Dogs, Dogs, Dogs are they here yet?

This time of the year brings us coaches from the wonderful ski program known as SKIKU!  We have five coaches with us and four arrived yesterday.   If you are a skier and would love to come to rural Alaska to work with kids for a week teaching them about cross country skiing please explore their website.  You might be lucky enough to come to Unalakleet to ski with us and to see the Iditarod!

Behind us is the checkpoint which by tomorrow at this time should be one hopping place!  Full of dogs, volunteers, fans, media you name it we will be here checking it all out!

Checkpoint Update! 

 I was out at the airport early restocking hats that we sell for the ski team. The top photos you will see the blue bags that have a straw bale in each one for dog bedding. The vet clinic has a lot more going on than the last post.  People were moving equipment.  In the background is a loader moving snow to make berms for the dogs to be out of the wind.

To the top right of this photo is the open sea which should be covered in sea ice.

There is the communications webcam! 

 Looking north on the slough you can see the berm.

Looking south on the slough is our friendly overflow mess! 

Here you can see them stringing the power to the webcam and they were burying the line.

Here are 3 folks who are the communications to the Insider!  They keep the show running here.

A little hard to tell but 3 dropped dogs that made it to Unalakleet this morning.

 Rakes, shovels, straw, wind berm, all key items for the drop dogs.

The mushers' feed bags are now in place and waiting for the teams to arrive! Pallets of bags that were packed weeks ago.

The get organized and then hauled down as teams come into the checkpoint.

There was a huge crew helping since so many volunteers have been stuck here due to weather and planes/seat availability.

Let's all hope that the name on this last bag will be hitting the arches in Nome FIRST!