Labor Day weekend in Seward

So has much as I'm not loving Alaska, I do love having every weekend off and love that Jeff and I have been able to do so much. This last weekend was pretty dang fun. We drove down to Seward, which is on the Kenai Peninsula, about 3 hrs away from Anchorage. Jeff had wanted to do an all day deep sea Halibut fishing trip (I was planning to spend the whole day at a Spa) but Jeff really wanted to go with a good charter company and the good ones were booked... so we scratched that plan and made other arrangements. We had the most amazing opportunity to go on an Iditarod ride. If you don't know what that is i'll explain. The iditarod is dog sled racing that happens every year here, think it's in March? Not sure. 70 or so teams of 16 dogs on each team and their musher head from Anchorage clear up to Nome, AK which is 1150 miles. Back when this started years ago it took 22 days to cross the mountainous terran, frozen lakes and freezing 50 below temps. Now, the best time is 9 days. Its still the same course but just have created better sledes, breed stronger dogs and have become smarter over the years. The prize check was 69,000 but it costs anywhere from 50-70,000 to do this race. But Alaskans live for it! The company we did this ride with, the owner won in 2004 and every year has dogs that are part of a winning team. The dogs were amazing. They have 64 dogs, all ages and that's not including the puppies. They usually have 4 new litters a year. They keep all their dogs until they die. They don't race them the whole time, they usually retire them afound 8 years of age and don't start racing them until they are 2. These dogs are pure Alaskan Huskies. They all look different but are breed to win. When we started to hook them up to the sled they all were barking like crazy... they all wanted to go. And even if we stopped on the trail, they hated it. They just wanteed to run and run. These dogs eat 5000 calories a day. They aren't like the Disney movie dogs, they are much skinnier but they are performance dogs and are very heathy and strong. We just had the best time ever. I could go back a million more times and have just as much fun (don't worry visitors, this will be something we take you to when you come to visit)


Jeff and the lead dog Peach. She is 8 years old and still runs the iditarod. She is the grandma for most dogs there and is just friendly and very smart and athletic.

This is Robin. He is the bear dog, chases all the bears that come around the dog area. He loves showing off all the attire that the dogs could wear on the trail if they needed.





We also went Sea Kayaking. Wow, what a beautiful calm day on the water. This was very relaxing and we were kayaking with pods of porposes, sea otters and a massive sea lion. It was the last day of the season and our guide said you don't get blue skies and calm water all in one, so we really lucked out. I don't think Jeff will ever do this again with me, cuz whether I was in the front of the back I was the worst backseat driver critquing him on everything and yelling at him for this and that, all because I was terrified to get tipped. So my public apology to Jeff for being such a brat but all in all we both loved it and we ended the adventure dry!!!


Jeff showing off our hot life jackets and the beautiful spray skirts we had to wear.
While taking this pic, 3 porpuses popped right out of the water between the guides kayak and ours. It was so cool to be within 10 feet of these animals.


Now just a few extra pics of use around town, walking the dogs, and just enjoying the peaceful ocean view atmosphere. What a great weekend. Thanks babe for all your planning.