The 2002 Iditarod starts Saturday, March 2.

 Map of the Iditarod Trail

Click here to find out more about the Iditarod.

 Click here to find out the weather in Anchorage.
 

Mrs. Murphy’s Journal:
My Alaska Trip

Tuesday, February 26
Today I left Chicago for Anchorage, Alaska.

Click here to read about my travels to Alaska
 

Wednesday, February 27

Sun rising behind the Chugach Mountains at about 8:10 a.m.
Do you know what time the sun rises in Chicago at this time of year?
 

We drove from Anchorage to Wasilla to the Iditarod Race Headquarters.

Wasilla is where the mushers actually start the race.
Even though all of the mushers have their sled dog team in Anchorage on
March 2, the first Saturday in March, the race doesn’t begin there.
The teams go off every two minutes to the first checkpoint, Eagle River.
There, they load up in a truck and are driven past the ice-free Knik River to Wasilla,
where they spend the night and begin racing the next day.
(see Idiitarod map above)
Inside the Iditarod Race Headquarters, a log building built in 1985,
are displays, trophies, meeting room for the mushers, and information about the Iditarod.
Outside the Headquarters, we also saw the veterinarians check the dog teams entered in the 2002 Iditarod.

Click here to see more about the
Iditarod Race Headquarters
and an iMovie of
the veterinarians checking the dogs
 

The Plettner Kennels are located in Big Lake, about 8 miles north of Wasilla.
The kennel is owned and operated by Iditarod mushers,
Lynda Plettner and Dan “Guido” Govoni.
Lynda has completed 8 Iditarods.
Dan first completed the race in 2000 and
won the most improved musher award in 2001, finishing 28th.
This husband and wife team has competed in almost every Alaskan dog mushing event:
Iditarod, Klondike 300, Knik, Kusko 300, Aurora 50/50, and various sprint and mid-distance races.
They have been raising, training, and racing sled dogs since 1981.
The two of them built, from the ground up, the 20 acre, 350 dog facility where they currently live.

Click here to see more about the Plettner Kennels
 
 

Lake Lucille (frozen) with the Chugach Mountains in the background

Arctic hare
 

Thursday, February 28
It's cold and windy today. They said in some areas the wind was blowing 80 mph!
It's not as clear and sunny as it was yesterday- although the sun did come out in the afternoon.

      
Dick Mackey was one of our speakers today.

Dick was one of about a dozen people (along with Joe Redington) involved in starting the
first Iditarod race 30 years ago and won the race by one second in 1978.
He spoke to us about the differences between the first Iditarod and racing now.
He said they started the Iditarod because they wanted to show people
how important and worthwhile it was to keep sled dogs.
The race started out to be 1,000 miles, but they added 49 miles to honor Alaska as it is the 49th state.
There were 28 teams of dogs and no one was interested in covering it in the paper.
But, when thousands of people came to watch the start of the event and it
caught the imagination of the public, more and more papers started to tell about it.

He calls the first year a "learning experience".
It took days longer to get from checkpoint to checkpoint than it takes mushers now.
The wooden sled weighed 100 pounds as compared to today's titanium sled that weighs about 36 pounds.
No one had heard of booties for the dogs, there was inadequage food, and only one veterinarian.
He says now there is better equipment and the knowledge as well as attitude has changed.
He thinks the only similarity between mushing then and now is the fact that
there was a sled, a musher, and a team of dogs.
Although he had bumps, bruises, frostbite, and was sun burned when he finished,
when Joe Redington said, "Let's do it again," he agreed.
And, that's why the Iditarod lasted more than one year.

Joe Redington, the "father of the Iditarod"
The man who had the vison of racing dogs from Anchorage to Nome.
 
 

We went to the Musher Banquet on Thursday night at The Sullivan Arena, a hockey stadium.
There were over 2,000 people there!
The money that was raised went towards the Iditarod.
Each musher was called up to the stage to make a speech
in the order that he/she is going to start the race on Saturday.
We had dinner and walked around to visit with the mushers.
They were kind enough to sign autographs and smile for pictures.

Click here to see more about the Musher Banquet
 

Friday, March 1

A Letter from Mrs. Murphy
to her Third Grade Class
 

Jeff King signing posters at The Millennium Hotel.

Jeff is from Denali Park, Alaska.
He was born in California and came to Alaska in 1975 to “seek adventure”.
He won the Iditarod in 1993, 1996, and 1998, received a Yukon Quest
victory in 1981, and came in 3rd in 2001.
His lifetime Iditarod winnings are $388,194.
He has three daughters and breeds, raises, and trains 60-70 huskies a year.
 

Libby Riddles, the first woman to win the Iditarod in 1985, signing her book that I bought, Storm Run.
 

Libby Riddles, Shannon Cartwright, illustrator of Storm Run, and Mrs. Murphy
 
 

Frozen Lake Spenard- where airplanes can take off and land
 

Stuart Nelson, Chief Veterinarian

Stuart’s job is to pick the vet staff that volunteer their time, organize and educate mushers and
vets on how to best take care of the dogs as well as to make sure the dogs are safe.
The veterinarians attend a seminar prior to the start of the race and
the rookie mushers and vets also have a two day meeting.
The veterinarians need to be able to take care of themselves in severe conditions with long hours
when teams come into the checkpoints right after one another- especially at the beginning.
There is also a meeting before the race where Stuart talks to all of the mushers
about being aware of the dogs while they are on the trail.
There are 35 trail veterinarians this year and 8 of them are rookies.
Many of them are experienced with other sled dog races.
They have to have at least 5 years of medical background.

