MORE snow

We have about three inches of more new snow. It is melting though and makes it tough walking. The gates were just chopped out and now they're plugged up again with the new stuff. This is called Spring preview, I think. We are not done with snow yet.

We had fun with the Fantasy Iditarod and won first place with our five luck of the draw teams:
Lance Mackey (winner) , Martin Buser, William Kleedehn (rookie of the year), John Baker and Kjetil Backen.

This is our last post from this blog for Iditarod 2008.

Iditarod and Back

Well, with the Iditarod coming to a close, the Red Lantern looking to belong to Deborah Bicknell, age 62, we will move back to our Windy Pups blog for daily kennel journaling. http://windypups.blogspot.com/

I see that Molly Yazwinski has scratched in White Mountain , only 77 miles from the finish, but don't know the reason.

And, our Fantasy Iditarod team still holds the lead out of 30 players out of Elim. Since we have Lance on our team, we will get mega points for his win as well as good points for William Kleedehn's rookie of the year. Maybe we'll win!

What an interesting year! We watched the first hour of the Versus coverage last night. There will be two more Sundays of coverage on Versus of Iditarod 2008. Here's to next year then!
We will be watching the All Alaska Sweepstakes beginning March 26th from Nome.

Chop Chop

Yesterday three gates were frozen solid when I went out to feed in the early a.m. There are a couple of choices with that dilemma... climb over, chop it out or melt it. I fed the dogs thru the fences , poured salt on the gate openings and waited. I use table salt as the other packaged stuff for sidewalks can be toxic.

So late day I was out shoveling the meltdown to prevent freezing this morning's gates. Yet to find out, but this Spring season will be long with the great snow we've had having to meltdown.

I chopped trenches yesterday, but we're expecting more snow and then more warm temps.

Spring ahead! Definitely a season of mixed emotions... snow, love us or leave us!!

Sue Morgan and Trent Herbst into Nome

Sue got there about 2:31 and Trent not too far along after her, looks like they'll both make it to the banquet! Congratulations, Sue and Trent!

The Best Thing about This Race

Hm, what is the one best thing about the Iditarod? Well, one best thing is that the SPK dog log says Allen is feeling better... that is huge. We just got our issue of MUSHING and there is great coverage of his CB 300 win and many other races.

Tonight is the banquet in Nome, with the GREAT food! The awards will be given and the mushers will tell some entertaining and hairraising stories about this year's race.

I think if there is only ONE best thing about the race, it is the opportunity it provides for friendships with humans and dogs... we meet such great humans and great dogs through this race.

We are watching now for Sue Morgan and Trent Herbst to come into Nome... looks like they might make the first banquet.

Golden Nome

There is gold mining equipment (old) all around the town. And I imagine a lot more now that they are mining again. This photo was taken at sunrise.

Nome

This is a photo of Nome at pre-dawn in March, 2003. It's a great town... with time between mushers you can roam the streets to learn a lot about the history.