when they recognize the near launching of the run, their energy increases ten-fold! You can tell by their back legs that they're already "pulling". |
 |
| Mama, Lance and I are happy and ready to ride! |
 |
| And we're off! Although, the second pair up both want to run on the right side and it takes them a while to work that argument out. This is part of the preparation as they need the best team of dogs working together when they head out on the Iditarod. These tours help resolve those issues. |
 |
We've been pulled for quite a while now and notice that the second pair from the atv is STILL trying to run on the right side of the lead.
The shack in the middle is where you check in and do your paperwork and get your gear to wear on the adventure. The building that you can kind of see behind the white van in the right of the picture is where we had our grill cheeseburgers for lunch. |
 |
| This is back where the dogs live and now we're in the puppies pen. |
 |
| Great picture of Rob and Mama! Rob caught himself one of the pups. That dog was a sweetie!! |
At this point, we were back at the check-in building where we turned in our blue coats for bright orange coats while still wearing the same pants. This is when Jeremiah grilled us cheeseburgers. They had buns, fresh tomatoes, lettuce and onions for toppings. It was fun to sit in the tiny "shed" with our group including Lindsay and hubby (danged if I can recall his name...). We learned that they had originally purchased a house in Anchorage that they're now trying to sell so they can move closer to Willow to live in a yurt... In Alaska... with a dog and no plumbing. Ok, then. As we like to say, you go and be you!
That's it for this part of our day. We'll pick up with the ATV tour in the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment