Friday Night on the Trail

As I write this Aliy and team are on the trail towards Eagle Island and Allen and his team are resting in Shageluk.

Aliy arrived into Grayling as the first musher at 9.54am this morning and received a wonderful gift of beautiful hand made beaver fur and moose hide mitts locally made by Sue Nicholi. Aliy saw out her mandatory eight hour layover there and left right on time at 5.54pm. The GPS shows her currently about 35 miles from Eagle Island.

Allen and team arrived into Shageluk at 3.55pm. I have inadvertently "put you crook" when I said that the eight hour mandatory layovers are to be taken at Anvik, Grayling, Eagle Island or Kaltag - in fact mushers are able to take this break in Shageluk also which could be what Allen is doing! (Sorry about that folks.) If that is the case they will be able to leave there at 11.55pm tonight.

Has everyone seen Sebastian Schnuelle's wonderful photo of Aliy and Jake Berkowitz sleeping in Grayling (right)? Her dad, Doug, bought her that sleeping bag in 1999 and she has been using it ever since. Aliy really likes to use tried and true equipment on her races and that bag has certainly been tried out!

The support crew has started to head out to Nome now to prepare everything for both teams' arrival. Now THAT is quite a logistical exercise to get all the dog crates (needed to ship the dogs home), supplies and people there at the right time... nothing like what the race officials have to deal with of course!

Note: We are still on track to hopefully meet our three dropped dogs from the trail tomorrow afternoon. Once we know who and why we will let you know. We got Tug and Sissy back to the kennel today and Meghan said that they were so excited to be home and everyone gave them a welcome home hooooowwwwwwlllll!!! Meghan was right out there howling with them too!