Travel Tuesday • Running of the Reindeer

Like last week’s Travel Tuesday, this week is about an experience, as opposed to an actual place. It’s about the annual Running of the Reindeer that takes place in Anchorage! Haha… Yes, such a thing actually exists! This annual event is part of the Fur Rondy Festival, and is clearly a wacky spin off of the much more dangerous event that takes place annually in Pamplona, Spain. After participating in the running of the bulls a couple years ago, my husband couldn’t resist the opportunity to also run with the REINDEER, while living here in Alaska. Thousands of people (including me) lined the streets to watch the chaos. I can’t say that I’ve ever witnessed anything quiet like it..lol. They started the run off with some fun live Music by Alaska’s infamous Hobo Jim. At one end of the street downtown, they gather all the runners and several male reindeers, and they get them to run by having one hot-momma of a female reindeer at the other end of the street. Not sure about that, but I guess it works!? Haha. You can tell from the photos below, that the street conditions aren’t exactly ideal for running, but they made the most of all the many truckloads of snow that they brought in for the day. This event makes for some GREAT people watching because some people really go ALL out with the crazy costumes. Most of them made no sense at all, but hey, neither does running with reindeer! There are four different ‘herds’ that run: guys, girl, groups, non-AK residents. I was really surprised how many people we came across that actually came to Alaska just to run with the Reindeer. Good for them for having and conquering super fun bucket list items! What’s life anyway, if you can’t have some random fun every once in a while?!