Running of the Reindeer

Running of the Reindeer was another event at the winter festival Fur Rendezvous. Think running of the bulls in Spain (except with friendly reindeer). My cousins live in Palmer, Alaska which is an hour outside of Anchorage. They own a reindeer farm. How cool is that?! And even cooler, they asked if Caleb and I wanted to help walk the reindeer for the event. Of course, we said YES! 

 

Runners were encouraged to dress in costume as you can see above. There were even some runners who chose the option of not dressing in anything but their birthday suit and underwear. It was freezing cold out and we still saw unclothed runners. Below is a video showing the reindeer being released to chase after the runners. Do you see Caleb?

There were four heats to the race. The four groups to run were Men, Women, Tourists, Couples/Groups. A corral for the reindeer was set up about 4 blocks away from the starting line of the race. The sides of the street were blocked off for spectators to stand behind fences and watch. We would start down at the corral and walk the reindeer up the street to the starting line. The runners would part down the middle and we would walk through them so the reindeers were waiting behind the runners for the race to start. Check out the video below to see this.

We walked a different reindeer down for each heat. The reindeer are friendly and most of them walked calmly down the streets with us. The reindeer in the picture above with me is Moose. He was a ball of energy wanting to do his own thing, but still friendly. After the race, some of us walked the reindeer for people to take pictures with them. This was a great Alaskan experience and we had fun being a part of it.  

Thanks Josh and Denise for letting us help with reindeer! 

http://www.reindeerfarm.com/

See my older post below for pictures of the snow sculptures we saw during the winter festival.