Alaska Trip Part 1

I was wanting to go to Alaska since my brother moved there about five years ago so when my mom called and told me we could get $200 round trip tickets I was all in!   We picked memorial weekend because Bob would have to take less days off work and my cousin was getting married in Alaska over the weekend.  It is a good thing we got the tickets when we did because my brother ended up moving to Idaho the day after we left!  So I left with my mom, dad, and sister Wednesday night and we got back early Wednesday morning.

I was excited to go and just the idea of a flight alone without the kids was fun.  It wasn't stressful at all and I actually got to watch the onboard show "McFarland."  It was good, but pretty predictable.

Then next picture was taken when we were close to landing in Alaska.

The airport was smaller but pretty nice and I got to see my first moose!

We got to my brothers house a little before midnight and went to bed.  It wasn't dark yet but the sun had set.  I was really surprised when I woke up at about 4 am with what felt like full sun in my face.  My brother didn't have any curtains up and I knew it would be light most of the time but I didn't realize exactly what that meant.  Luckily I had one of those eye masks tucked in with my travel pillow and was able to slip them on every morning.  Another strange thing was that I didn't feel tired when it was so light out.  11pm does not feel the same when it looks like 3pm.

My cousin dropped off a little wedding/Alaska prep bag and it had these beautiful chocolates in it.  I think they were painted.  They must be the prettiest candy I've ever seen.

Our fist tourist thing was to visit the Iditarod Headquarters.  It was very informational.  We got to watch a movie about the dogs and see what a stop looks like.

The best part was seeing the dogs.  They had puppies that might be future racers and they were soooo cute!

The owners said it was important for us to hold and play with them because when they are on the race they need to be ok with all the different vets checking them out at the checkpoints.

They also had a real dog sled team and the owner had raced 16 times before.  They gave us a little ride.  It was short and on a 4 wheeler but cool to know that I was pulled by sled dogs.  The dogs were so excited to run.  When we started getting ready to go they were whining and pulling.

It was cool to learn about how these dogs are athletes and how they are bread and trained to run.