Just as Fur Rondy is wrapping up, the Iditarod gets started. We bundled up and headed right to the starting line on 4th Avenue for the ceremonial start. It was snowing...of course...but we managed to get pretty close to the starting line and watched a few of the first teams take off.
Later we headed farther down to watch them go around a corner. While we were walking we stopped while a dog team crossed the street and got to be right up near them. The ceremonial start is a lot of fun. The mushers are waving and the dogs are so excited to get started they weigh them down more by adding a second sled and letting a person ride in the basket. The next day they do the restart a little farther outside of Anchorage and that's when the real race gets started.
I've been reading a lot about the Iditarod and I found out that when they round the corners of downtown streets in Anchorage a lot of times the dogs are going too fast and at least one of the sleds turns over. We were lucky enough to get to see one flip. They got going again soon enough.
It was fun to see everyone treating the Iditarod like a football game. There were lots of people tailgating in the snow. Some of the mushers even stopped and fed their dogs hot-dogs people were cooking. It was a lot of fun. We followed the Iditarod in the newspaper and it was exciting to see that the winner was Dallas Seavey, the youngest musher to ever win the Iditarod. He's 25 years old and both his dad and his granddad competed this year as well. His dad is a former winner and his grandfather competed in the very first Iditarod. It's such an intense race...we felt lucky to actually see it start. It really is the last great race on earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment