Thank you Kathleen for sharing your knowledge and experience. I sure appreciate it.
I will attempt to give some information concerning what I have learned to possibly cut down on costs.

Northern Air Cargo.
I spoke to a lady there at length about 3 months ago. She asked that I contact her when we have more specific information such as the number of sleds to be shipped, number of dogs and whether the dogs would be in crates or boxes and the approximate weight of other gear to be shipped. I am hoping to get back to her very soon with this “approximate” information. I also learned they have something called NAC Packs. These are sacks about the size of a large trash bag and you can ship items up to 50lbs total in these bags for $25. She talked about the possibility of giving us vouchers for shipping. I am not sure what that means but will know more once I can present her with numbers.

Housing.
I am more than willing to talk to folks in town about places to stay once they arrive in Nome. I do not see why there would be the need for hotels in Nome unless that is your preference. Let me know who would like to have housing in Nome.

Straw / Crates from Nome.
Gil has mentioned that the Animal House in Nome is willing to support us with crates. Thank you Gil for this great idea! Once we get an idea of how many crates are needed, the Animal House is willing to check with their vendor and would only charge mushers the actual costs for them (shipping / crate cost). They are willing to do the same with straw. We could use this offer to ship straw out the Nome side villages. I think that would be 3 or 4 straw drops depending on what we would decide (including Nome). Again, I am not sure what the actual cost of a bale of straw would be but it is definitely worth looking in to as an option to check out.

Bering Air.
The owner of the Animal House (Sandra) is married to one of the owners of Bering Air (Russell) . Russell’s mom ran the Serum Run many years ago and his is very excited we are doing this. I could ask him for discounted rate on shipping the straw and/or other items to the Nome side villages. They are both very supportive of mushing.

Thoughts on contacting Villages.
Sue presented this before but I wanted to add my 2 cents. I agree with Sue that we just first contact the government (IRA or City Office) of the Villages we travel through and ask them the best person to speak with concerning a place to sleep. This is just being respectful of their territory and their population. I have been traveling to the Nome and Kotzebue region villages for about 15 years and was taught to contact them first and to let them know you will be visiting at a certain time. They also will have a chance to offer us thier own facilities before we go to the school. The school is funded through outside sources when the Village works to maintain their own operations. If the Village government says, work with schools, then we go to the school. I am not sure what it is like in the villages out of the Nome region but being in this region, I (personally) would like to follow this protocol.

I am in support that gasoline be an individual cost for snowmachiners, straw an idividual cost mushers and Heet a group cost.

I also have contacts in the Nome region villages that may be willing to take care of our supplies.

Just a few thoughts….
Thank you.