Tuesday February 25, 2014
As we sat in the LA Airport, we read Joe
Runyan’s report about his travel to Alaska for this race:
“Like a world convention, the
Iditarod arrives and converges on Anchorage. I eased into Anchorage late
last night on a sleepy flight out of Portland, Oregon, noticed some
veterinarians with their very large duffle bags of winter gear and sleeping
bag, and overheard passengers talking about the start this weekend, March 1. “
We had that same experience. Even as we checked in at LAX, we immediately
met a group of people who were headed to Alaska for the Iditarod. In many ways, we feel as though we were
Muslims headed towards Mecca with the other faithful pilgrims. (Okay, we know
that going to Mecca has a very important spiritual significance…but, this is
another very powerful gathering of people, coming from around the world.) Anchorage, a medium sized city, which is
quite quiet in the middle of winter, becomes a hopping carnival with thousands
of visitors for the week leading up to the race start the first Saturday in
March.
Ever since we drove to Alaska on the
Alaskan Highway 5 summers ago, we knew that someday we wanted to be in
Anchorage for the start of the Iditarod Sled dog Race. If you are not familiar with this race, take
a look at the website http://iditarod.com
Here you can explore and see videos, see profiles of the mushers (the men and
women who are racing the teams of up to 16 dogs), and see more about this
amazing race. You can also see the countdown clock, showing time until the race begins, and then that clock switches over to be "race time", how long since they started.
It was a long travel day, but we arrived and were ready to go to bed, and then start the next grand adventure.
