Inside the Arctic Cathedral |
Steve driving the sled |
Steve and I took turns driving the sled and sitting on the sled. When you are the passenger you get to enjoy the scenery more, and you get watch the dogs. I thought the dogs were as fun to watch as the scenery. Each dog looked pretty different from each other and they run differently too. One of our dogs ran with it's butt to the right hand side the whole time almost like his back legs were faster than his front legs. They say the smartest dogs lead the pack and the back dogs are the strongest. I'm not sure what traits the middle dogs have. The one downfall of sitting in the sled is that the dogs do all their bathroom business as they run, and when you are sitting directly behind them, it's not always very pretty to see or smell.
Now when you are driving the sled you don't get to take in the scenery around you as much because you've got to pay attention to the dogs your speed and balance so the sled doesn't tip over. However, you feel the speed of the sled much more than sitting. It's like sticking your head out of the window of the car. It's exhilarating to feel the dogs pull you so quickly. Dog sledding is much more physically demanding than I thought it would be. Besides balancing, the driver needs to jump off the sled when you go up hills to help the dogs by pushing the sled up the hill. Luckily for me Steve drove most of the hilly part.
After dog sledding we had a nice lunch of bread and reindeer soup. The soup was delicious, reindeer tastes like beef. Overall a fantastic experience I absolutely want to do this again. I hear they have dog sledding in the northern part of Minnesota. Now the only thing I've got to deal with is that Steve (who most of you know is a avid cross country skier) wants to get a dog when we get back so he can go skijoring. You know where people harness themselves to a dog and the dog pulls them as they ski behind...we'll see how that works out.