Thursday, July 28

It was an awesome day, beautiful, blue sky, fluffy white clouds.
Hobbs and I decided to take a ride up to Long Rifle for lunch, about 100 miles north. The lodge has a commanding view of the Matanuska Glacier, and also lots of dead heads for people to look at ... bears, goat, moose, buffalo and lots more. I think there is no finer view, as you can have lunch and see the glacier all from the comfort of the dining area.

Hobbs at Long Rifle Lodge with the Matanuska Glacier in the background.

From there we stopped at the rest area for yet another and slightly different view of the glacier. It was warm, the road was fun and there wasn't much traffic.

A closeup of the glacier from the rest stop.

I decided to go to the Harley shop to see if they had any poker chips. But on the radio I heard about this book about Joe Redington, the father of the Iditarod, the Last Great Race, 1049 miles by dog sled to Nome. It was a book by a lady I'd spoken to in March. She had a photo she'd brought by the bike show looking to see if someone could identify the people in the photo. Jaz and I knew most of them, and I wrote the names on the copy of the photo and left it. She must not have received it because I got a copy of the photo again with her phone number from Barry at the House of Harley.  So I called her. It had to do with the Ladies of Harley donating some coolers for a serum run back in the 90s. We met Redington and had a photo that she was going to put in the book. Awesome. This was the book.



The office is located in Wasilla, and I had never visited.



A statue of Joe Redington, Sr., and one of his dogs.  The statue is at the Iditarod headquarters.

 I had a call from Jaz and told her about the book. She rode out to Wasilla and we went together to get copies of it. The author autographed them and was really happy to meet us, knowing that we'd helped give her the names and that she'd spoken to me at one point. It was great.

Author Katie Mangelsdorf and me.


Phoned home and decided to meet Hobbs at Providence Hosptial so we could visit Dennis and Norm. Dennis may be home tomorrow. He looks pretty good but beat up. Norm looks pretty beat up, too. But considering what happened they're both really lucky.
Met Norm's family, which was nice. We already knew his wife, Linda, but hadn't met the kids.
Home to get the car and take Stacey to the airport. Then to bed.