After we had dinner — and one of us had a huge piece of coconut cream pie! — Allen and Aliy burrowed into piles of coats on the floor of the Eureka Cafe bar to catch some sleep. You can clearly see Allen’s socks and black pants, but you really have to look carefully — and use a little imagination — to see Aliy sleeping under the table! I told her she looked like the dogs do when they are in a box on Big Red. It was pretty noisy in the bar so they didn’t get much sleep, but they did get about three hours of rest and seemed to “wake up” in decent shape.
Our next — and last — activity for this first time through the Eureka checkpoint was to get the dogs ready to go and execute another two clean starts which, I am happy to report, we did. Both teams are still at full strength of twelve dogs for the next leg, a 50+ loop back here to Eureka. Allen is positively possessed with going as fast as he possibly can, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts to dig in even more and chase down the speedsters.
I’ve spent another couple of hours since then editing all the media in these past three posts and I’m pretty wiped out. So, I am going to go curl up in the truck and take a quick nap until it is the earliest time that I think Allen could possibly get here. I can’t wait to see what happens in this close and exciting race!
Stay tuned!…
