29 Apr Blog Your Way Around the World: Alaska Winter Magic – Part Three
In 2010, seven of Adventure Collection’s ten members sponsored Blog Your Way Around the World, a unique online travel contest that challenged contestants to write a short essay about why they deserved to win eight of the world’s most amazing adventure vacations and how, if selected the winner, they would write about their experiences to inspire others. Beth Robbins won the contest by receiving the most votes from readers. Beth recently enjoyed, and blogged about, one of her prizes, a trip to Alaska in winter, courtesy of Adventure Collection member Off the Beaten Path. We are pleased to share her dispatches here.
©Beth Robbins
Waking up bright and early the next morning, we left for Seward to go dog sledding. We arrived at Mitch and Dallas Seavey’s sledding operation. Dallas was the winner of this year’s Iditarod and we actually used some of his dogs to pull our sled. We had a briefing on what to do and how to handle the dogs and we were off. I was amazed that the dogs were not Huskies or Malamutes; but a specially bred dog for pulling sleds. Although they do use Huskies, the larger dogs would overheat in the 1,049 endurance race from Anchorage to Nome.
The scenery along the Kenai Fjords National Park was beautiful. Mountains ran the length of our trail on one side with a stream running along the other. Two hours later we stopped for a picnic lunch and then continued back for another two hours. The dogs were very anxious to keep going and yapped and howled every time we stopped.
Another interesting fact that we learned about the Iditarod was that the dogs only run between seven and ten miles per hour. I was always under the assumption that they went much faster.
The ride back to Girdwood was beautiful at this time of day. The sun was on the snowy mountains and we could see hikers and ski trails along the ridges. We were even fortunate enough to see a lone wolf walking across a field.
That evening we had a farewell dinner and the next morning we left for the airport. We were all sorry to see this trip come to an end.
Contact Off the Beaten Path at 800-445-2995 to learn more about their Alaska’s Winter Magic adventure.
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