Wednesday, July 21, 2010
We spent the day taking a "Real Alaska Tour". It's a full day tour in the Seward area which began with a program and tour at Mitch Seavey's sled dog kennel. He was the 2004 Iditarod Champion and has a fabulous kennel operation here. We were able to see how the dogs are housed and cared for as well as hear from real mushers who've raced the Iditarod. The picture above is our group on a sled dog ride. Mickey got to stand in the back and help the musher. This is one of the ways they exercise and train the dogs. The musher on our sled was a young woman who had just received her undergraduate degree and is spending the summer working at the kennel. She has been mushing since she was 13. Now that she's graduated from college, she plans to start her own kennel and hopes to race the Iditarod in 2014.
Part of the kennel program included a very interesting talk by a musher who has completed the Iditarod four times. He told us about all the work that goes into caring for the dogs during the race. He also explained that sleep deprivation is a huge factor during the race, with mushers often getting only 1-2 hours of sleep for days at a time. The entire kennel experience was really interesting and educational. What a lot of work goes into an operation like this.
Click this link to see the view from the front seat of the dog sled. (Katy did a great job shooting this one!)
Holding the puppies was a big hit too!
Exit Glacier
After a nice lunch at a local road house, we headed to Kenai Fjords National Park where we took a short hike to the base of Exit Glacier (http://www.nps.gov/kefj/index.htm). All along the road leading to the park and along the trail to the glacier were signs with dates showing us how big the glacier had been at that time. The earliest posted date I saw was in the 1890s. It's amazing to see how much of the glacier has melted (even just in the last 20 years). Seeing it is so much more meaningful than just reading about it. I hope the girls felt that way too.We met some fellow Texans from Austin that took this picture. Thanks guys.
Last we went to see salmon swimming upstream to spawn. If you look closely at the picture you can see red salmon in the stream. They work really hard swimming upstream from the ocean to their home stream to spawn. Click the link to see a video of some we watched.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNr7nECnQdw
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