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After going to sleep in Ruby, with the northern lights dancing
outside our bedroom window,  we
woke up to a cloudy day with snow flurries in the air. Bill helped
Lisa Ungry make gravy to go with her biscuits, eggs and sausage.
Having a hot shower was a nice convenience and much appreciated.
After everyone was ready to go, Bill, Earl, Naomi, Emily and I headed
down to town to socialize with the mushers. Many had come and gone
during the night while we slept, such as Joe Garnie, Randy Chappel,
Mike Williams, Anna Bondarenko, Melanie Gould and Paul Gebhardt.
While we were hanging around, the first thing we saw was Karen Ramstead
and her team of sixteen pretty Siberians pulling in. Karen was in
good spirits and the dogs looked great. One of them required two
small stitches by the vets. I think it had pushed the dog next to
it into a snow bank, and of course that created a little tiff along
with a nip beside its eye. Bill Pinkham pulled  out
of town right before Peter Bartlett pulled in, around midday, and
next came Ryan Redington. Both were having good runs so far. Cindy
Gallea was looking good and parked nearby. Ed Stielstra had
an incident right outside Rohn where he had slammed into some rocks
when his sled blew sideways on glare ice before he could hit the
brake. The swelling was going down and Ed felt confident that he
should be able to run by tomorrow.
A bit later in the afternoon, the girls and I walked down to the
only store to buy a soda and to the Laundromat, the only place downtown
where there is an inside bathroom. You can also pay $2 for a shower
if you wish. Neat. The walk back up the hill was much longer than
the walk down. Not too lon g
afterwards, Frank
Siler, Karen Land and Doug
Grilliot pulled in and shortly thereafter came the other pretty
Sibe team belonging to Wayne
Curtis. By now the sun was shining brightly and the temperatures
had warmed considerably. The dog teams were basking in the sunshine
and getting in some good naps. Annie Honea had brought some casseroles
down to feed the mushers and invited me back to her house to learn
to make her special tuna salad recipe. Her secret ingredient is
the cream cheese she adds to her yummy mix. After my lesson and
a sandwich, she and I took a walking tour around town. Annie showed
me the library and some of the older
buildings in Ruby. When we got back to the Community Center,
Peryll
Kyzer and Rick
Mackey were in. There was plenty of time to walk around and
take snapshots of the resting teams, visit with mushers who were
not napping in the checkpoint and to watch the vets as they performed
their duties with the dogs. Before long two more teams were spotted
in the distance and Dexter
Kancer pulled in with Noah
Burmeister right on his heels, literally. Many of the mushers
are taking their eight-hour mandatory stops here in Ruby and most
have completed their 24-hour rest by now.
As darkness began to fall and after a wonderful halibut dinner
with
Lisa and the family, some of us jumped back in the truck to go back
down to town see Ellie Claus. She had arrived about 6:00PM and by
now had fed her team. The Ungry family, as part of their home school,
chose to follow four male and four female mushers. Ellie was one
of the choices, and a very impressive young role model to keep an
eye on. Ellie’s Mom, Dad, sister, brother, and more were there
to welcome her into town. Her dogs were now covered with fleece
blankets of many colors (made by her Mom) and resting all snuggly
and warm. Inside the Community Center, Ed Stielstra, Ryan Redington
and Peryl Kyzer were having a hot drink and contemplating when they
would be pulling the hook to head down the mighty Yukon. Ellie was
worried that her schedule now had her running mostly in the heat
of the day. Dogs run best at about twenty below and in these nice,
sunshiny days, the temperatures are more like twenty above. Soon
Karen Ramstead gathered her bunch and trotted them past the other
teams, heading towards Galena and Nulato. As darkness fell, Peter
Bartlett also headed down the river, but not before handing me Bill’s
Leatherman. Peter had lost his Leatherman and asked if he could
borrow Bill’s for the rest of the trip to Nome. “Sure.”
But Peter had found that his had only slipped out of his pocket
and was down inside his sleeping bag. I have heard many tales of
all the ‘good stuff’ mushers manage to lose out there
on the trail, from clothes to knives to gear. Anyway, we all headed
back to the Ungry’s house to update the web and wind down
from a busy day of “musher watching.”
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