We booked a tour at Husky Homestead, home of Jeff King, the four-time Iditarod champion, and his many dogs. At first, I was a tiny bit skeptical. Learning about the Iditarod would be interesting, but Jessica and The Yankee were more interested in seeing the puppies.
They did not disappoint. And they’ll win you over. Cuteness follows. You step off the shuttle and they thrust dogs right into your hands:
Those puppies are all about six weeks old. We’re told we are a part of their training. We’re socializing the animals. They should be paying us for our help!
This is Chase, he gave us the general idea of the place, introduced us to a few of the 60 or so dogs there, including a couple of champion huskies and told us about their general life with the mushmaster. Some turn into competitive sled dogs, others get passed along to a more domestic lifestyle. For now, they’re all pulling stuff. In the winter they drag a sled. Right now, as we were there, they hooked up nine or 10 to a four wheeler and the dogs ran like the kibble bowl was on fire. The rest were loudly jealous.
The short version: they’ve got it pretty good.
This dog is already a champion, and at a young age. King said she could be one of the best ever before she’s done.
This one is a couple of months old. Each litter is given a theme name. This litter is named after Jeeps. This is Cherokee. Or Wrangler. Hard to keep them straight:
King has a nice patter as he talks about running the races. I have some video of this I’ll be putting together in the next few days. Be sure you come back to check it out. It is informative and entertaining.
In the afternoon we went out riding four wheelers. There’s a large parcel of land that abuts the national park that is private land. The story goes there was a coal operation there when the park was federalized. And that was in a time when the government wouldn’t just snap things up. So the mining continued. When that played out, the land stayed private, and now there are ATVs.
And this guy is our guide. What could go wrong?
He was good, a personable fellow, a fine guide. He didn’t drive fast enough.
He took us up close to views like these, though:
We saw the train on our way back to the lodge:
More mountains:
And a moose — unconcerned on the side of the road. I walked to the center line on the road before the moose would worry about me. That’s, what, 15 feet? Not a bad evening find.
Tomorrow we head back to Anchorage and, much later tomorrow, back to the lower 48.
