Mush, Mush!

Our second port-of-call was Skagway. Again, they just pulled the boat into the harbor and we disembarked.

Aaron and I had booked another excursion, so we loaded onto a small bus to be taken to a Musher's Camp and go on a sled ride with sled dogs. On the way to the camp, our tour guide told us a bit about Skagway. He said that you can hop onto the highway out of town and drive all the way to the lower 48. He added that there are many places in Alaska where that is not possible - like Juneau. Apparently, you can only get in or out of Juneau by boat or plane - there are no roads there that lead out of town. I thought that was interesting.

At the base of the camp, we were let off the bus and put into small groups and loaded into vans to get to where the dogs were located. It was a steep and bumpy hill, so it was a rough ride! Once we made it to the Musher's camp, we saw tons of dogs ready to pull sleds,

some modified sleds (we weren't at a high enough altitude for snow, so they had carts with seats and wheels for the dogs to pull us in) and mushers to guide the dogs and the faux sleds.

After we got out of the vans, we stayed in our groups and got seated on the sled carts. Our seats had seatbelts, which was good, because once the mushers told the dogs to mush, they really took off! They seemed eager to run and it seemed like the mushers had more trouble stopping the dogs than getting them to keep going. Here is our view of the dogs when they were pulling us:

As we went around the camp, we could see that the dogs all had their own dog houses, which were spread out throughout the camp.

After our sled ride, we got back in the small vans and were taken to the lower camp for a talk by a musher about sled racing.

But the very best part, was getting to play with the puppies! They had one, three and four-month-old puppies for us to see! They were so adorable! This little guy wanted to get under the dog house - cute puppy butt!

I have to admit that I almost tried to smuggle out one of the puppies! I'm sure they wouldn't have missed just one!

It was a really fun day and I talked to a few of the mushers. They all seemed to genuinely care about their dogs and I didn't get the impression from any of them that they would ever mistreat their dogs or push them beyond their endurance limits. It was a great experience!