Winter Solstice...

Actually, the next day or so, but since the sun angle and day length only change a few seconds per day at this time of year, well who's to say what's the shortest day?

Here's a shot from the bottom of the valley behind our place looking south at the afternoon sun. It won't clear the ridge again for another few weeks.

Here's a view of the ridge on the other side of the valley. The sun hits the ridge part way up and it's a real treat running the dogs when the trail gets us up to the sunny side of the valley.

Here comes the sun! Coming down that ridge on the trail there's a gap in the trees where the sun just clears the ridge top to the south. Pretty nice view. While the days are short and it's usually cold out, there's still lots to see when you get outside.
If you want to see the real solstice, there's a time lapse series of photos at the Alaska Climate Center:
http://akclimate.org/sites/Default/files/webcam-timelapse/2017_12_21-TLaps.gif
(copy and paste into your browser)

Merry Christmas...

Off to the neighbors for Christmas dinner after a fine breakfast and opening gifts. And now our so called president seems to think Obama banned Christmas and he just brought it back. I guess I missed that version of reality: https://www.yahoo.com/news/tv-ad-thanks-trump-ending-203029715.html
Anyway have a Merry Christmas. Here's a group I'd like to hear sometime; maybe that's one thing we can all agree on, or not .

First dog run...

Well actually the second since I forgot the camera on the first one, like always. The dogs ran great, except for a short stop out the dog yard when Tambo didn't realize he was a sled dog. The rest of the run was fine, as was the second, once we got him going, no real problems.

It's hard to get good pics with the low angle sun. The lower valley won't get direct sunlight until mid-January when the sun clears the ridge top again.

When we got  back, there were some seriously tired doggies. Like they say, a good sled dog is one that's just finished a hard run.

Dog Hauler (part 2)...

The first two boxes are mounted on the truck. The slide rail system seems to work, but may have to use bigger channel next year to strengthen the mounts. There's another box that could be installed to haul ten dogs, but since we only have five running, with two dogs retired, probably just go with the shorter setup and have the rear of the bed available to haul other stuff.

In other events, been out on the Ski Doo putting in the dog trail. There were a few trees down but all are cleared now and will run dogs tomorrow. Should be a good test for the new knee.
We're down to about four hours of sunshine now, so it doesn't give a lot daylight to get things done. With the low angle of the sun, it only gets about two degrees above the horizon, you do get periods of what's called civil twilight. According to Wikipedia, morning civil twilight begins when the sun is 6° below the horizon and ends at sunrise. Evening civil twilight begins at sunset and ends when the sun is 6° below the horizon. So altogether we get over six hours when it's light enough to see outside reasonably well.

Here's the sun starting to set around 2pm. It won't be dark for about another two hours with the extended civil twilight.

Dog Hauler (part 1)...

So like I was saying last post, been putting dog boxes (or dog haulers as they're called up here) on the more or less new pickup. Well the first problem was I'd figured it all out using 2 1/2 in aluminum channel. Well they don't have that up here, so did I get 3 in, no of course not, I got 2 in. Which of course was too narrow, so when I drilled the first hole, it went between the bed and the fender. Uh oh, so had to move the holes further toward the bed, which made it too narrow to fit the boxes. So to make a short story long, had to finagle it to get it wide enough to fit the the boxes on the bed. So now the channels are fitted to the sides of the bed and just need to to get the rest of boxes fitted. Too much fun. But it's been in the 30's above all week so at least it's warm enough to work without gloves. That's something for this time of year.

November Weather Summary...

Here's the ever popular monthly weather summary, this time courtesy of the Alaska Climate Research Center (http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/node/1377):
Fairbanks Weather Summary for November 2017
Mean monthly temperature was 4.8°F, which was 2.2°F above normal. The observed maximum temperature was 33.0°F on the 3rd of the month, the minimum temperature was -27.0°F on the 26th of the month. The total monthly precipitation was 1.3", which was 0.7" above normal.

(Normal values refer to the period 1981 to 2010)

The big project for the month (so far) is putting the dog boxes on the new pickup using an external mounting system (angle aluminum) so Andy doesn't have to crawl underneath and wrench while I install the bolts. We'll add photos if and when it's done.