We are happy to report that we have arrived safely with no more vehicle troubles at our friends Jacues and Magali Phillip's late last night. We were greeted with a superb home cooked meal by Magali and had a great visit before feeding the dogs and collapsing into bed. We had good weather for the last part of our journey from Whitehorse. Beautiful blue skies and good roads. Only saw five moose and they were all far from the truck so we were able to enjoy them. Neither of us have any desire for any up close moose encounters. 

Today was a day of unpacking, repacking and reorganizing and I wish I could say we are all done but we will continue this process for a few more days until the drop bags are completed! We have a master list that we pack the truck/trailer with at home and things are checked off as they go in. So, if they are checked off, we know they are here somewhere. But, now that we are here, we realize that with all the hands that helped to pack up (which are all very appreciated!) that we aren't exacly sure where everything is! So, we have a few mmore days of discovery ahead of us. Today we took all of the precut meat for the dogs out of the back of the truck and put it into the storage container here for our eventual Iditarod food drop bags to be completed in a few days. We set up a camping spot for the dogs in the woods by the house which is good for all. They are all bedded down comfortably as I write. Many of them have been here before so they are comfortable. The only dog who isn't super happy with me at the moment is Filbert.  She is in heat right now and has been making all the boys on the truck crazy with hormones so I have put her in Magali's pen for females in heat and she is not super happy about that. Though my last visit with her about an hour ago she did seem to be more forgiving to me. I know she just wants to be sure she is going where we are and that is definitely going to happen!

Warren worked on setting up his main racing sled this afternoon. All the lines connecting the sled to the dog's gangline have been changed, new ropes for the snow hooks, the new gangline is made up and fresh snaps put on, I made new zipper pulls for the many pockets on the sled, and the basic items he always carries loaded up. These are alot of the little parts of preparation that can make a big difference on the trail that can be time consuming but worth the effort. We are so lucky to have geat friends here who have offered their garage to us for these preparations. It makes things go that much smoother. 

Warren and Magali are out right now with the skidoo, the trail groomer, and W's sled - in that order all connected by ropes - checking out the trail that we will be running on tomorrow with all the dogs. There is a section of about ten miles that they will have to put in as it has not been used this winter. They have the chainsaw with them in case there have been any trees downed by the winds. This trail will connect Jacques and Mag's house to the Tenana River and from there we can run lots of miles. We will probably run around 50 miles tomrrow, work on drop bags on Thursday andrun again on Friday.

I am off to continue work on food drops. I will be making smaller bags of FirstMate dog food for the Iditarod bags for the next few hours.

Cheers,
Kate