The Simple Things

Home! Looking through the photos I've taken, I'm finding things I missed without knowing I missed them, along with the things I knew I wanted to see again. Here's a few of them!

Bare birch trees waiting for spring.

Spruce trees that hide neighbors :-)

Dirt roads!! This is the road I live on (or rather, the one you turn off of to get to my road).

Perfectly good thermometers that show a very optimistic temperature in the sun... It's only about 20 degrees too warm!

Mount Hayes, Hess, and Deborah in the Alaska Range, about 100 miles away. (Not all visible in this shot).

Chickadees in willow trees outside the living room window. My parents got a baby monitor this winter to listen to all the birds at the bird feeder this winter, how awesome is that?? Also very useful to know that a baby monitor can survive winter temps... I guess...

Ice Fishing

I went ice fishing when I got back to Alaska on May 1st with friends and coworkers, which is quickly becoming a HAP tradition (I hope!) This was only my second time going ice fishing, the fishing I grew up with was mainly catch and release fishing on the Chena and the results of my dad dipnetting at Chitna (Yum!) Ice fishing has been a blast though. We went out at Birch Lake, just over an hour outside of Fairbanks.

The group out on the lake, we even had some sun this year!

Well, I guess it doesn't look very frozen... But here's the lake! Hehe, the fishing holes where we were still had almost three feet of ice to get through, so a bit safer once beyond the edge!

This is where we crossed to get on the ice, a bit of a leap, but easy enough for all.

One of the first fish to be caught, this one wasn't quite big enough, so back in it went!

Time to enjoy! We had a fire out on the ice, and a fabulous meal of potatoes and fish on the fire, plus macaroni salad, chips, and cake. Yummy.

The spread... A few fish ready to cook up, the remains of an old fire melting into the ice, and our fire in the upper right corner, on a metal sheet.

It's Breakup Time!

Howdy folks!

It's currently 40 degrees here in Fairbanks, and an absolutely gorgeous day! The temps here have been staying a bit low (40-60's) but the sun has been staying out quite a bit. Remember, 40 degrees here still makes for a comfortable walk or bike ride, even if we'd rather be doing it it 65 or 70!

I thought I'd post a few photos about our breakup season. When discussing seasons with a local Alaskan, you should realize we have five: Winter, Breakup, June, July, and August. This year we're even getting a bit of May in Fairbanks, post breakup! Breakup is how we talk about spring, to us spring doesn't begin with flowers and green leaves... It begins with mud and melting ice. Signs of spring include baby reindeer at the university, and the willow trees start showing pussy willows. Those have almost gone to seed now, and still no leaves showing up.

Spring here isn't our most beautiful, but we're gaining seven minutes of daylight a day, making today 18 hours and 12 minutes long! The sun will set just before 11pm, leaving it light out a bit longer. It won't get truly dark again until September, the only time of the year we see pitch black. Once the snow falls, any light is reflected back throughout the winter. Here are a few photos of what I love about breakup season!

You may have grown up with mud boots, or puddle boots... Here they are Breakup Boots, or ExtraTuffs. I didn't know the other names until I was 17 working with tourists for the first time. These are a must have for springtime, whether you want to walk on the trails...

...Or on the roads. This is a road I live on, and a common sight in late April. Snow, ice, mud, and yes... puddles! All of our dirt roads have culverts for this short season, so the water can flow underneath instead of over. Unfortunately, most of those are still frozen, or have been crushed by water trucks. So my dad is always ready with hoses and tools to create siphons to get the water over and off our road. It's quite a sight :p

The more dramatic side of breakup of course, is the river system. This is the Chena River, which flows through Fairbanks and is the reason we're accidentally here (maybe that'll be another blog...) Almost all of the ice was gone, but I found some of it here between two bridges in a shady curve of river where it got trapped. This ice started out several feet thick, thick enough we have an ice bridge people drive over all winter long!

About an hour outside of Fairbanks, this is a section of the Tanana River several days after that photo of the Chena. These sections of ice are still around because they're sitting on the sandbars that the Tanana weaves around all summer. The ice is still almost five feet thick in places, and farther up, you can see a section breaking off into the water. This and August are the two times of year we're concerned about flooding, but so far not much in the Fairbanks area. So Note all that flowing water... This is the same day we went ice fishing!