Iditarod and Other Winter Fun

Late winter is basically the time of the Iditarod celebrations here in Alaska, its kind of like the Alaskan Superbowl! There is a whole week full of activities leading up to the big race called Fur Rendezvous or "Fur Rondy" for short. One of the best activities that I participated in was the 3rd Annual Bed Races. Teams of four dress up in costume and race down a small ski hill on mattresses. You stop by colliding into hay bales at the bottom, kind of terrifying! Thank goodness there was a beer garden and DJ at the at the event so after a couple drinks it became less scary sliding down. Our team dressed in onsies PJs (a practical costume for the cold) haha, and we made it to the semi finals. On the last run, we were planning sabotage to sacrifice Jason to jump onto one of the competitors mattresses. However, he was pushed early and got to ride down the hill solo, it was pretty hilarious.

View from the bottom of the bed races

At the bottom colliding with the hay bales

Our dragon competitors! Erin is in the background in the white hat, the rest of us must be buried

I didn't really know what the the Iditarod was all about before I moved here. It has been dubbed the Last Great Race on Earth and is an approximately 1000 mile race that is a tribute to the role of the sled dogs along Alaska's historical mail and supply route from the south all the way up to the north villages. The sled dog culture and Alaskan huskies are slowly being phased out into extinction due to the introduction of snowmobiles in Alaska. The race takes 9-15 days to complete and every musher has a different strategy when it comes to feeding, running in the daylight or night, how many dogs to use, etc. This year there were 70 mushers are 49 of them crossed the finish line!

View from above

Racing at night

There is a ceremonial start of the Iditarod in Anchorage the day before the actual race begins in Willow. Downtown was packed with spectators as the mushers, each with their full team of 12 dogs, rode for about 11 miles throughout the town. That's over 800 dogs in one place, talk about my dream come true (I hope everyone who knows me understands my sarcasm here due to my fear of dogs haha). Luckily they are extremely well trained and don't go near people without direction from the musher. I scored a pass from work to get up close to all the mushers and take lots of photos. There were also some wild outfits around town, and people decked out in their furs! It was the perfect place for me to wear my new fox fur hat :)

Ceremonial start of the Iditarod

Cute dog booties

Ready to run 

Crazy bobcat hat and jacket

Erin and friendly lady with fox hat

Furs galore

Hands down craziest - a wolf hat!

After watching several mushers start downtown, we headed down the trail a bit to a less crowded park where several groups set up a tailgate or "Trailgate." It was really cool cause the sleds rode right past us! There really aren't any sports games up here in Anchorage besides minor league hockey, so it turned out to be an awesome day of trailgating and cheering on the mushers.

Trailgating

New mittens we got at the festivities downtown

Speaking of missing sports, I got somewhat sad this month seeing all the rodeo posts from everyone in Houston. I love the rodeo time, especially wearing my cowboy boots on Go Texas Day at work! So I totally wore my boots to work and celebrated here in Alaska :) I also went to a boxing match that they set up in the convention center. Apparently they have them every Thursday during the winter, definitely an interesting experience and great for people watching.

GO Texan in Alaska

Thursday Night Fights

Thursday Night Fights

One of my sweet friends Aubrey got married down in Waco, Texas this month and let me tell you, traveling 13+ hours from Anchorage to Waco is no easy feat. However the wedding was perfect and I got to see some of my favorite people down in Texas! My bestie Becca was my date to the wedding and I got to check out her newly renovated house. It's been months and lots of struggles for them, so it was awesome to see it in the final stages of renovation and I can't wait to see it furnished on my next trip down! I also got to see a couple friends at the wedding and then Christopher and Greg took me back to the airport in Houston. Overall it was a quick trip but great to be in warm weather and see some good friends. I also got to sit next to one of the SXSW bands on my way back to Seattle - Massy Ferguson. They were pretty beat after playing like 5 shows in a couple days, but it was interesting to talk to them. I briefly checked out their music on iTunes when I got home and it sounded interesting.

Catching up with Lindsey, the new Floridian

The lovely bride and groom

I came back to Anchorage just in time for St Paddy's Day, one of my favorite holidays. I kept up my tradition of drinking a Guinness and wearing my annual beer hat for the 5th year... although I can't find my 2010 pic.

