Alaska - Day One

I survived. And had fun. Two great things. This morning we went to watch the ceremonial start of the Iditarod. I just found out that with the wind chill it was right around zero degrees. It was cold, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. How does one combat the cold? It appears that most people wear some type of dead animal on their heads. Seriously. I've never seen more fur in my life. PETA would have had a field day. And I'm sure they would not have approved of the dog sledding either. Other things we saw...a mall, ice sculptures, snow sculptures and the Uluu factory (google Uluu if you don't know what that is). After lunch at a burger joint that also served Chinese, Mexican and seafood we drove to Eklutna Lake, which is frozen right now. We hiked up to the lake and ventured out on it. So, technically today I walked on water. :-) We also fell down...a couple of times. There is a lot of ice under the snow and if you slip you are going all the way down. Now I'm really exhausted. We are about to have dinner and will probably hit the sack early tonight. I'll try to upload some pictures of today's activities a bit later.