Land Mushing in Talkeetna

This morning we were fortunate enough to go out to the kennels of Dallas Seavey, a five time Iditarod champion and current reigning champion. He has about 130 dogs in totally, but about 85 were out today. He has some that stay on a glacier part of the year to train. He also has this big trailer that is air conditioned that has a huge treadmill to run a 14 dog mushing group. Isn’t that crazy? His trainers worked with us. They were fantastic. Some live there all year round and others, like Chloe, a 20 year old vet student from Minnesota, comes up for the summer for an internship. All of them are mushers and want to learn from the magic of Dallas. We got to meet Gamble, the dog that has been one of the most decorated dogs ever. They had a pen of eight puppies that were 7 weeks old and full of energy. They had the howling down pat. They made land carts to mimic dog sleds to use through the forest on his property. They have two sided hand brakes so Lily rode on my sled the whole time while I drove. We had a blast with the dogs. I wasn’t so sure at first about how the dogs lived…on 30-40 foot runs with a dog house…all on gravel. However, they were really well taken care of and I was really impressed with these trainers and the whole process involved in training for the Iditarod. Afterwards, we went into town and had lunch at the Talkeetna Brewery and Pub, then Lily and Rich had some fireweed ice cream cones. Fireweed is a purple flower that grows wild all over the play around here. It is in the vase next to Lily in the picture with her eating pink ice cream. Lily said that if pink were a flavor, it would taste like fireweed ice cream! Shirley, the owner, moved to Alaska from Arkansas 39 years ago. She is quite a character and sounds like she left Arkansas yesterday! We also had some spinach bread….sooooo good!