Alaska! Day One:

Hello everyone! After nearly two months without internet, it is time to update you all on my adventures, challenges and life up here in Alaska. For those of you who didn't know I was coming up here to handle for the winter, I'll try to begin at the begining...

I arrived on the 8th of October, flying from Spokane to Seattle, where I had a 1.5hour layover, and then into Fairbanks. I brought Rocky with me:

(I'll get into the reasons I came and why I brought Rocky in a later post.)

I was thrilled to finally get here, and the Fairbanks airport is so small that I had no trouble finding Aaron and Scott - they were parked out front in a dog truck. Well, it actually wasn't just any dog truck...it was John Baker's! (If you follow the Iditarod, you will recall that John Baker won the 2011 Iditarod!!!) After saying hello and grabbing my bags, and a very travel weary Rocky, we headed out of town.

Sad to say, my first meal in AK was McDonalds.  :( Aaron and Scott had just gotten in town with all the dogs the night before and since Aaron, his wife Mandy and their son Hunter live in Nome, AK part of the year, there was little food in the house! Not frequenting fast food restaraunts, I experienced slight culture shock. :)

After McDonalds, we headed out of town to Iditarod musher Jessie Royer's where we picked up eight dogs from Sebastian Schnuelle. Sebastian had run a few of Aaron's dogs last year in both the Iditarod in the Quest, so this year was Aaron's year to run Sebastian's dogs. Scott also had some yearlings that we dropped off to go down to Montana to do tours for the winter.

And then, to the kennel. It was quite dark when I got here and by the time we fed the dogs it was time to turn in...