Wow! There are crazy days and then there is whatever the heck yesterday was. To be brief, we decided to leave the dogs home in Kasilof (roughly 3 hours south) until the last minute, so they owuldn’t be stresed in the big city or cramped in their tiny travel boxes of the dog truck. We left at 8:30 a.m., thinking we could make a quick trip down and back, but the weather had other ideas.
Withing about 20 miles of leaving Anchorage we started to hit one heck of a snow and wind storm, and it only got worse as we went south (see photo above and notice you can’t see the orad or the guard rail in this frame to the right). We were in our two-wheel drive pick-up so we were very concerned as the snow was falling at about a foot an hour, and we were only able to travel 20-30mph in the white out conditions. At time we could barely see past the hood and if we lost our momentum for any reason, we feared never getting out of the deep drifts.Amazing, we somehow made it through the storm, but it took nearly 5 hours to do it.
ONce home COle and her sibling began packing the dog truck, while JOseph took COle’s UNcle Jeff Morrow for a quick dog sled ride with some of our pups that weren’t runing in the Iditarod. The run went great, mostly, as there was about 6 inches of fresh powder down at the house. On the way home, about 1/2 mile from the dog yard, Joseph stopped the team to switch places with Jeff and let him drive the final the dogs the final stretch - a fairly typical tactic on our tours. JOseph got in the sled bag with Jeff’s camera while Jeff got on the runners and pulled the hook, but for some reason, the dogs all pulled at just the right time and in just the right way and the handle bar CAME OFF! Jeff fell off and the sled tipped on its side, draggin Joseph at high velocity since no one was driving or using the brake. He managed to get one hand on the handle bar, but had Jeff’s camera in the other hand, he got dragged ofr awhile, until he finally hit a tree and was knocked off the sled too. The dogs made the final dash home wit no drivers, and luckily no one was injured, COle was there in the yard and got everyone straightened out, while an out of breath Joseph showed up mintues later, after running home to make sure everything was O.K. and no one got tangled (see photo above).
After the adventure we got back on the road and the trip back to the big city with the dogs was fairly unaventful as the storm we had driven through onthe way down had now moved further north (hopefully dumping some much needed snow on the Iditarod trail). We got back to the hotel and Jeff went to his room, but when he got there two teenagers were trying to get by him to get into the room at the same time. He asked if they had the right room and they said yeah and showed him a room key, then one said “I’m Jeff Morrow. This is my room.” The real Jeff quickly called hotel security and they came and got the hoodlums. Once in the room we found they had set up shop in there all day long. They had, oddly enough, put on some of Jeff’s clothes, including his dirty socks, and they had stollen his sell phone. IN the room the kids had quite a bit of other stolen things from what looked like an all day crime spree. They also has set up a collage of their photos (see above), put their clothes around the room, left numerous energy drink bottles around and brought in their bicycle. It was all really bizarre, and really not very bright. We don’t know how they initially got into the room, but their decision to try and stay the night in a hotel room (with someone stuff in it that the owner is obviously coming back for) didn’t seem too bright, and in the end they got to spend the night someone else: jail.
The whole day was very surreal, but we have to say, it got out minds of the stress of worrying about the race for a few hours. ALso, hopefully now all the insanity is out of the way and this means Cole will have a smooth race. Let’s all hope anyway.
