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In Alaska in the winter, it
doesn’t get light too early, so we slept in a bit, but then off to find
breakfast and to plan our day. Today
during the day was a day “off” for us, and we wanted to take a look at what
downtown Anchorage looked like a couple days before the big ceremonial start
happens. On this day (Saturday) there
will be thousands gathering lining the streets of Anchorage to cheer on the 69
mushers. They will start one every 2 minutes until they are all going, then
drive their teams through the city streets and parks for about 20 minutes. Then
the pack things up, go home or to their hotels until the actual race start on
Sunday. More on that later.
What is especially
interesting to us is, there is pretty much no snow in the city of Anchorage,
Alaska has had a very warm winter, and the snow that they have had has mostly
melted. There were jokes that the race
should be rerouted to run Florida up to Kentucky this year. So what do they do? There is a plan in place that truckloads of
snow will be brought in starting on Friday to cover the streets so the dogs can
race on through. The streets right now
are either dry or filled with puddles.
We are waiting to see the transformation, but are concerned
.
Throughout the day today
the temperature has been in the upper 40’s and we even saw a 50 degree reading
on the thermometer. This is not good for snow.
As we walked back to our
hotel, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and Dick announced, “We have
got to get into the car and head north.”
What we had hoped to have happened, did.
The sun was out and the sky was clearing up, so the mountains above and north of Anchorage were beautiful.
That also meant, the mountain
would be out. Denali, or Mt. McKinley as
it used ot be called, is the highest mountain in North America, over 20,000
feet tall. It is so tall that it can be
seen from very far away when it was clear, and we hoped to be able to see it
today. It is in Denali National Park
over 200 miles north of Anchorage. This wasn’t going to be a realistic drive,
but we hoped we might be able to drive far enough North to see it. And see it we did. The first peek of it happened about 56 miles
up, and then at the miles I the 80’s there was amazing view after amazing
view. Wow! Doesn’t begin to describe it. The mountain captured us when we were here
before and we were so very happy to see it again.
A highlight was stop at a
boat landing north of Willow, where a nice guy (a transplant form Minnesota)
let us hike on a snowmobile path where we got some great shots of the mountain. Then we had a great conversation and heard
about his family history and relatives in Norway.
On the way back to
Anchorage, we stopped off in Willow at the site of the true start or restart of
the Iditarod Race. It seemed very quiet
there. Hard to imagine hundreds of fans
in a few days there….having to ride in on shuttles because there wouldn’t be
enough parking.
When we got back into town,
we decided to take a quick drive over to see the snow sculptures on
display. They were lovely, but rapidly
melting, with some of them looking more and more funny as the warm temperature
did its deed. We could see that by
Monday, many would be reduced to puddle status.
Then a quick shower to be
ready for the Musher’s Banquet. This is
quite an affair where two thousand fans gather, and have dinner with the mushers,
who each in term takes the stage, and draws their number to see what order they
start the race. They then get the chance
to make a little speech.
We
were with a tour group and so had a reserved table. The idea was to mingle and spot mushers where
you could grab autographs and photos. We
worked hard to grab ad many of these as we could. Both from old favorite and famous mushers and
the young “rookie” (those who have not completed this race before. The meal was hearty, with most people
getting a huge chunk of steak. Dick went
with the veggie lasagna. There was also
salad and chocolate cake. But the main
course was the mushers.
The banquet was such a blast. It was a combination stuffy social event
with the required speeches by politicians and sponsors. (A surprise guest was
Former Governor Sarah Palin.) Everyone got thanked multiple times. But the core of the event was really the
chance to meet the mushers. This included roaming from table to table asking
for autographs or to take a photo. Patti
was really enamored with getting photos and autographs of both famous folks,
and of the newbies. The old hands brought their own Sharpie pens or posters to
hand out. Sometimes it was hard to tell
who was the musher, and who was their sister or brother or dog handler. But most people dealt with this with grace.
After the mushers had the chance to come up and draw their number out
of a boot, and give a speech if they wanted, they then came down a gauntlet of
fans getting autographs and sharing thoughts on “Which one is he?” or “Do you
know which page of the program she is on?”
We pooled our information. While
Patti was busy with this, Dick undertook taking a photo of each musher as they
were on stage giving their speeches.
Each in our own way recording and enjoying the experience.
We stayed until the very end, about 10:00, having arrived shortly
after 5. We left tired, ready and geared up for the race.
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