Our Saturday started slow......

Both of us woke up with headaches so we decided not to go downtown or over to the Tudor Road bridge to watch the ceremonial start - instead we waited until about 2:30, stopped to get another fur ruff for my coat for both the sleeves and then headed downtown to the Ramada to meet Mark and Austin to walk over and see the Reindeer Run (supposedly patterned after the "running of the bulls......."). We waited quite a long time in 3,4 and 5-deep spectators - there may have been as many for this as there were for the Iditarod start! We watched one group of "runners" being chased and then alot of the people left, thinking it was over -but my astute husband notices there were not any men in the "first wave" - and sure enough we had much better viewing places for the 2nd and 3rd waves!!!! Hilarious costumes of just about anything you can imagine - rivaling Halloween! Then we walked over to the ice sculpture display - you can see the pictures below - of that and the reindeer run - be sure to go back several pages because I probably put up 15 pictures!!

Mark and Austin were up very early Saturday morning and just kind of acted like they were supposed to be dog handlers and got a bazillion autographs from Iditarod drivers!! It really paid off to be there early before all the hurrying and anxiety started! Several of the drivers even remembered them from visiting at the track the day before!! and called them by name!

Mark and Austin came back and fed with us and then drove themselves back to the Ramada so they could drive up to the re-start in Willow this morning - Randy figured that we couldn't get there and back without leaving the dogs alone or un-dropped for too long - it's a 2 hour drive and doesn't even start until 2pm - I think Mark and Austin were going to leave really early this morning to get there and get a good parking spot - you can imagine how many people go up there......

I have to say from our perspective, Mark and Austin couldn't be having any better a trip - they have seen and done just about everything they hoped and more!!!

So just a sit-around-and-read-and-watch movies kind of a day!