Yukon Quest Dogsled Race

Weather Report

Sun rose today at 8:56 a.m. and will set at 5:16 p.m. for 8 hours and 20 minutes of day light. A gain of almost 7 minutes a day.

High today +30 low +25.

The strange thing was it was –51 on January 28 and exactly two weeks later on February 11 the temperature was +45. An astounding difference of 96 degrees in two weeks. They said it never gets up to +45 and some years February is colder than January. We were real worried about that on Jan 28th. The strange thing is this warm weather we are having is troublesome for frozen pipes. When there isn’t much snow and it gets warm the pipes freeze more than they do at –50 degrees. The warm pushes the cold down. That is your science lesson for the day.

Now, if you are our friends or family you are way to busy to read my ramblings today so don’t. Or just skip to the part about the Yukon Quest and my “Love You” salutation and we will still be friends.

We could have problems with exercising but we were given an exercise booklet in the MTC with lots of well illustrated exercises and a big elastic band. It has been too cold to be outside to walk, which we would really like to do but the good news is we have a big apartment and there is plenty of room to walk around, do our MTC exercises and do some stair climbing. On Tuesday and Thursday I do my pool exercises (on dry land) so I can think of my friends in the pool. We walk around the church a couple of times a week and use this time to study our scriptures. It has taken us one month to learn D&C 4. We aren’t’ slow are we? This past week we have been able to get out into the BEAUTIFUL country and walk. You saw our picture last week of the beautiful Frozen Chena River, which wasn’t frozen in the spot of our picture because the power plant puts in hot water so the water was open and there were ducks floating every where. There are lots of trails and we can just know that this winter wonderland will be beautiful in the spring.

Does everything on a mission have to be just great? I hope not because we had our problems this week. Everything went wrong, our printers and computers at the Family History Center, the library and even at home wouldn’t work. We felt like we should have been doing more but we couldn’t work any faster because of technical problems. But to even make matters worse we had our first “No show” appointment and our wonderful investigator went on a retreat with his old church. That doesn’t sound good does it? Well, we aren’t’ giving up on him!!!! But 17 months seemed like an awfully long time a couple of days last week.

Saturday we went up town and watched the dog sled races. We were right down on the frozen Chena River, just a couple of blocks down from the open water in our picture last week. There were 22 teams and each team had 14 dogs pulling their sleds. The dogs were so fun to watch because they LOVED it and were so excited to run they just kept jumping up and down and barking so loudly. These dogs are all tied up to the sled and each other but one dog was so excited he kept ducking under his reins to the next dog and finally got frustrated and just jumped straight up in the air over the black dog and back again. We laughed and Burt got a couple of great pictures before the handlers came over and held on to the dog so he couldn't jump any more.

Another team #17 was so excited that the driver got off his sleigh and stood right in front of his dogs and talked to them, gave them a hug, and got back on the sled and they took off. The teams are going to be running for 1000 miles to White Horse, Yukon. Look on a map so you can see how far it is. They say the dogs don’t settle down until about 10 miles out of town. They will run most of the way on the big Yukon River but sometimes will be up in the mountains.

Eagle Pass will be especially difficult because the wind blows so hard. The drivers and dogs all sleep on the trail and there will be food drops for them occasionally along the way. It will take them at least nine days to get there. It is called the Yukon Quest and was a fun thing for us to watch. What a fun, rugged sport!

The gospel is still true!!
Love from two Old Froggers.