Daylight : 7:47 a.m. - 6:36 p.m
I’ve been meaning to post for a couple of days. **slow**
Saturday was gloomy and overcast, but the sun came out Sunday so I headed out. If I had been thinking, I probably would’ve headed to Willow, Alaska for the official re-start of the Iditarod. I headed in the other direction though, towards Girdwood. The further south I went, the cloudier it got, so at the Girdwood cutoff I turned around and headed back. I stopped at Bird Creek, and got some pictures. One is posted here, more soon. On my way back, driving across Potter’s Marsh, I saw the coolest thing. I almost turned around to shoot it, but the Seward Highway across the Marsh is a tricky place to turn around, so I passed it up. During the winter, the shallow waters of the Marsh obviously freeze. In the summer, it’s a premier place to shoot (sorry take pictures of) a zillion different migrating birds. Sunday however, there were a lot of people out on the Marsh. Some were ice skating, seems pretty normal right? Others were flying kites, flying remote controlled planes, and my favorite… remote controlled cars! I never really thought about how much fun it would be to run remote controlled devices on the ice.
The other exciting thing that happened this past weekend was the start of the Iditarod. Before I moved to Alaska, and went to the ceremonial start of the race in 1997, I didn’t understand the spirit of the race, or how eager the dogs were to run. I was probably more on the side of the people, who thought it was cruel, or that the dogs were forced to run. What did I know? To the contrary. Of course there are people that abuse their animals. But the level of care and attention that these dogs are given on and off the trail is amazing, and has only improved over the years. The Iditarod Website has live GPS updates of the where the dog teams are. I suggest checking it out if you’ve never looked into it before. A great companion for learning more about the Iditarod or Alaska in general is the watching/downloading the Alaska Podshow. Scott Sloan put together great audio and video podcasts about all things Alaska. Please stop by and tell him Laura says hi… 
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