Oh no, it rained - and then snowed again.

Friday night it warmed up to 40 degrees and it rained all night and melted all the snow that we did have. On Saturday Brent and I were able to finish up our winter projects. All the doors have new weather stripping and the wood is unloaded and all the lawn furniture is put away. It was a rather nice day to spend outside. Then last night it snowed again. Brent was standing and staring as the snowflakes were falling and he decided that he should go and fire up the snowmachine and take it for a spin. With not even 2 inches of the ground he took his sled out for a ride. As you can tell from his ear to ear smile - winter is his favorite season.

Oh no ... it snowed!

We got our first true snow this last week and winter is here to stay. Although I will miss the green grass and warm days (I guess we had some of those in September) I do love the snow. As Brent jokingly said he will sit in his garage on his snowmachine and watch the snow fall. Brent is really looking forward to this winter, snowmaching, ice fishing, and we are even going to try and go cross country skiing. So bring on the snow - but keep the 50 below away to a minimum. But in case the 50 below does come, we are getting a woodstove installed next month. Brent and my dad, along with my mom's cousin have been busy all summer getting wood. Our woodshed is stacked tall and we are ready to start burning.

Wanted - cabbage thief

With the cold and rainy summer everybodys gardens did not do as well this year. The only vegetable that was able to grow was the cabbage. I had 3 plants that did great. The day before Brent left we picked one head of cabbage and it was great. I was hoping to get the other two picked this week, but as luck would have it - the moose beat me to it! I found evidence of the leaves that they didn't get and the footprints in the bed. Although Brent is hoping that they come back during hunting season so he can get them. Speaking of hunting season, it opens on September 1st, the day Brent gets off work. So on his way home from Delta he will be keeping his eye out for Bullwinkle. We'll keep our fingers crossed for a full freezer this fall.

One heck of a hike.

On our last day of being in the park we went for one heck of a hike. Mary Vail and I mentioned that if we would have known that our ending point would have been where it was, we would have not even gotten off the bus. As we were heading back down the mountain we noticed that we passed about three of our "hell no" hills. While hiking up the hills we got to one plateau and caught up with the boys only for them to take off again, Mary Vail called that rabbit chasing. But each time we decided that we could make it to the top of the nest hill, and sure enough slowly but surely we made it. Although the picture of the GPS show 5149 feet we started out at just over 3400 feet. But still, it was an awesome accomplishment. The 3rd picture shown is the view from the top looking down to the road where we started. The last picture is of Brent standing on the road and where his finger is pointing is where we finished - wow!

Squirrels, Cairibou and Bears .. oh my!

Last weekend Brent and I joined my parents and some family friends on a camping trip to Denali Park. We camped at a campground about 29 miles into the Park and we stayed there for 4 nights. During the day we would hop on the buses that take the tourists in for sightseeing and we would get off the bus where we wanted to go hiking and off we went. This blog will show some of the animals that we saw. Luckily a majority of the bears (with the exception of one) we were able to observe from the bus. It was incredible to see all the animals. One afternoon when we were watching a large caribou Mary Vail and I kept hearing from Mark and Brent about how great of a shot they could get on it. Good thing it was in a national park, they will have to wait until this fall to get their shot at a caribou. Enjoy the pictures.

Happy Solstice!

On Saturday, June 21st, the longest day of the year and the sun does not go below the horizon. A tradition in Fairbanks is going to the Goldpanners baseball game. The game started at 10:30 pm and is played without artifical lights. We had a great time. There was an alumni pitcher from the Goldpanner's who came back and pitched for the team, keep in mind he was 62 and was throwing strikes against kids who could be his grandkids. We had a lot of fun and are looking forward to next years game. (Note: This picture was taken at midnight and the sun was still shining.)

Dog days of summer.

Friday was a nice and sunny day. Brent was going out bear hunting in the evening so we decided to take the boat out for a drive to make sure it was ready. We took Roscoe along for his first boat ride and he loved it. The weather was awesome and it was a great first boat ride of the year.