Folks gathered to welcome the musher and dog team. He was greeted with cheers, applause and the flash of cameras. The checker stepped forward to examine the mandatory musher gear, the dogs were counted, the arrival time was announced and the musher officially signed in. It was 22:37 on Tuesday and Louie Ambrose was checked into Unalakleet. Three hundred miles further up the coast in Nome, the same scenario played out plus a couple thousand spectators as Mitch Seavey claimed his second Iditarod Championship three minutes later.

The residents of Unalakleet came out to welcome Louis Ambrose, a Native son of the area. Ambrose was born in Tanana and grew up in Galena, a checkpoint on the northern Iditarod route. Not only did he grow up with Iditarod on a bi-annual basis, he married Iditarod musher and Hall of Fame inductee, Jerry Austin’s daughter. Now Louie, Jerrine and family live in St. Michael and run an adventure business and operate a sled dog kennel. Hearing many tales of the trail, Ambrose was inspired by father-in-law Austin to run Iditarod. Today at mile 700 of the 41st Iditarod, Ambrose lives his dream.

Charley Bejna also spent part of the night at Unalakleet. Bejna, a rookie, departed for Shaktoolik at dawn. He’ll have a chilly run as it’s a few degrees below zero and there’s some wind from the NNE so it’ll feel like 20 below. Charlie’s trail to running Iditarod started with touring the Last Frontier with his father. Next he found himself in the Bruce Linton’s sled as an Idita-rider in 2007. A year later, Charlie was on the runners of Linton’s tag sled for the eleven mile Ceremonial run in Anchorage. Charlie then met G.B. Jones. As a landscaper from Illinois, Charlie has some free time in the winter so he workes at Jones’ kennel as a handler. Bejna was on the runners G.B.’s tag sled in 2011. Now, two years later, Charlie has 30 dogs and is finally on the runners of his own sled for the run through Anchorage and on to Nome.

There’s a guy out there with green and yellow harnesses and sled bag. Being from Wisconsin, I thought he might be a Packer backer but such is not the case. Luan Ramos Marques is from Brazil. The Brazilian Flag has a blue starry globe on a background of green and yellow. A banner with the motto, “Love as a principle and order as the basis; progress as the goal,” surrounds the globe. Interesting how both the Alaska flag and the Brazilian flag depict starry scenes. Marques has been training and completing his qualifying races with Vern Halter at Dream a Dream Training Center in Willow. Luan is no stranger to handling dogs. He’s owned a pet shop in Macae, Brazil since the young age of 22 and offers canine obedience training. Luan aspires to become a veterinarian. I won’t go out on a limb to say he’s the first Brazilian to run Iditarod without doing some further research.

Even though race stats and the GPS tracker don’t show Cindy Gallea in Unalakleet, she is. I talked to her this morning while she was preparing a super charged calorie combo for her dogs that were already snoozing on straw. Food sent out to checkpoints remains in a frozen state by just sitting outdoors. Cindy was using an axe to chop a block of meat into individual Husky portions. With the cooler/food box full of chunks she went to the high volume cooker to get hot water. She marveled at the smoking beast that’s been continually supplied by 5-gallon pail since before the first musher arrived. Complete with a spigot the water heater is a musher’s dream come true when it comes to getting quick calories into the dogs. Mushers are required to carry an axe 22 inches in length. Cindy’s axe was a light weight hatchet with a custom fashioned wood piece fitted into the hollow handle of the hatchet to meet the length requirement. A genius put it together for her to meet the requirement AND save weight. Why would the nurse practitioner from Minnesota choose to run Iditarod? Cindy saw the finish of the 1996 Iditarod and worked hard the next two years to get herself ready for a run to Nome in 1998. Now she’s a veteran of nine races. Take this advice from Cindy, “Life is about enjoying each day and every adventure.”

One of the common themes I’ve heard from mushers at Unalakleet is how cold the run from Kaltag to the coast felt. Looking at the thermometer, it was below zero on the trail but NOTHING close to the 50 degrees below mushers have experienced in past races. Most of them attribute their “chill” to having such a mild winter and not being used to temperatures on the bottom side of zero so even a few degrees below zero fells real cold. More than one musher said look at me, it’s zero and I’m wearing all the clothes I normally wear at fifty below.  It’s all in what you’re used to.