Labor Day weekend. 

                                                                                Working for Nome Community Center, we were invited to join in the fun at the work retreat. Kimberly offered to help by leading the group in some team building activities. It was a great way to get to know everybody that we will be working with over the next two years. We are feeling so blessed to get to work with such great people.

 

The community center had rented out the boy scout camp, which is 30 miles north east of Nome, by Salmon Lake. There are salmon all over the place just spawning and splashing a few feet from the shore. It's a whole different type of terrain than I am used to, but really beautiful.

 For our evening campfire, we hacked the salvaged drift wood down to manageable sizes. 

Here's Kimberly, trying out one of the paddle boards on the lake. The water is cold, but it's so worth getting a little wet to stand above the water like this. The lake is crisp and clear, and standing up, you can see the bright red of the salmon streak by as you paddle around.

                                                                                  The real festivities didn't begin until Monday. We were excited to experience our first bathtub race and duck race! The first of which is an event that combines fundraising  and ridiculous sports that everybody loves making traditions out of. I haven't figured out how many years this race has been going on, but everybody in town knows about it and tries to be there. The bathtub race is a lot like it sounds. There's a few bathtubs (on wheels) and people race them down the busiest street in town right at noon. This year, there we three entries. 

 

The winner was the blue one with the bike tires.

 The Duck race followed at 2pm and just about the whole town drove to the stream next to Bering Airport. Both races are organized as a fundraiser for the Rotary Club. They have been selling duck numbers for weeks. Then, they dump a couple hundred ducks in the snake river, each with someone's number, and let the current do it's job. 

There they go!

While, this is a little slower pace than the bathtub race, or most other races, it was really cool seeing so many people gathering for such a unique event.