Fur Rondy begins

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The Frostbite Footrace started the Fur Rendzevous festivities Saturday morning. Later that afternoon, we walked downtown through the carnival. We headed on down to the snow sculptures competition. They were putting the finishing touches on the frozen creations. We will go back later this week and take some pictures of the completed works. One artist I spoke to told me that his group had already put in about 150 hours work on the sculpture.

We came back to the apartment to warm up and watched the fireworks show from our balcony. It was a fantastic show.

Sunday morning we watched the final day of the sled dog races. These are the sprint dogs races. They run a course around the city. Look at that snow fly!!We will get more pics next weekend when the Iditarod begins here. That endurance race lasts almost 2 weeks and is over 1,000 miles long.

It snowed again today. We are now within .3 of an inch becoming the fourth snowiest winter season in Anchorage! It's snowed this much, so we're hoping to become the snowiest season ever.

Presidents' Day, Feb. 20

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Our long weekend is almost over. Friday morning Greg got home from his weeklong trip to Phoenix. We did get 4 more inches of snow while he was gone. Now we are within 26 inches of the all-time snowfall record for Anchorage! We've had 9 feet so far, with still many more cold wintry days ahead. It did get warm several days last week, even above freezing. This melt and refreeze caused some huge and potentially dangerous icicles. Greg hopes no one gets impaled by one like in the movie "The Omen". Nothing like that in our pictures so far, thankfully. We have mostly vegged out all weekend. I've worked on school stuff and Greg rested. I did get out today with our friend, Doris. We did a little shopping and had lunch. Fur Rondy starts this Friday with the sled dog races. Hopefully, we will have more exciting pics for you next week.

February 5, 2012

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It finally warmed up quite a bit this week. We even hit 40 degrees one day. This is an almost 60 degree difference from our lows last weekend. In fact, this put us on record for the fourth coldest January since they've kept records here in Anchorage. However, we paid the price for the warmth on Thursday. Yep, on Friday we got nearly a foot of snow downtown. This puts us over 8 and a half feet of snow for the year! Greg was able to leave work early due to deteriorating road conditions. He used all of his survival skills to safely walk those two blocks home. Whatever. I spent nearly 10 minutes sweeping the 8+ inches of snow off my car before I could leave work. The roads had not been plowed but I plowed right on through. It took me twice as long to get home but I arrived safe and sound. Greg got out yesterday and was amazed at the amount of snow everywhere. He swears these were the worst road conditions he's seen. Today we got out during the Super Bowl time and grabbed a few items at Wal-Mart. For those of you who think we joke about the crazy prices on some things, check out the price on this box of Little Debbie snacks. Yes, the sticker says "In Alaska $3.49"! And this is at Wal-Mart. Wow.

Yeah, I hear the plows and dump trucks running right now at 10 pm on Sunday night. Hopefully tomorrow the roads will be back to near normal.