Out and About...

With the warmer weather, it's a lot better outside doing chores, running dogs, and just enjoying the winter. While it 's hard to appreciate how cold the weather was just a few weeks ago, the dogs, at least the fuzzy ones like Gus and Mac,  don't really care for the warmth either. The airport just set new records with temps. in the forties above. It's supposed to cool off and be below zero by next week, so at least those dogs will be happy again.

Here's a shot from yesterdays dog run. We had some snow overnight, so it's hard to see how much the yahoo Skidooers shredded the trail during the warm spell. They sure know how to have fun!

February Runs Hot and Cold...

As noted, January ended very cold and February started off the same way. Other than a few days in the minus teens, it was thirty to forty below for the first week or so.

Jack Black hung out by the wood stove upstairs or the Toyo heater downstairs during the cold spell. Other than feeding and letting the dogs off for a brief free run, we mostly stayed inside too.

The thermometer seemed stuck at minus 33 for more than a few days. Even the giraffes were cold.

But as luck would have it, a chinook blew through this week and we've been above freezing the past few days. Before this it was too cold to run dogs, now it's almost too warm, go figure!

Cold Ground Hogs...

 If there were ground hogs in Alaska, they'd been smart to stay in their burrows, cause it's been real cold today. The official high at the airport was -30, after a low of -49, so a ground hog smart enough to predict the weather would certainly have stayed inside. While it had warmed up to the teens below zero earlier in the week, then we were able to get out a bit more, run the dogs, and a few trips to town for shopping, it didn't last and the cold is back again. But we did get unexpected visitors one night...

The dogs started barking a little after dinner, so we turned on the outside light and saw a cow and calf moose munching on some low birch branches. Eventually they moved over to the mountain ash near the house. Andy turned on the back light and they were right next to the deck, stripping off the dried leaves and branches, not ten feet from the house. After they finished off the lower branches, they wandered around back and up the driveway, munching on the birch there. Apparently getting tired of the dogs barking, they ambled up to the road and disappeared. Just another Fairbanks moose encounter.