Mushing and Paddling....

We have heard a lot about the Iditarod dog sled race as we have travelled in Alaska, on board ship we had Libby Riddles, the first woman winner in 1985. She brought along a couple of dogs and described her adventure. Then as we travelled up towards Fairbanks we met Bill Cotter, another winner of the more than 1000 mile race, held in the dead of winter over a course from Anchorage to Nome that includes some of the wildest and least inhabited country in the world.
This is one of the checkpoints north of Anchorage where the race starts, before it really goes off into the wild. We met some of the dogs there, while Bill himself took some of our party on a ride.

Later we were to meet the family of Susan Butcher, the four times winner of the race. Unfortunately she died of cancer in 2008 at the age of 50, but her family keeps up the tradition, and owns around 100 dogs on the side of the river in Fairbanks.

He lives for his dogs, and with them. They are all kept outside his log cabin, and he demonstrates his prowess for tourists at every opportunity, when there is no snow on the ground he uses a motor-less quad bike as his sled, running ten dogs at speeds up to 20 mph.
By the time we got up to Fairbanks we were pretty exhausted, after eight hours in a bus. Unfortunately one of our cases was soaking wet, so we had to spend time washing the clothes within. By the time we had done that and had dinner it was time for bed, and we were pretty b***ered.

It was an early start again the next morning, we had to pack and be out of our room by eight o'clock, as we were to go on a paddle boat up the river. As is very usual in Alaska we were dropped off at a gift shop in the harbour before we were allowed on the boat, in fact we were the first there, just four of us in a 44 seater bus! We thought the boat was just for us.
Anyway in this gift shop was a couple of stuffed moose who had locked antlers, so I couldn't resist snapping them for posterity:

Eventually we were allowed on the boat, along with at least 500 others, There were four decks, so it wasn't too crowded. But it was cold, we started off on the top open deck, but soon retreated to the lower deck when it started raining heavily.

There are some beautiful houses alongside the river, this was the first one we saw and it set the tone of the trip, most had beautifully manicured lawns: but with the climate here they probably only had to cut them for one month a year!

Others however were a little less well looked after, this one was only partly finished. We had heard that if a house was not completely finished they did not pay rates, even if they were living in them, so we saw many houses with one wall not yet clad, probably to qualify for rate relief. What a great idea.

During the trip we had a float plane take off and land over us, I presume just to give us a thrill. As we had sat for two or three hours in Vancouver watching them it was nothing new for us!!

We stopped off at an Inuit village where they smoked salmon, most of our party disembarked to be shown round the village and receive the usual advice on what to do if confronted by a bear......

This is a fish trap, it is turned by the fast flowing river, and as the salmon travel up stream to spawn they are lifted by the vanes and slid down into a box. Clever stuff eh?

They keep reindeer too, which is a close relation of the caribou. This lot were grazing on the riverbank, brought out specially for us to get a photo.......
After the trip we had a great lunch of Miner's Stew, (along with the other 500), then made our way back to the hotel where we sat about until it was time to make our way to the Airport.
Now we are in Toronto after a seven hour flight via Chicago, and a five hour time difference. So we are pretty exhausted, and the fact that it is over 30 Celsius here doesn't help!