Dallas Seavey | Texas Tales and Denali Dreams

I didn’t plan on it taking this long for me to post again. Life with 3 young children has kept me busy the past couple of weeks. I have a couple of ideas for my next posts. They should be up more quickly. I know all of you are waiting with baited breath….

My last post was about the ceremonial start to the Iditarod race. Todd and I were able to help lead Anjanette Steer’s team to the start line and it was a blast! The race is now over and I wanted to share the results with you.

Dallas Seavey (the musher Todd and I were able to take the super fun and cheesy picture with) won the 2012 Iditarod in nine days, four hours, 29 minutes and 26 seconds. At 25, he became the youngest musher to win the race. Aliy Zirkle came in one hour behind Seavey for a second place finish. Anjanette Steer, the rookie Todd and I were following, came in 26th place. Only one other rookie, Brent Sass, finished before her. Finally, capturing the Red Lantern award for the last musher in to Nome, was rookie Jan Steves.

It was fun to watch how the entire city of Anchorage was engrossed with following the Iditarod. Very different from Texas and football, but tons of fun anyway.

So I’ve mentioned that Todd and I have been taking the kids to enjoy the different Fur Rondy activities. What is Fur Rondy you may ask? It’s actually short for Fur Rendezvous and it’s the winter festival here in Anchorage. This is the 77th year for the Rondy and it, “is built around the celebration when miners and trappers would come to town to resupply and sell their goods and do a little celebrating.”

The first activity we did with the kids was dog sledding. One of the kennels in the area gives rides in one of the local parks. I’m a dog lover and have always admired sled dogs and their athleticism and endurance. This was a huge treat to actually ride on a sled!

Later that weekend we took the kids to see the snow sculptures, the model trains at the Alaska Railroad and finally we capped the weekend off with a carriage ride through downtown.

The 40th Iditarod race begins next weekend and Todd and I did get out by ourselves and attended a reception for some of the mushers. We met and had our picture taken with Dallas Seavey. He’s a third generation musher. His grandfather, Dan, helped organize the first Iditarod. Dallas’ father, Mitch Seavey, has raced the Iditarod 18 times and won once. This will be Dallas’ 6th time to race the Iditarod and he was last year’s winner of the Yukon Quest, another 1,000 mile dog sled race held in February. All three generations of Seaveys will be racing this year in celebration of the 40th running of the Iditarod.

Anyway, the picture is complete cornball cheesy, but Dallas was a really good sport about taking his picture with everyone, and it’s just a great picture, cheesy or not. And no, the fur coats are not ours – they’re props donated by a furrier here in town.