New picture record

I'm pretty sure this post will break previous records for number of pictures! It's April though and seeing that March and April are some of my favorite months, that means there are lots of pictures to share of the beauty and activities! I'll try to get some order to these but they are pretty random so to some degree, there won't be a lot of connection between them. The first one is the full moon, the one that was supposed to be bigger than normal. We didn't have much luck with pictures of the moon itself but this one was interesting to me in a different way. It really shows how bright it is here in the winter when the moon is out. With the snow reflecting the light, it is bright enough to see quite a bit with a minimal amount of moon-light. So even when the days are short, we still often have quite a bit of light. Right now our days aren't short though. We have over 15 hours of light (including long twilight periods) per day now and are still adding almost 6 minutes of daylight every day.

The ice has already started breaking up on the Matanuska River but this shot is from a few weeks ago when the snow had cleared quite a bit so you could really see the texture of the river. I know this shot is right into the sun but it highlighted the texture better that way. You can double click on any of the pictures to see a bigger version of it.

This is the best I could get of the color of the river. It still didn't capture the color as well as I had hoped, but you can see the glacier blues a little bit.

This is just a gratuitous scenic shot of my drive to and from town a week or so ago.
The camp ice rink was as slick as could be for the BOW weekend (I think that's when this one was taken):

So is our ice road! Makes for rather fun driving to be sure! So far the ice road is still rather thick and we're not getting overflow (thanks to Lee's road placement instructions and a much lighter snow pack) so we're still driving. We weren't by this time last year. The worst part is the mud that washed down off the driveway leaving a mud pond at the bottom of the drive. That is causing faster melting, but so far we're still in good shape. We also have to be careful now not to drive the truck off the hill in the afternoon. If we want the truck, we have to take it down the drive in the morning when the mud is frozen.

The ATV trail had a lot of ice through one section. Sergei shoveled dirt over the ice to help it melt off quicker after these pictures were taken. The sun is intense this time of year and anywhere there are dark spots things melt off VERY quickly!

Rodney and some of the other guys from camp went out on a day trip a week or so ago.
This is the view of the Matanuska Glacier from on top of Fortress Ridge.

Jared Thiessen, Brian Wilbert and Lowell Hilsen on that same trip. Jared seems to manage to go along on almost every trip that happens. ;) Lowell used to ride all over the area but is slowing down a little bit. Rodney figured that with it being Lowell's first trip this year, he might be able to keep up. He did, but it was still quite a job! Not sure if I've ever introduced Lowell or not. He's the breakfast cook in the winter (one of those morning people). In the summer he takes off to other parts of the country.

JJ and Bella Cote helped me work for a few hours this week while mom and dad went on a town trip "date." Seriously! They worked hard! Or worked me. I forget which!
Ellie isn't the only naughty one. Eider had Rodney's hat and was sooooooo pleased with his bad self! Dufus!

Ellie spends a great deal of time seeking out sunbeams lately. Good thing for her there are plenty of them!

Annie made this beautiful quilt for me so I had to show it off:

Yesterday we went to Gunsight for the annual spring sledding party. Rodney and I rode up to the base of Gunsight where you can see for miles around. If you double click on this picture to go to the larger one, and then see a miniature magnifying glass with a plus sign, click once to go to magnified view and look at the very top edge of that ridge. You should be able to see the V formation that gives the mountain it's name. Legend has it that Dwayne King (of Kingdom Air Corps) used to fly through that V. No idea if it is true or not or if he still does but it should give you a good feel both for the scale of things AND Dwayne's character! He's a character all right!

The snow was what they call "sugar snow" or "corn snow" - crystalized and unstable so we left the machines on the trail and hiked up a small ridge to get a better look around.

Coming back down the hill Jesse Lee and Rodney stopped to chat. This is actually two pictures stitched together. For some reason it cut off Jesse's hand and part of his leg when it did it. I would have liked to have fixed it but it was late at night when I stitched these and bed was calling. This morning I still have a pile of things to do before I hit the road again. At any rate, this is another one worth seeing in better detail so if you'd like, double click and then you can use the magnifying glass again. In the center on the horizon to the left of the mountains that are clearly there are some mountains barely visible way off in the distance. Those are the Wrangell-St Elias range that we saw on our way to Valdez. Near the road in the lower part of the picture is the group that was there sledding. Another way to get an idea of the scale of things is to look at our truck and trailer parked right on the road.


Sergei and Jared took the death sleds down a for run but apparently Jared was dragging his feet in front of Sergei so Sergei got a bit covered in snow. Note the Alaskan Special knee patch. Sergei has a habit of getting too close to the fire. And he also has a habit of using duct tape to fix EVERYTHING.

