Yesterday we loaded up the team and trucked them down to the Nordale Road bridge over the Chena River. It's only 15 miles or so away from here. So why the trouble of loading everything in to the truck to get to the same trails we can run to straight from our yard?? Well, we live just off the Quest trail and our team will have to run right by home on February 6th when we start this year's Quest. Although we've been running teams home from all different directions recently so the dogs aren't as used to any one turn, that means we have to run by lots of different places that they know go home. We wanted to simulate the race and see how they'd do. When our friend Paige, who is running the Quest 300 this year, asked if we'd give her a tour of the sometimes confusing trails through our backyard before the race, we had a chance to do the whole run with another team, giving a race feel. We left Nordale at about 1pm, a very similar time to when I'll be coming by there, 20 miles from the start in Fairbanks. I stopped just before we got close to home, about 20+ miles in to the run, to tell Paige that we were getting close... Well, all this build up is just to tell you that Stump and Merlin didn't even hesitate at any of the turns that lead home. They listened perfectly and we had a pretty enjoyable run the rest of the way out to Angel Creek Lodge where Sue and Cody picked us up. We, of course, had a beer and a burger at the lodge before heading home with a truck full of very good dogs!
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