[Gallery not found]It is so hard to put the excursion I took today into words.  I took a snow cat ride out to Safety Checkpoint and back.  I took off at 8 AM in the morning, which is actually before dawn up here.  It was clear and cold and quiet.  It was amazing to see what it must be like to be out so far from anything like the mushers are.  This is their last stretch before they arrive in Nome, and as we passed a couple mushers, you could feel the urgency about them.

Safety Checkpoint is a warm and welcoming place.  Joe runs the place and welcomes everyone with a story.  Visitors from near and far visit the Roadhouse and leave a dollar bill with their name on it stapled to one of the walls.

On the way out to Safety and back again, we viewed some completely different biomes than I have seen so far this trip.  There were gravel pits and estuaries and creeks that are usually three feet wide, now showing up at about 30 feet wide with overflow.  The sun was coming up and the moon going down, but I think you could see both all the time.

It was a bumpy trip, but well worth the rock and roll of being back on the trail.

Blynne