Mitch Seavey sled dog team.

Mitch Seavey.

Okay, now here comes in Mitch Seavey's team, coming in ninth place.

There goes Jason Barren.

Still the sled dog team of Jason Barren.

Look at the team go. I almost didn't have the camera ready as they came in so fast.

Now coming in, almost right on the heels of Ed Iten, is Jason Barren. He finished eighth place less than 10 minutes later than Iten.

And there goes Ed Iten down toward the burled arch and a seventh place finish.

See how close we got!!!!

Close up of the sled dog team of Ed Iten.

Ed Iten into Nome.

Coming closer...

Here comes Ed Iten into the final stretch.

All right, we got some better pictures today. Amy came to pick us up to take us into town on her break from work. They all felt so bad that Morgan got crowded out. So we watched four mushers come in and we were right there on top of them. This time we were smart and sat down at the bank, right on the side of Front Street, even the side of the street that the sleds went straight down. Here is a picture of the coming of Ed Iten who came in seventh place.

And here's the best picture I took of Jeff King waving victory to the crowd as the officials inventory his sled and announce him the official winner to the 34th Iditarod Sled Dog Race.

Okay, let's fast forward a bit to the end of the evening, a little after one, when Jeff King finally comes across the finish line. At first, I thought Morgan and I had a pretty good position on the ropes marking the boundary to stay behind. Unfortunately, when the whistle went off to sound that the musher made it onto solid ground (they travel for a time on the ice), some of the drunks came out and ended up boxing us out of line. My camera doesn't have a motion picture with the nighttime vision so this came really fast. These dogs seemed so much smaller than we thought they'd be. I learned from all this that next year, we don't have to be so close to the arch. The best place to be is down Front Street, where we were parked and watch him take the last bit of trail. Amy said he waved at her down by the car as she sat to watch a sleeping Madison in the car. However, it was neat to be at the finish. This is like the World Series or the Superbowl around here and we were at the finish line. This seemed like one of those places to be in your life, comparable to the running of the bulls in Pamplona. I was there. As far as I am concerned, this is another notch on my belt. How many people have actually been here at this time?

Here is a blurred image of the dogs in Jeff King's team coming in.

The plow comes through one more time to get the main stretch nice for the mushers. (Jeff King went down the side of the road, not on this false snow mound down the middle of the road.)

The camera crews are all setting up too, right across from the Arctic Trading Post.

Underneath the arch is the truck that the winning musher wins, on top of the purse of $69k. Funny, but Amy said last night, "Yeah, he'll need the 69 grand to get the truck back down to the roads!" Well, she also knew that this was just a truck for show--they'll auction this one off and then give Jeff King a similar truck back home. (He is an Alaskan, by the way.)

You were actually ab le to walk across the path up until the last minute or so. This is the avenue that they go straight down, heading towards that burled arch in the short distance. We left the apartment when we heard that Jeff King had left Safety, 22 miles away from Nome. We had all heard conflicting reports that sometimes it is a very fast trip from Safety to Nome. We left the apartment then at about 10:20 pm.