Jesse took Sergei for a ride - always an adventure and Sergei has learned to hold on TIGHT!

And one more gratuitous scenic picture. It was a bit cloudy so I was trying to see if I could capture the glacier blue better without so much sun on it. Not bad, but might have been better with the Canon.

March Snow Machine Ride, BOW, and more

Spring is on its way here in Alaska. The days are much longer now and warmer too with plenty of brilliant sunshine. The ice is melting off the side roads and parking lots and it rains rocks on some of the steep slopes on the way to town. At this time of year the snow plows turn to rock plows. We even saw a couple of motorcycles out and about this week!

Today we took a snow machine trip out to Pinochle Pass which is not too far away. It is close (probably the other side of a mountain) to where they do the camp outs that I showed you in the last post. Rodney got a new machine (strictly for play, no work with this one) and we borrowed one for Oksana to ride so we all had our own machines to ride. Sergei has not had much luck keeping one of the Arctic Cats running so we just went with what we could get going at the moment. We were joined by Jared Thiessen and Derek Kolb. We had some technical difficulties getting up one part of the trail that had a ton of overflow. The machines couldn't get any traction on the ice and when one stopped moving forward, we all backed up behind it. We had to back up the machines off the ice and get a running start, taking them through one at a time.

But once we got up there, the views were marvelous! Rare clouds for this time of year:


Rodney on the new toy:

Me coming down a steep hill (and yes, I'm going to be sore tomorrow!):

Jared stopping for a minute to have a snack and enjoy the day:

All of us-es taking a little break:

Derek:
The valley from up there:

A couple of moose were hanging out in the bowl:

Another break:
Oksana foreground, Andrei behind her:

We went into Anchorage earlier this week to take care of some paperwork and other errands and just get out of camp for the day. Hicks can't figure out big city rules (still enough ice we couldn't see any markings on the road and the meter didn't show that you couldn't park on that side):

I've been wanting for ages to get a panorama of the view as you drive from Anchorage toward Palmer and Wasilla. I finally stopped and tried it this last trip in. Not as clear as I've seen it, but now that I've got a good spot, I'll try it again another day.

Rodney spent 5 weeks battling the frozen sewer line from Alpine but once they got it thawed it was broken so they were still without that line before we had 200 women in for BOW! Here's the solution - they dug out a road for the pump truck to back down, fill up and haul it out. Kind of labor intensive but it allows us to use Alpine Camp for the rest of the winter. Alpine was not really built for winter use and the big question is whether to try to fix it so that it can be used in the winter without fighting the freezing. They'd very much like to, but it is expensive!

The BOW ladies gutted a couple of elk so the Bald Eagles enjoyed the remains:

I only took one BOW class this year, Dutch oven gourmet. My, but the food was DELICIOUS!!! Can't wait to try out some of the recipes in my own Dutch oven!

And last but certainly not least, we had some lovely displays of the northern lights in recent weeks. My pictures didn't turn out that well (though we think we've figure out why so we can try again next time) so I've borrowed some from Jamie Ruisch. I'll have to check with her on how she did it and see if we're on the right track or not.

A busy week post

What happens when I'm REALLY busy? I post pictures! :) Hey, I go with what works! Besides, no one ever complains when I post a bunch of pictures! First is Dufus, aka Eider. He snores too.

The teen's youth group had a formal dinner - Trayton, Oksana & Ali.

Carlen & Andrei were trying to look stern, but it took them a while to put on "the face." Personally, I like this one best:

It was REALLY windy this day so the mountains were all hazy, yet the sky was as blue as could be. Just an interesting twist on the normal scene!

Sunrise. I was too slow to catch the streak of red straight up into the sky!

I spend a lot of time on the road these days - 3 days on a normal week now. Fortunately the scenery is AWESOME! The Matanuska Glacier:

River ice - this doesn't quite catch the glacier blue of it, or the bucks and slides of the ice.

Another night I came home and mixed in with the glacier ice blue were sunset reds, pinks and oranges.
The men recently went out camping on their annual Mountain Man week. This past weekend was the family camping weekend and there may yet be a teen girl camp out next weekend. Here are a few pics from the family weekend:

The tent Rodney snagged off a military auction site - VERY cozy warm! It has the outer layer plus an insulated inner layer. Snow around the edges so the wind doesn't blow in. It was quite warm in there this afternoon with the sun shining on it even without the wood stove going.

Inside - Ryan Cote built the wood stove with a nice level surface for cooking. He and his family stayed out there this weekend. Thick foam mattresses for sleeping keep you off the cold floor. Some tents had bunks to keep people up where the warmth was.

Rough scenery out there too. Somebody's got to look at it! ;)