ARRIVAL TO ANCHORAGE - Sandy

“Hey, who’s your musher?”

This was the first thing I heard as I removed my coat on the plane to take my seat, and I knew that this trip was going to be unique! Simply put, that’s just not a question you get every day, especially not in New Jersey! But it’s Iditarod season and our plane was headed for Anchorage – and apparently we were not the only east coast enthusiasts on board.

Decked in our “NJ to NOME” sweatshirts & hats in support of our favorite Iditarod rookie, Kim Darst, we smiled and officially switched our mental gears to “vacation” - our Alaskan adventure vacation… first time to the Last Frontier, first Iditarod…many more firsts to come!!

Kim Darst, the only NJ musher to ever qualify for & enter the Iditarod (and the only musher to allow city-girl-me into her world last spring with the privilege of scooping poop and doing other glamorous kennel chores for her canine athletes) was due to arrive in Anchorage in the afternoon. After a long flight, a lost piece of luggage and a snow storm we didn’t know would be welcoming us to Alaska, we got to the hotel and found Kim’s primary handler, Diane, waiting in the lobby for Kim and her team to arrive.

Diane, who flew out from NJ earlier in the week, reported that Kim had been incommunicado for the last two days. She was worried knowing that the weather and roads were problematic. But at 11:30 in the evening, when I happened to be in the hotel lobby asking about our lost baggage, the Husky Haven Race Team of Blairstown, NJ arrived safely in Anchorage! I was there to greet Kim as she walked into the hotel exhausted from 8 days of trecherous driving...and all I could think was, "And that was probably the easy part."