When I first updated to Facebook status to say I was starting the long drive to Alaska, one of my California friends who used to live in Anchorage, Selena, replied "You will be there for Fur Rondy!" The next comment was from Sharon who currently lives here. "Bring your fur bikini!" she wrote. What??? And....What??? What is Fur Rondy and why would one have a fur bikini?? My inquiry was met with an unusual silence. I guess it was just going to be one of those things I had to figure out when I arrived.
So here I am and Fur Rondy is in full swing. I still think is sounds funny, but Fur Rondy is not as bizarre or dubious as it may sound, its just short for Fur Rendezvous. Historically this was the time when all the fur trappers came to town to display their wares. Nowadays, there are more fur stores than you can shake a stick at, not that I will be purchasing any fur, but thinking the fur exchange may be a smaller part of it. There is a winter carnival complete with a ferris wheel, snow sculptures, plays and gatherings (probably where the fur bikinis would be en vogue), caribou races (more on that when I confirm exactly what that entails), and the ceremonial start of the Iditarod!
After a delicious lunch at the Brown Bag Sandwich Company and a nice catch up with Selena and her family, Stan showed me his favorite downtown coffee spot. Being successfully caffeinated, we wandered around downtown so I could see a bit more and get a bit more "lay of the land." I found a storefront bear and had to get a photo. When I sent it to a friend I was asked if it was a real bear...it's just a big "stuffy" not a taxidermy bear.
There is a little tourist area called Bear Square. It has another stuffed bear flying an airplane by the Bear Paw mine...there's an ice cream parlour and some Alaska experience based short films in a theatre downstairs.
Out front is another statue paying homage to 2 local residents and mythology....the Raven and the Bear.
I had to cross the street to get this picture -- a statue in tribute to the 150 sled dogs who braved darkness, blizzards, and temperatures below -60 Celcius to deliver life saving Diptheria anti-toxin to the remote village in Nome in January of 1925. If you aren't familiar with this, the first thing you should do is rent the cartoon movie Balto -- it was a favorite of my niece's and therefore I love all things Balto (which is what made me run across the street to get this photo). This is a story that any of you who are 'anti-vaccers' might want to hear. Chances are you might not be overly familiar with Diptheria, as you were vaccinated for it as a child and neither you nor your friends ever got sick with it. In the 1930's, Diptheria was the 3rd greatest cause of childhood morbidity, but it affected adults too. In 1921, 15,321 people died from Diptheria in the US. It's not a pleasant illness...those cases that are fatal are due to a toxin, and the affected person suffers breathing obstruction, coma, and death. 15,321...that's more than the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 in the US. And recall that Diptheria was not a viral pandemic, but a bacterial illness that popped up pretty routinely. In the winter of 1925, the sole local doctor in Nome, Alaska started seeing deaths from Diptheria. The anti-toxin he had ordered did not arrive on the last supply run of the fall, and he was faced with dealing with a potentially lethal epidemic in the community and having nothing to combat it with. The seas were frozen over, the trains did not go that far, and the only plane was frozen solid and unable to fly. The only option left was the Iditarod trail, used by dogsled teams. With little time and lives hanging in their paws, over 150 sled dogs participated in the critical relay of antitoxin to Nome. The trains got it as far an Nenesa, AK....the dogs needed to run it the last 674 miles. Blizzard conditions, temperatures as low as -60C, winter darkness, and difficult trails provided extreme challenges. One dog, Togo, led his team over 350 miles of that terrain. It was Balto and his team that ran through a blizzard and entirely in the dark on the final leg into Nome. The time it took for them to travel those 674 frozen stormy dark terrible miles? 127 hours. That's still amazing to me. Oh, and for all of you who like "6 Degrees of Separation," Kevin Bacon IS the voice of Balto in the cartoon.
A local artist in town has spruced up the downtown core with some murals. Here is one showing the current Iditarod route, as well as the traditional one that Balto and Togo would have take in 1925.
That's it for today...I have to mush if I want to see the ceremonial start of the 2015 Iditarod, although the pouring rain and lack of snow this year might make it unusual!
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