January 29 - Dogsled Ride and the Northern Lights

We were up well before the crack of dawn.  However, since dawn cracks around 9:45 that isn’t saying much.  We headed down for breakfast and then stayed at the lodge until it was time for our first excursion…dogsledding.

And this morning we officially froze to the bone…cold day for a dog sled ride.  

Those dogs were interested in nothing but running.  They howled and barked and whined (and occasionally looked back at us with frustration) before they were finally released to run.  And then just silence from the dogs as they ran.

************************************************
Dogs anxious to run video
************************************************

Paul drove (not that the huskies needed much driving…mainly he just had to apply the brakes when needed) and Mary rode.  

And it was really, really cold.  But the snow and the snow-covered trees were beautiful.  The sun only came up far enough to light the tops of the trees…barely made it over the horizon. 

We very much enjoyed the ride but we really needed even better snow gear than the layers and layers that we were wearing, which included a jumper type outfit that went over all your layers.  Actually, Paul was fine except for fingers and toes. But they recovered once inside.

After the ride we went into a very large tent where they had built a fire.  We had hot berry juice but skipped the lunch of fish soup.  We did have some bread and butter and cookies.

Then it was off to see the puppies.  The puppies we visited were about 7 months old and extremely friendly.  They tried to climb on everyone and chewed on anything they could reach.

Then it was back to the lodge to try to warm up.  After some hot chocolate...

we walked over to the observation tower where we had great views of the surrounding area.

And then we visited the planetarium where we saw an interesting movie on the myths and science surrounding northern lights.  And the movie included lots of movies of northern lights.  This may be the closest we get to seeing the lights on this trip.

The planetarium is in a new building (work still underway) that looks like it will be a conference center.  

Walking around the grounds starts getting rather magical when the sun goes down. 

We had an early dinner and were back in the room by 5:00.  We both were finally able to warm up.