Jan 29

 Hello everyone.  Anchorage is gearing up for the 39 running of the Iditarod.  We are volunteering for many activities.  Saturday, Beth and I went to the Iditarod headquarter to make foot ointment for the sled dogs. It was fun. I really enjoyed mixing the ointment because it has so much lanolin, anti-inflammatory and mineral oil I spread more on my hands than putting the ointment in the tubes.  The first picture is the heart worm tablets that are packaged and sent to each musher two weeks prior the race.  The 39 Iditarod starts Saturday, March 5.  This year there are 63 mushers at this point and a friend of mine, Annie Taggert, is a rookie musher.  She is a teacher and she will be running Jeff King's dogs because he will be in
 Sweden during the Iditarod. We will miss him a lot but I wish Annie the best of luck with her race.  The plastic tubes are to be filled with the ointment. Each dog receives 2 tubes for the race. Each sled starts with 16 dogs so we had to fill a lot of tubes.  The pink tubes in the box are what they look like when the are ready to ship. The musher will receive a dozen at a time to carry on the sled. At different check points they will receive the next dozen tubes.  Then Beth and I went on an adventure down the Kinick Goose Point road to see where it ended. It is the opposite side of the peninsula and it was very pristine.  We ended up at Point McKenzie and had a fabulous view of Anchorage from the other side of the inlet

 The mud flats were frozen slabs of ground but in the foreground you can see the river flowing quickly. Then we went towards the boat dock. We saw 9 moose during our day.  This one thought he was well hidden.  As you can see, moose do not camouflage very well in snow. He didn't like us being too close so he got up and moseyed over towards us and we hustled back to the car quickly.   On our way we saw "Jake, his wife, and their dog, Buddy, bringing fuel oil to their homestead.  You can see how a snow machine (that is Alaskan for snow mobiles) are used in so many ways.  Beth took the picture of Jack and Buddy from the car window.  Do you see Buddy's bed on top of the oil drums?  That is

one spoiled dog. We had to stop at the General Store because there was nothing around for 30 miles.  They had good burgers and fries and of course nice cold Alaskan Amber beers.  The locals pulled up chairs and talked to us about the changes in their little community of 300 people.  A new prison is going in about a mile and half down the road.  This will bring about 600 jobs to the area.  We inquired about the kind of security, it is medium - two electric fences.  Apparently, AK doesn't have enough prisons so AK ships their prisoners to Arizona.  The State of AK has to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly the prisoners down to the lower 48, pay for their room and board and any treatment they are

directed to have by the court. So AK is building 4 new prisons to bring the prisoners home where it will cost less.  Apparently, we have a maximum prison on the most beautiful point of AK - in Seward.  Imagine that.  The water is so cold and Seward has many seal lions and bears they figure the prisoners won't try to escape.  Gosh, what you learn by talking to the locals.  There is a famous serial killer in the Seward prison.  His story is the Baker. My friend is lending me the book that talks about his case.

Beth and I are attending the Bear class in June. We will be on Admiral T Island for a week as we kayak and hike and observe bears in their natural habitat.  So to get into the spirit of hiking in the woods, I purchased my first pair of camouflage pants.  My friends call me - GI Sheryl.  That is pepper spray in my hand.
There is a phrase - we do things up BIG in Alaska.  Have you ever seen a snowman as big as this one?  His nose is a construction cone!!!



I am 5 foot 1 and I look so small next to this

 snowman.  There are a handful of these big guys around town.  The last picture is one of my students, Bridger.  We placed stickers on a worksheet and he took the outline of the stickers and placed it over his mouth.  I thought he looked like Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs.  He thought he looked silly and had me take his picture. 

 I am cross country skiing 5 nights a week.  Our big Ski for Women's race is this Sunday.  We ski at 11 am and will be home in time for the Super Bowl.  Because of the time difference we watch the Super Bowl at 2:30 pm and still have an evening afterwards.  Aren't you all jealous?  Go Pittsburgh!!!  The advantage of living in so many states is that we can cheer for just about any sports team.  We lived in Pittsburgh once.  Go Pittsburgh.  It was one of our shortest stays in a state.  I think we lived their 18 months.  But we can claim the Pittsburgh Steelers!!

Tuesday after skiing we will go and participate in the Trivia night again.  Last week they asked such difficult categories. You would think with 8 people we could have aced the category of "alcohol" . Nope! we didn't know most of the questions.  We did well with anatomy, science fiction and bombed on Professional team mascots.  Do you know what the Titan's mascot is named? How about the Bears mascot? Look into it and I bet you didn't do any better than we did.

 Well, that is my news for the week.  Hope you all are staying warm with all the cold weather and snow.  Hopefully we will get some snow in the next few days. The forecast is for 4 days of snow. That would be wonderful.
  If you feel the need to take an adventure, come on up and visit.  there are so many things to up here.
Until then,  Sheryl the Nanuq of the North