Into Ruby
/Good evening Ryno Kennel fans! Ryne has made it into Ruby, arriving at 2:05 PM with thirteen happy dogs and has officially made it halfway through the race. I’m not sure yet if she’ll be hanging out here for her mandatory eight hour rest, or moving on to another checkpoint. I guess we’ll just have to watch the tracker and see!
From Ruby, Ryne will continue to head down the mighty Yukon River towards Galena. The Yukon River is often seen as a difficult stretch for many mushers as the scenery hardly changes, and if you get off the trail, you’re likely to end up in open water or overflow up to your waist. Luckily, the Yukon is like a highway between villages and snowmachine traffic helps to pack down a path along a river that can be up to two miles from shore to shore. As long as mushers stay on the trail, they shouldn’t encounter any problems.
While I have your attention, I’d also like to take a moment to talk a bit more about this morning’s unfortunate events. There has been an outpouring of support from the residents of Nulato who were just as shocked as the rest of the world watching from the outside. I’m including a touching article from ADN highlighting the village of Nulato and its residents. The community of Nulato has been warm, welcoming and incredibly sorrowful following this morning’s tragic occurrence. I am heartened by how many people are remaining positive in the face of such a heart-rending incident. Great work sending out all that positive energy Ryno Kennel fans!
Substance abuse in rural Alaska has been a problem for many, many years, but there are also a number of out reach programs that aim to help educate bush communities. I’m including a couple of websites that you all may be interested in checking out to see the great work Alaskans are doing for Alaskans.
And lastly, I'm also including the blog post from Snowhook Kennels, home of Justin and Rebecca Savidis. Their post is beautiful, touching and definitely a tear jerker!
That’s all for now, tune in tomorrow morning to catch up with Ryne and her happy huskies!
http://www.alaskanschangingtogether.org
http://www.adn.com/article/20160312/after-killing-iditarod-dog-nulato-unites-behind-mushers
http://snowhookkennel.blogspot.com/2016/03/prayer-offering-7-we-sing-for-our.html