February testing of dogs:
-A permanent microchip is implanted so that the dog can be identified throughout its life.
       -An ECG- electrocardiogram is taken which is an electro tracing of heart pattern- looking for
potentially fatal hearts and to see if the dog’s heart is normal.
- They check each dog’s blood count
-Vaccinations are given to kill different types of worms inside the dogs
-Dogs are given a basic checkup
This is different from the physical examination done at the Iditarod Race Headquarters.

Why does Stuart volunteer his time?
He says the trail has a lot of attractions. One of the drawings is the people you meet-
the mushers, the villagers, and the other volunteers.
He also enjoys the wilderness and history of the different checkpoints.
His greatest concern is when the dogs get overheated.
There are different ways to keep a dog warm.
You can always put a coat on the dog and put them on straw,
but it’s difficult to find ways to cool them off when they’re running.
So, they need to make sure that each dog has a good coat.

Food is weighed before it’s sent out to the checkpoints and there are certain
rules and regulations about how much food should be shipped.
The veterinarians give a hands-on examination of every dog
at every checkpoint before they eat and rest.
If there’s a concern, they want to communicate it with the musher
and get medication in the dog as soon as possible.
They look at each dog’s hydration, body weight, mucous, heart, lungs, body temperature,
posture, attitude, feet and skin, appetite, and abnormal signs-coughing, trembling, lethargy...
Each musher carries a Dog Team Diary to write about how the dogs are doing along the trail.
They give the journal to the vet at every checkpoint and the vet might write back,
“Dogs are getting thin- watch closely.”

Susan Butcher was one of our speakers today.

Susan lives in Manley, Alaska. She has been in the Iditarod 17 times and won it 4 times.
She started mushing when she was 23 years old and is now 47.
When she was 23 and Joe Redington, the father of the Iditarod race, was 63,
they mushed up Mt. McKinley.
She mushes about 10,000 miles a year.
 Susan believes that it is such a wonderful experience to
go out on the Iditarod trail and through the villages.
She says now you get a small feel for the history and culture you’re passing through,
but in the old days when the mushers were allowed to stay with the villager’s family,
they really got to know the family with which they stayed.
She believes that an important part of the race is traveling through the native lands and villages.

 Another very important aspect of the race is how much the dogs love what they’re doing.
She told wonderful stories of how her dogs have saved her life numerous times
She says that any honest musher will tell you that the race is all about the dogs.
The mushers are neat people, but the media needs to focus more on the dogs.
She says the musher’s job in the race is to love, feed, take care of the dogs, and hold on for dear life.
Alaskan Huskies are uniquely different. They are trained and used for sledding.
They are extremely competitive and have an amazing desire to run.
 

      
The Fur Rendezvous and the Iditarod are the two most popular sled dog races in Anchorage.
 

Saturday, March 2
Iditarod 2002 "Ceremonial Start"

For 64 mushers and about 1,000 dogs,
the Iditarod journey began at 10 a.m. today in downtown Anchorage.
The winner will get to Nome in 9 days and the others will cross the finish line within the following 5.
Sled dogs that have seen more moose than people were guided down the streets
that were lined with spectators, pets, and yummy hot-food stands.
The dogs were so anxious to get going because they just LOVE to run,
they had to be restrained until it was their turn to start.
22 rookies were entered in the 30th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Many of them were happy to have scraped together the money to run.
Most lack sponsors like the dog-food company, Iams, the outdoor gear supplier, Cabela's, or
the clothing company, Eddie Bauer, all of which put tens of thousands of dollars into
the kennels of top mushers like Dee Dee Jonrowe or Jeff King.
One rookie, Peter Bartlett, has been working two jobs to make his Iditarod dream come true.

Click here to see and read more about
the "ceremonial start" of Iditarod 2002
 
 

Sunday, March 3

We flew on a Cessna 206, a single engine airplane that holds 6 people, to Flathorn Lake
to see the mushers and sled dog teams going from checkpoints, Knik to Yentna.
Do you notice the skis they use to take off and land instead of wheels?
(A picture of Mrs. Murphy and the pilot.)
 

Inside the plane

Click here to read and see
more about Flathorn Lake
and the sled dog teams

After watching the dogs and mushers, we hopped on a Cessna 180,
a single engine airplane that holds 4 people,
and flew over the Chugach Mountains to Lake George
where we saw amazing glaciers and icebergs.

Click here to see
glaciers and icebergs
 

Monday, March 4

There are over two hundred airplanes on frozen Lake Hood.

Today, we got on another Cessna 206 at Lake Hood and flew to checkpoint,
Finger Lake where we stayed for 4 hours and saw 23 sled dog teams check in.

From the air, we could see Mt. McKinley in the distance.
It is over 20,000 feet high!
The highest peak in the Rocky Mountains is around 14,000 feet high.
Can you figure out the difference in feet and miles?

After the musher checks in at Finger Lake, a volunteer leads his/her dog team to
a resting spot where the mushers feed the dogs and themselves,
the veterinarians check the dogs, and the mushers let the dogs rest on
a pile of straw that the musher sets out for every pair of dogs.
You might even see a musher taking a nap in his/her sled.
Mushers stay at the checkpoints for different amounts of time.
Some check in at the checkpoint and leave without resting and
take their rest at another point along the trail.
They must make 2 eight-hour stops and one 24-hour stop on their journey
to Nome, but they also pull their team off the trail, take a short rest,
and give the dogs a snack as they feel it's necessary.
When it is warm and sunny during the day, the mushers
will let the dogs rest more often to cool off and run at night.

This checkpoint is an area along the frozen lake with one log cabin
where the mushers are able to use the restroom.
Other checkpoints are located in towns where their could be lodging facilities.

Movies of Finger Lake will be posted at a later time.

Can you find the sled dog team?
“Bye, bye, mushers, dogs, and Alaska. I had a fabulous time!” I said
as we flew away.