Headquarters and Dream a Dream!

At 10:30 at night, after and amazing, amazingly LONG day, I’m mostly wide awake because the sun refuses to go to bed.  I found out last night that even though technically the sun is supposed to set around midnight, it doesn’t set with very much commitment and it remains twighlighty the entire (4 hours!) of supposed night before it pops up again at 4am. 

I arrived at Anchorage at around midnight last night and got to my hotel where I got a few hours of sleep before getting up this morning anxious to begin camp.  I met 2 other teachers who were staying at the same hotel as I was, and we were all picked up by a lovely woman named Jane who was the Teacher on the Trail a few years ago.  She brought us to Iditarod Headquarters in Wasilla, where we met up with the other 23 teachers (from 19 states, plus one teacher from Germany!) Iditarod headquarters is really cool – there is a team of dogs and a cart and they give short (but FAST!) rides through the woods. 

Doggies Ready to go!!

The most amazing thing I was today was… TOGO!!  The actual dog, Togo is here.  Of course he’s not alive, but he’s very well preserved and sits in a glass case looking very majestic.  I had no idea!

Togo - the famous (to those in the know) serum- run lead dog

After spending a few hours at headquarters we headed to Willow where we will be staying for three days at the Dream a Dream Dog Farm.  This place is amazing!  We met the dogs right away and got to take the 6 new puppies for a walk in the woods.  They are adorable and chubby and all named after pieces of meat.  (T-bone, sirloin… being a vegetarian, I’m not super up on my cuts of meat, so I don’t remember the rest.)  Within 10 minutes of being here I was wet, had muddy paw prints all over me, and had about 8 mosquito bites that had swelled up to the size of golf balls.  The mosquitos here are truly terrifying.  They look more like hummingbirds than mosquitos, and they are blood-thirsty monsters.  I will be dousing my entire body with mosquito spray before I go outside tomorrow.