The Iditarod

Our winter ended with a fun family project. This year Avonlea Jane was old enough to follow the Iditarod, the nearly 1,000-mile Alaskan dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome. Prior to the race starting on the first Saturday of March, we talked about the history of the Iditarod and she learned that it commemorated the 1925 Serum Run to Nome, when sled dog teams needed to rush diphtheria antitoxin to combat an epidemic in the small, Gold Rush town. We watched the movie Balto about the lead sled dog who brought the serum into Nome, and we watched a lot of real clips of sled dogs and their mushers online. 

We read stacks of books about the Iditarod, sled dogs, Alaska, and native Alaskan culture and watched some documentaries about Alaskan wildlife. Once she had a good understanding of the race and where it was held, we put a map of Alaska up on our refrigerator and marked the trail of the Iditarod so we could follow along. We then each picked a musher (not an obvious pack leader) to cheer for from the list of sixty-six teams in this year's race. Each of us put a race log up on the fridge under our map, and we updated our musher's check point status throughout the race. 

To do something to celebrate the kick off of the race, we held a little daytime party the day before the race started. 

Avonlea Jane and Will's friends Violet, Addison, Jason, and Preston sit amid a stack of Iditarod and Arctic books while we get ready to start a craft. 

After looking at some pictures of the northern lights, the kids started making their own nighttime landscape pictures while enjoying a snack of chocolate puppy chow. 

Avonlea Jane, Mommy, and Will's chalk and paint landscapes. Avonlea Jane said hers was a white out. 

Will is excited to make a popsicle stick dogsled. 

After our crafting and snack, we headed outside for a little I-kid-arod. The kids all learned the sled dog commands for right, left, go, stop, speed up, and slow down. Then they practiced them in individual trials (like a game of Red Light, Green Light) before being able to make the team. Once they had them all down, they had to try them in different formations, like holding hands two-by-two like a sled team or fanned out in the event of ice. They had a blast.

Some of the kids' dogsleds (Avonlea Jane's is on the left.)

After our kick off party, we made sure to watch the streaming coverage of the race start the next day. Avonlea Jane thought it was really cool to see the teams leave. They spread out the start times several minutes apart, based on a lottery, so we didn't watch all the teams start, but we watched for about an hour. 

David's musher at the ceremonial start

During the race, we checked in with Iditarod.com to update our mushers' statuses and to see webcam footage of checkpoints and GPS trackers. We were also fortunate to see plenty of race photos being posted on our mushers' Facebook pages. 

Avonlea Jane's musher, 29-year-old Wisconsin native, Anna Berington, who ran the race with her twin sister also competing, came into Nome on March 14 at 10:07 p.m. (AST) with nine dogs. (All start the race with sixteen and drop them at checkpoints if needed. They must have at least six at the finish.) She placed 43rd.

David's musher, Jamaican native Newton Marshall, scratched at the seventh checkpoint on March 6. One of his sled dogs, May, got loose from the team, and he left the race to track her. A week later, she was found 150 miles away, trying to make her way home. 

Liv's musher, last year's Rookie of the Year, Brent Marshall, checked into Nome on March 13 at 2:24 p.m. (AST) with eight dogs. He finished in 22nd place.

Will's musher, Akiak native (Akiak was the title of Will's favorite mushing book.) Mike Williams, Sr., whose son also raced, came into Nome on March 15 at 3:35 p.m. (AST) with nine dogs. He placed 45th. 

We weren't able to watch steaming coverage of the finish, but we did watch footage of it the next morning and tracked the top mushers by GPS the night before. The race ended in the middle night East Coast time. It was a really tight race between first and second place, with them being within sight of each other for much of the last leg, which is amazing considering the mileage of the race. The gap widened toward the end, and Mitch Seavey and Aliy Zirkle finished 44 minutes apart. The gap between seventh and eight place was only seconds apart. 

Mitch Seavey crossing the line in Nome.

Aliy Zirkle coming in second. She was who we really thought would win this year. 

We had a really fun time following the race, and Avonlea Jane is already excited about next year. We were hoping to take the kids to a sled dog race near us this year, but due to an early lack of snow for training, the 2013 New England sled dog races were all cancelled this year. We'll definitely have to go next year. 

Now that the race is over, the kids are making drawings and we're writing congratulatory letters to each of our mushers.