Alaska's Winter Horizon

Alaska's Winter Horizon

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Snowy end to October

We got out and walked around downtown this weekend. We checked out the food and craft show but walked out empty-handed. Stopped by the bakery and got a fresh baguette of bread. As we were walking in front of the museum, we noticed this new bronze sculpture.

 It's a beautiful representation of some of our unique animals.

Tuesday morning we woke up to a few inches of snow on the ground. Our temps have gotten colder and this will be the snow that stays around til spring. It will be the bottom layer under several feet of winter snow. There is actually more predicted for this weekend. Our playground at school looked so calm and peaceful this morning.
 By the end of the day it certainly didn't look like this anymore.
 Soon our students will be skiing on this field.
 Most of them will try sledding and sliding down the back hills.
 We have had a good layer of snow on the ground every Halloween since we moved here and this year is no exception. What a way to welcome November!

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Sunday, October 14

This past Friday night, we grilled out hamburgers, bratwursts, and hot dogs on our new grill. It was our anniversary present to each other. How romantic is that?! But we had really missed grilling so it was a sincere gift. We had a great feast and afterwards I had to unfortunately work on Master's classwork. It was a little after 10 and Greg had gone out onto the balcony. I was getting ready for bed when he came rushing back in to tell me to come look at the Northern Lights.

 When I made my way out there, a beautiful sky of green dancing ribbons awaited me.
 We were both surprised at their intensity as we had never seen the Northern Lights downtown before.










 As they traveled across the sky and seemed to have diminished, I decided to get out of the cold and go to bed. Greg, on the other hand, was more vigilant and came in to wake me up several times insisting I come back out and look at them now.












It was quite a display.

 Our pictures do not do the aurora justice.





It is hard to capture their brilliance while the city's lights blaze intently and interfere with the photo.







Our local newspaper has some awesome reader photos if you want to check them out at www.adn.com You may have to search under reader submitted photos or it was entitled Aurora over Anchorage. It was quite an unexpected and magical night especially since the aurora forecast was very low for the night!


On Saturday, we woke to a chilly day and our friend/nemesis- the snow- was back!

 It started out as really light but gradually began to build up to big, fat, fluffy snowflakes.
 
 We probably got about an inch of snow here and by Sunday afternoon it had all melted away.
But stay tuned, because there is more in the forecast. It will soon cover the ground and not leave until spring!