Fur Rondy

This past weekend was the start of the winter festival here in Anchorage that goes by the name Fur Rendezvous or better known as "Fur Rondy".
Rondy has everything that a regular festival/carnival has, rides, games & contests, but with an Alaska twist. There was the World Championship Dog Weight Pull, Snow Sculptures, mushing races and skijoring (skier being pulled by an animal, usually a dog). This year, they added something new, Running of the Reindeer (please see separate entry for this one cuz it deserves an entry all its own). This event proves what can happen when cabin fever hits in mass.
All in all, I enjoyed myself. Tried a reindeer sausage (tasted like deer sausage to me) and had a good time taking pictures.






This little gal is just about ready to start her race down 4th Street. Keep in mind she is somewhere between 5 & 6 years old.










This is a shot of the carnival rides that were there. And, no, I didn't ride any of them....does "windchill" mean anything to you? ;P









This is during the weight pull. If memory serves me correct, this guy had only been training to pull for about a month, also, he was pretty lanky, so he was quite young to boot. His owner was trying and trying to get him to pull, and everyone had a good laugh when he just plopped his big butt down on the ground and just stared at the crowd or his owner.








This dude here, he is aptly named...he weighs 180 pounds and is named "Dozer". I wasn't able to hang around for the end of this competition....my feet were turning to ice. The previous weight class, 85-125 pounds, winner pulled right around 4,200 pounds. Another kicker for me, "Dozer" looks like a twin to the Malamute that my parents had, we thought that "Bud" weighed close to 120 pounds, looks like we were off a couple pounds....







Yep, there were people dressed in all sorts of garb. This man happened to also be an artist that was selling paintings...had I had an extra $100, one of his paintings would be on my wall right now.

I nearly choked when I read this....

O.k...I have to admit, on occasion, I do read the Rant/Rave section on Craigslist.com. Usually it's all rants, but on a rare occasion, a gem pops out:
The first post, a seemingly innocent question:

is there walmart in alaska?
Reply to: pers-549742304@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-01-23, 11:01PM AKST


do you have Best Buy, Target or computers up there?Just wondering?Is it really that cold up there?

Now, here's the response that nearly killed me (bad timing on swallowing a drink of water and reading the post).

RE: is there walmart in alaska
Reply to: pers-549749832@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-01-23, 11:17PM AKST


Wal-Mart? What is that? I have seen pictures of stores and buildings, but we only have ice houses called igloos. Also, please tell us about these fancy automobile thingies. I hear they go faster than the dog teams we use to commute with.
Do you have to clean up poop from cars too?
Which end do you feed?
Hold on, my polar bear can’t find his squeaky toy…