An Amazing Summer! Part 2

Hey I'm back with more news of summer 2010!
I'm sorry to break everything up like this, but so much has happened over the last two months it would have been a novel if I hadn't!
Now where did I leave off? After receiving TuTu from Darryl we left on the train to Churchill! I decided to go this past summer because I was commissioned to write a children's book about Isobel the Blind Sled Dog. To fully explain how this came about I have to go back two whole years!
 I love the arctic and dogsledding and for  Christmas two years ago, my family gave me a trip up to Churchill to learn how to mush and to stay with a real musher! I was so excited I cried! We went up to Churchill in March of that year and have gone back three times since! We always stay with a beautiful family who runs a bed and breakfast called Bluesky Bed & Sled. It's the coziest place on earth! Gerald and Jenafor Azure (the couple who run the Bed & Sled) also have a dog yard where you can learn how to mush. Their dogs are so well cared for and happy! And, boy do they love to run! They all have such great personalities and are so special! One of these special dogs is named Isobel, who became blind in 2005. To get the whole story you'll have to wait for the book, but she was the reason we decided to take the train to Churchill. I adored taking the train! To get from Winnipeg to Churchill it takes two days of constant traveling by train. One night you fall asleep with wheat and canola fields and then you wake up to tundra. I thought that by traveling this way it would bring me inspiration for Isobel's story. Once we got to Churchill, I was able to fully soak in Isobel's beautiful home and interview some of the humans that were in her life. Isobel had recently retired and moved out to Alberta, but I got the chance to find out all about her life and the personalities of her team mates. It was such a fantastic trip. On the very last day, while we were hooking up dogs to a dog cart, I cut my hand on a dog's chain. I ended up having to get eight stitches in my right hand. The one thing that I was hoping for was that we would miss the train. Even if I did have stitches, I would have loved to spend at least one more night with Gerald and Jen. We ended up catching the train because the conductor held it for us. They also let us stay in a sleeper instead of berths because they heard I was hurt. It was so kind of them! Even though we were sad to leave, we had a nice ride home, enjoying the company of some of the other train riders. That's one of the best parts of train travel. You meet the neatest people! On our way up to Churchill, we met a botanist and her grandson, who ended up staying at Bluesky for two nights while we were there, a couple who had only been retired for a week but were already on a trip all across North America by train, and of course a wonderful man from the train's staff who always stopped to chat and helped me with my hand on the way home. They are also some of the remarkable and special people I was so lucky to meet this summer. I am so honoured to have been asked to write Isobel's extraordinary story, and I can't wait to bring all of these people's smiles, hearts and love into it's pages. Isobel's real story is about every being's value because they are. Every being deserves to be valued simply because they are on this earth. Most people would have cast Isobel away because she was blind but Gerald and Jenafor saw past her disability to her beautiful spirit. I wish we could all see that in each other, especially in our homeless people.