A fortuitous connection

I am pretty sure I have mentioned Helen Hegener at time or two earlier. Her FB page Idita-Support was the vehicle for us to encounter each other. I made a post--my first--which hit some of the musher folks in that group very wrong and they were not shy about telling me to shut up and take a time out.
Wow!! I wasn't wearing my asbestos undies but should have been!
Bless Helen. She came to my rescue in her gentle but also very forthright away and we began to correspond both there and on some of her other pages. This lady has more irons in the fire than the King Ranch on branding day!

She reviewed my initial book proposal and liked it, with a few suggested changes and talked a bit about her books. She has a dozen or so all true history tales about Alaska. The north 49th has been her heart's home since she moved there with her parents at age fifteen. And she has a quick, steel trap mind, a head for facts, figures and information and a way of meeting and dealing that is awesome. We had both been looking forward to a face-to-face meeting when I made my trip.

That finally happened the afternoon of Sunday, June 23 and the day after the big ITC HQ events. I drove down to the Mexican restaurant where we were to meet and arrived just a few minutes before she did. When she got out we met with a big hug and both saying how great it was to finally get together; it seemed a lot longer than the few weeks it had really been since we discovered each other's existence.  And, from that beginning, we were not strangers but just long-separated friends. Her friend Barbara joined us shortly and we did a lot of book talking since Barb is a book store manager as well as wearing several other hats. She is also a native born Alaskan and descendant of a multi-generation Alaska-rooted family. And yes, Palmer does have a very decent Mexican restaurant!

Lake Lucille, behind ITCHQ

By the time we left La Fiesta, Helen and I were planning to spend more time together. We did just that for the better part of two days. It was so much fun but also very educational. Helen is an excellent tour guide and has been a huge mushing fan for years, served as a volunteer and collected all kinds of stories, memorabilia and old photos and documents. She knew Joe Reddington when she was a young bride and got involved in the whole Iditarod creation project. I just got her Alaskan Sled Dog Tales book before I left and will have some more soon. She still owns a retired Husky named Chena. Next time I will have to get at least a selfie of us together since I failed to do it this trip.

Lake Eklutna in Chugash Mtns
glacier fed source of Anchorage water

I share here a couple of shots from our travels over the two days. Next post I will cover the  first day and maybe into the second when we visited Jan and Bob at their kennel, lost to the fire but rebuilding better than ever as most of the Willow mushers are doing. The frontier can-do spirit is alive and well in Alaska for sure.