Alaska - Friday

With the blue skies on Friday morning we finally got to go on our long awaited bike ride. We rented bikes and a trailer from a place downtown, then rode a few blocks over to start on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.

This trail goes for more than 10 miles along the coast, and it's so pretty and green and has no street crossings to worry about. Though we did get to ride alongside a train for a short time.

About 3 or 4 miles down the trail we stopped at a lookout point and could see Mt. McKinley 160 miles away, a pretty special treat, as the mountain is covered with clouds more often than not. At that point we turned around and headed back up the trail to get back in time for our afternoon activity.

The bike ride was so nice I found myself wondering many times why I don't go biking more often. I told Jake I would be out biking at least weekly if we had a nice trail like that one. If we had the coast nearby. And if it wasn't 90+ degrees by the time I get dressed in the morning. Oh yeah, that might be a reason I don't go biking more often. Though I do think that once fall comes along we may get a bike trailer and try biking along the Rillito River trail--that could be really nice for probably 8 months out of the year, as long as we go at the right time of the day. Sure, we won't get quite the same experience biking near water (the word river here does not necessarily mean a place of water--mostly just that water occasionally shows up in the river bed when we get really good monsoons), but it should be pretty nice exercise anyway.

After returning our bike we set off for one of my favorite activities of the whole trip: the Dog Sled Rodeo. Before we headed up to Alaska I did a search at the library for kids materials on Alaska. One of the things I came up with was Snow Buddies, a real cheesy movie about these puppies that go to Alaska and end up making a dog sled team with an Alaskan Husky named Shasta. Rachel LOVED the movie. Then when we got to Anchorage Grandma and Grandpa Campbell had gotten her a stuffed husky dog for a present, which she immediately named Shasta, and it became her new best friend and favorite toy. So upon arriving at the Dog Sled Rodeo, the very first dog we saw was Hugo, the dog who played Shasta in the movie when he was a puppy:

Rachel was so happy to get to pet the REAL Shasta. And Annie was hilarious, getting SO excited to have a real live dog sniffing her and hanging out so close and not even caring when she pulled his fur. She was squealing in baby heaven.

They had a mini dog sled that Rachel and Annie had to try out.

The show was really awesome! They explained all about sled dogs and how they train them and showed us some of the cool things they can do, and talked about the Iditarod and how they take care of the dogs and all sorts of interesting things. Apparently these dogs will run over 100 miles a day and wake up every morning ready and wanting to do it all over again. They eat over 10,000 calories a day when racing. Crazy!

The coolest thing was when they brought out 16 dogs to show us what a real sled racing team looks like, and hooked them up to the truck they use to transport the dogs. Check it out:

After the show we got to go pet and hang out with the dogs some more. These malamutes really aren't racing dogs--they're too bulky for speed--but the bigger they are, the more Annie likes them, and she was crazy about this big guy:

Standing up he's almost as tall as Rachel.

We got to hold some of the puppies and play with them, too. This one kept trying to get milk from Rachel's finger.

Annie liked the puppies, but not quite as much as the big dogs.

Notice the pink sticker we all got to wear. During the show they had a girls vs. boys competition, and the girls won, so everyone got a pink sticker that says "Alaska: where men are still men, and women win the iditarod."
It was a great day with a real nice bike ride in the morning and an awesome dog sled rodeo in the afternoon. To top it all off we got to go out to dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. One of my favorite days for sure.