Location: McGrath
Time: 6:00 PM
Hi Everyone!
I guess you had another day off of school. And, it sounds as if you didn’t
even have that much snow! And, if I remember the schedule, tomorrow is a half
day! What a week you are having!
As for me, I got up this morning to snow, but within about an hour the sun
was shining and it was gorgeous – about 30 degrees. I still haven’t needed
all of my heavy clothes.
We headed down to the airstrip (on snow machine, of course) and loaded the
plane for take-off. Bill, the pilot, was very concerned about the weather over
the mountains, and I must say he made me a bit nervous talking about it! Luckily,
it turned out better than we ever expected! In fact, we had a beautiful ride!
We had to cross over the Alaska
range and it was amazing. I took a lot of pictures and I’m posting one
of the mountains and one of the meandering
river across on the other side. I’ll have lots more to show you when I
get back.
We were heading to McGrath, but then we heard that all of the front runners
were at Nikolai, so we decided to
stop there first for a while. It was great! There were 14 teams in, and while
we were there we saw Fiedler and Gebhardt leave for McGrath. Nikolai has about
80 people.
I took a few pictures of the mushers taking care of their dogs - bedding
them down, massaging their feet and
feeding them. I love watching them.
They are so tender and loving. A few days ago I said that one of the motivators
for the mushers, in my opinion, is the beauty of the outdoors. Another is their
love for their dogs. Watching them at all of these checkpoints, and seeing
the TLC (ask someone what that means if you don’t know), it is clear to me that
the mushers and dogs have a very special relationship.
We watched a musher come in to Nikolai, and I included a picture of the
checkers seeing that all of his equipment was in the sled. I then took
a close-up of the contents of his sled. You
can see all the booties in there! They supposedly go through about 1000
on this trip!
We went in to the school, and the first person we saw was the friendly principal.
She is also one of the two teachers! How about that! There are only 14 children
in the whole school. She teaches the K to 5 group, and the other teacher teaches
6th to 12th grades! The school is beautiful. We toured
the building but didn’t see the kids because they had already gone home.
I included a picture, though, of
the kids.
Then we got back in the plane and headed further west to the next checkpoint
at McGrath. We should start seeing the winners come in this evening. We will
be here for three nights. Right now I am going to the checkpoint to watch them
start coming in, and to see if I can find a teacher named Phyllis. I had contacted
her a few months ago, and she said I could visit the school and meet the kids.
Also, this is the town that needs lots of volunteers in the checkpoint kitchen,
and I’m one of them! So, I may add some more to this later, but if it’s too
late and I’m too tired, then it’ll be included the next day.
By the way, I’m not including the race results in my letters to you because
you can get that on the website
(Iditarod.com). I will tell you that at this point two of the 68 teams
scratched. One scratched because he couldn’t see well at night, and the other,
Mike Nosko, had an accident. A person on a snow machine crashed into his dogteam!
Too many of the dogs were injured so he couldn’t go on. It seems to me that
there should be some rules about snow machines during the Iditarod. If you
have time in class, talk about it to each other and see if you can decide on
some fair rules that you would make. Right now there are none about snow machines.
So, happy trails for now, and love from Mrs. McClintock |
