Mushing it up old school

• I try to do one thing on a cruise that I’ve never done before and have some rea­son to think I’ll never do again. This time it was rid­ing on a dog sled.

  We did this yes­ter­day in Skag­way. It was one of the excur­sions that Car­ni­val offered, and once I saw it I just had to sign up. Greg loves all dogs all the time, so I knew it would be a bit of heaven for him. I’m a lazy girl who enjoys all means of trans­porta­tion that don’t involve any exer­tion for me, so of course I was into it. (Well, maybe I’m not that bad, but I did enjoy let­ting dogs do my walk­ing for me, how­ever briefly.)

  Our tour guide took about 40 of us in a bus up roads that turned from pave­ment to gravel fairly quickly. He pulled off at a remote spot in a meadow, and we walked the rest of the way in, guided in by the cat­er­waul­ing of over 300 sled dogs.
  
  We were given a short intro­duc­tion by a woman that got involved in dog-sledding — actu­ally, “mush­ing” is what they call it — just as a sort of hobby. It’s a very expen­sive hobby, requir­ing great amounts of cap­i­tal, energy and time that you may never see again, but the peo­ple who take to it feel it’s worth it all. Our lady-musher (I’ve for­got­ten her name) said she started with just one or two dogs and just kept adding on. As she was talked a fenced-in yard full of dogs slept, paced, watched or occa­sion­ally howled.

  

  But when it was time for a lit­tle mush­ing, we didn’t take those dogs out. The “musher’s camp” we were vis­it­ing is home to a num­ber of mush­ers, all of whom keep and train their dogs. Since the sled-races require 14–16 dogs to a sled, that ends up being a lot of dogs. In sum­mer, the train­ing involves hav­ing them pull a wheeled cart that can hold seven peo­ple. So hav­ing the dogs pull tourists around for 15 min­utes or so is a win-win sit­u­a­tion. We tourists are happy to pay for the priv­i­lege, and the train­ers are happy to give the dogs the exercise.

  And the dogs may be the biggest win­ners of all, because it seems as if they just love doing it. Our group went up to where the wheeled cart was with the dogs all har­nessed up and tied to a cou­ple trees. We stepped in and buck­led up as our musher Aaron did a last check on the dogs to straighten them out. And the dogs started to get excited, greet­ing him with jumps and howls. When he took his place on the end of the cart, they couldn’t stand the sus­pense any longer and some of them started leap­ing for­ward, try­ing to get going all by them­selves (which would’ve worked bet­ter if there weren’t a brake on). Then Aaron untied the team, released the brake, gave them a “Hike! LET’S go,” and off we went.

  And what a blast! The dogs are only going 15 mph or so, but it’s amaz­ing to think they can do even that. When the cart is full it weighs about 2500 pounds. Some of the dogs seem almost to be run­ning side­ways because they’re bear­ing down so hard. And with all of that exu­ber­ant dog-power in front of you and the wind in your face, it’s hard to think of any­thing more fun to pro­pel you down the for­est path.

  

  We went about a mile, and then it was time to get off and thank them for the lovely time. I had thought per­haps the dogs would be a lit­tle on the wild side, but appar­ently not. There’s no prob­lem with being pet­ted and fussed over and the more hands-on the better.

  Going back to camp, we vis­ited some up-and-comers — one-week-old Bertram (left)who just wanted to go back to sleep, and four-month-old But­ters (right), who was already want­ing to go see the world.

  Glad to know we’d done our lit­tle bit to help the next poten­tially Idi­tarod–win­ning team, we climbed back on the bus, just tak­ing a lit­tle break for Kodak moments when the scenery got too pretty to stand …

  

  … and then back to our lit­tle home away from home.

  

  
  

  Related posts:

  1. Pelosi, show­ing how many Sun­day School classes she skipped
  2. The dog, the band and blogging

  
  
  June 5th, 2007 | Grace | 7394 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fthis-side-of-glory.com%2Flife%2Ftravel-blogging%2Fmushing-it-up-old-school%2FMushing+it+up+old+school2007-06-05+10%3A22%3A06Gracehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.this-side-of-glory.com%2Farchives%2Fmushing-it-up-old-school%2F |

7394 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Fthis-side-of-glory.com%2Flife%2Ftravel-blogging%2Fmushing-it-up-old-school%2FMushing+it+up+old+school2007-06-05+10%3A22%3A06Gracehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.this-side-of-glory.com%2Farchives%2Fmushing-it-up-old-school%2F and Counting...

• Michelle 06.05.2007
  

  Wow. That looks gor­geous! I would love to take a cruise there as well. You’ll have to give us a full run down of the trip

• Mimi
  

  Wow! That looks so fun!

• Grace
  

  It really was great. I think it’s very neat they can fig­ure out a way for us ten­der­foot types to get a chance to enjoy it, because the real thing in the real weather is much too gru­el­ing for me.

• hand­maid Mary-Leah
  

  Here in Col­orado, in the moun­tains in win­ter, they do day trips where you can go on the sleds… They say that there is noth­ing more sooth­ing than being bun­dled up with no other sounds than the dogs feet and the shush­ing of the sled through the snow and the quiet of the moun­tains.
  Peace­ful way to see the scenery, the only thing cold is your nose!
  Christ is in our midst!
  the hand­maid,
  Mary-Leah

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