A View From The North: Sheep Mountain Weekend

Hi, Folks:

First of all, we sometimes like to remind ourselves that we live here:

As one of Steve's clerks put it, it's so amazingly beautiful and dramatic that you sometimes want to say: "Hey, Mountains . . . Tone it down a bit, would you?"  At which point the mountains respond: "Sure thing, but not before I do one more amazing thing with the sun that you have never seen before.  Ba-bam!"

This weekend we packed our bags and headed about 2 hours north of Anchorage to the Sheep Mountain area.  The area is surrounded by two separate mountain ranges that come close to each other, but never actually touch.  It's quite the impressive place.  We went with a number of Alaska court clerks and some of their significant others.

The cabin was a dry cabin, meaning that it didn't have any running water.  We had to walk down to the lodge to use the restroom.  But the place also included a hot tub and sauna, which made for some amazing relaxation evenings.  It also had this Airstream trailer outside, which we have learned from Pawn Stars is worth a bit of money.

We spent a great deal of time cross-country skiing.  The trails by the cabins were all groomed and made for some pretty awesome ups and downs.

We also got to ski by an abandoned air strip, where we messed around for a little bit.  Elena decided to leave her mark:

The snow was really thick, but powdery.  You can see how much they've gotten by the coverage of the bench here:

One of the clerks is also a bit of a hunter.  He brought along his gun and shot a few rabbits for later consumption.  We were going to put a photo of him skinning the rabbit here, but decided it was a bit too graphic for this PG blog.

Anyway, as you can see from the first picture in this post, the views were simply stunning.  Here's another shot once the clouds started rolling in:

The weekend also called for celebrations with drinks and board games.  We had a ton of fun, and learned how quickly water can freeze into ice cubes if left outside.  We also learned that you can get ice for drinks quickly by simply breaking off chunks of it.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend.  The views were stunning, the skiing amazing, the laughter ongoing, and the company fantastic.  We really enjoyed getting to spend some more time with Alex, Ana, Peter, Rebecca, Claire, Suzanne, Jimmy, and Elena.  We're looking forward to spending more time with them in the near-future on more adventures.  Until then, keep on skiing!