In Which Miss Hoppington Answers the Call of the Wild

Helloooooo! (that's me howling),

Juneau is an interesting city but I spent most of my time outside of downtown. You see, I got to ride on a helicopter. A helicopter that flew over a glacier. And then landed on the glacier. And then I got to ride a dog sled! How absolutely fantastic!

We flew to the Mendenhall Glacier, which is a large glacier that starts in the Juneau Icefield, the fifth largest icefield in the world. A glacier is very dense ice formed by snow from over hundreds of years. Glaciers can move and can even change the land around them by scraping on the sides and pressing down. A lot of the mountains in Alaska were made by glaciers.

Once on the glacier, we all got off the helicopters and then went to meet our dog teams. Each group had a dog musher (a person who commands the dogs). After meeting the dogs, we all got into the sleds for a ride. All the dogs who weren't pulling sleds had to stay behind. They were very unhappy about it and let us know by barking and howling and whining. Sled dogs love to pull sleds and run!

After a quick break, the dogs are ready to run again.

Away from the camp, it was very quiet. All we could hear was the sound of the wind, blowing across the glacier, and the shushing of the sled runners. We stopped once because the lead dog wouldn't follow directions; he wanted to haw (go left) when the musher wanted him to gee (go right). Then, we stopped about half-way through to take photographs and for people to switch places (some people wanted to stand on the foot boards). The sleds started up again, and much too soon, we were back at the dog camp. I would have loved to go on a much longer ride.

Then the helicopter came back and we had to fly back to Juneau and the boat. My adventure in Juneau came to an end much too soon. But there was more adventure waiting the next day!

I'll tell you about it next time.

Mush onward, my friends!

Hedda