2011

2012

2013

2014 - St. Paddy's in Anchorage

I didn't do nearly as much skiing this winter as I had hoped. Unfortunately, there were not many weekends with good conditions. But one awesome thing they have here at the Alyeska Ski Resort is night skiing. I can get a $20 lift pass to ski from 7-9pm and then catch a live music show down at the ski lodge. Since the sun is now staying up so late, the night skiing was more like dusk skiing. However, I began to really notice all of the lights along the runs during the last 30 minutes of skiing. It was a beautiful evening with sunset views as I rode up the lifts. My friend Steph also gave me a lesson and some skiing tips so that I was able to make it down a few blue runs.

Alyeska Resort is in Girdwood, which is a 40-45 minute drive from Anchorage depending on who you get stuck behind on the highway. It's a beautiful drive along the inlet with lots of scenic pull-offs. Even though I've lived here a year, I still feel like a tourist sometimes because I love taking advantage of all the photo ops. The weather has been so nice lately with nearly 3 weeks in a row of sunshine everyday. So the drive down to Alyeska has been beautiful.

Scenic stops along the drive to Girdwood 

Still a tourist

Starting "night" skiing

Catching the sunset over the inlet

Lights starting to turn on along the runs

Lighting up the runs

Ski lodge with cool ceiling at night and live music

Besides my night skiing adventure, I also went down to Alyeska for a team building day with my coworkers. We rode the tram to the Seven Glaciers restaurant at the top of mountain for lunch and then spent the rest of the day skiing. I started the day on the lower mountain with mostly greens. After practicing all my newly learned tips from Steph, I managed to ski down from the top of the mountain several times in the afternoon on the blues, so I guess I'm getting better slowly but surely :)

Riding up the tram to the Seven Glaciers restaurant

Cool views from the restaurant

Teambuilding event skiing with coworkers

Such a pretty day

Beautiful views from the top of the mountain

The sun is now setting just before 9, so I thought it would be a fun idea to hike up Flattop to watch the sunset with some wine. My friend Emily and I geared up last week for this adventure. We are both amateur hikers, so it was a fun and not too strenuous experience. It is still pretty icy towards the top so it was a little scary going up the steep steps and along the narrow ledges. It took us about an hour and a half to find this perfect spot to set up our little space heater, blanket, and pop open our bottle of wine... it was actually called "The Best Darn Bench." It had been such a lovely weekend in the 40s that we didn't think it would be super cold. However, it was pretty chilly so luckily we had the heater to warm us up! We watched the sunset and then headed back down the mountain, a little more confident going down, possibly because of the wine :)

Starting our Flattop hike

Beautiful dusk

Walking along the side

Heading towards the bench spot

View of the city below us

"The Best Darn Bench" 

Staying warm with our heater and enjoying some wine

Beautiful

City lights

It's rather difficult to find occasions to dress up and look nice here in Anchorage. I guess it's like this in cold weather places in general since you have to wear so many layers, jackets, boots, hats, gloves, etc. So people don't really tend to dress up like they did in Texas on the weekends and while out and about. However, one thing that I've grown to love which is an easy way to look nice is eyelash extensions! I already have pretty long eyelashes, but some of my friends here got a groupon to try out these extensions and it seemed like a fun idea.. and now I'm addicted! It's such an easy way to add a little glam to life in cold weather places.

Lovely lashes

Spring "break up" is pretty much here.. the snow is melting, which is making the trails slushy. It's probably time to take the studs off my running shoes! My last end of the season snow runs have been pretty good though. I really want to run a 12K at the end of May (about 7.5 miles), but I've plateaued at 4 miles lately. One of my friends here convinced me to go on a run with him to get past my 4 mile stall. He is definitely a great runner and pushed me to go 6.5 miles! I probably walked about 0.5 miles total, but for the most part I overcame my plateau and I'm so excited. I've also spotted a couple more moose along the trails!

Moose sightings

Can't believe I made it 6.5 miles

Unfortunately, spring is not a very pretty season here. But I took an impromptu trip to Portland last weekend where I got to experience a beautiful springtime! I'll post all about that trip later this week :)

New welcome to spring phone cover - real dried flowers!