Sunday, April 29, 2007

Chena Hot Springs - again!


Sarah arrived Wednesday night & on Thursday we went to the hot springs. A former co-worker of Sarah's, Rick, who is also a travel RN and is now working here in Fairbanks in the ER, joined us for the day.
The day was beautiful...about 50 degrees, and sunny...and the spring was REALLY HOT. 109+...the thermometer did not go any higher. It was so hot that we couldn't stay in much longer than 10-15 minutes, we would have to retreat to the much shallower end to cool down.
After we got tired of being in the spring, we went for lunch. We had a cute little red squirrel join us (took Sarah & I two days to figure out what kind of squirrel it is). As usual, the food was wonderful.
After lunch, we went to the gift shop and then to the Ice Museum. The tour guide was rather nice, Sarah & I got to split a free Appletinni, we had tried about 6 times to get our debit cards to go through without luck--their computer was not connecting like it should.
After we got done in the museum, we had to head back to the springs to thaw out...it's about 20 degrees in there. The really funny thing, the last time I was in there, it was WARM (then again, outside it was -20).

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Trip to Tok/Fast Eddies



On the 16th, took a road !trip out to Tok to go to Fast Eddie's! I did buy a couple t-shirts.
Funny haven't been to the one in Alton!
It was a really nice day, the mountains were out, and the temp was in the high 40's low 50's. On the way, we saw a cow moose and her yearling.
This Fast Eddies is quite a bit different from the one in Alton. This one in Tok, you can take kids in and you can leave with left overs. The burgers were good (I got the halibut burger) and filled us up so much that we took our dessert to go...I got the white chocolate raspberry cheese cake, it was really yummy!
On the way back, we saw two more cow/calf. One set is probably the first set that we saw going to Tok, for they were about in the same area. Even if it wasn't, I was excited because this was he first moose that I've seen outside of downtown Fairbanks!

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Spring is here!!

I think spring has finally arrived!
Can see plenty of grass that is TRYING to turn green, and I'm anxiously waiting for the first flowers of the season!
During the day, we have been playing with the 50's for the last 2-3 weeks, however, we are still getting down into he 20's at night.
It really didn't take much more than 4 days for all the non-piled snow to disappear and turn into massively huge lakes that would freeze over during the night....made for some interesting walking to the car in the AM.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

2007 Ice Festival

I know this posting is a little late, but better late than never!!
I was happy that I went to see the single block sculptures as early as I did...even though I didn't like the fact that it was -10 with a pretty good wind that day....about a week later, some vandals went through the park at night and destroyed some sculptures. One of my favorites, the Praying Mantis was one that got hit pretty good. I was so disappointed that it got clobbered for I was looking forward to seeing it lit up at night.






This particular sculpture, I was not at all impressed with during the day, but at night lit up, it is beautiful. It's pretty strange how colored light changes the feel of the ice, not to mention how the light changes as it goes through the imperfections in the ice.













This photo is of the Susan Butcher Memorial. For those of you who haven't a clue who she is, she is the second woman to win the Iditarod, and the first person to win it 3 times in a row, a record that stood for 15 years. She passed away this past fall of leukemia.
The cool thing about this sculpture is that the light colors cycled. My first attempt at taking a photo failed because it was a 30 second exposure and the lights cycled through all their colors during that point and all I got was a big blob of white!