6 March 2007

I got such positive responses to my last blog report that I am tempted to write another one just to show you some more of my pictures.

These are picture of the village of Holy Cross.



(above left - teacher's house and apartments)
(above right - town of Holy Cross)
(right - Holy Cross Catholic Church)

We printed more telephone books today. It is one of the ways Laural makes money for the library. But, she says that this year, the selling price has not covered the printing costs. But they are in demand and especially with all the strangers coming in for the Iditarod. So she prints more and I collate them.

The library was the busiest today that it has been since I came here. We have distributed posters all over town telling of the location of the library. The museum has an Iditarod exhibit including former mushers of McGrath , for example the third place trophy won by my landlords brother , Ernie, in 1982. McGrath doesn't have any active mushers anymore. Tomorrow morning, personnel of 4 television stations are arriving and will be staying in the school. Tomorrow evening or night they expect the leading mushers to arrive. If I have transportation, I will work in the kitchen and dining room at the city building, which is the checkpoint in McGrath. I'm told that at this point the racers generally follow the river, which is hard to believe after seeing the serpentine river from the air.

McGrath, itself is situated in a horseshoe bend of the river, so the Kuskokwim is north, west and south of town. I can see the advantage of following the river this year because the snow has evaporated down to the dirt of the road in many places. The temperature stays at about 30 below and very unusual for McGrath, the wind picked up yesterday creating a chill factor. This morning's weather report just said we're having a neat wave of 0 to 5 below. But, the wind is expected to continue.



Above, I live in the house in the bottom, center closest to the river. you can see it more easily in the picture to the right. The B&B is on the first road (on left), the last house on the left of the road, closest to the river, where you see the trail leading down to the river. Town and the airport are off the pictures to the left, in the bend of the river. Because of the broken foot, I haven't followed the trail to the river yet, nor even realized how close the river was.