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!

Mush! Gee! Haw! Whoa!

Hi, Everyone:

Before moving to Alaska, Tammy's long lasting goal was to be a sled dog musher in the Iditarod.  Ok, not really.  But she did want to spend some time trying out mushing.  Needless to say, when groupon.com put up a coupon for a sled dog ride earlier this week, we jumped at the chance.

So today we geared up and headed out for a ride with Dario Martinez, a nine time Iditarod veteran.  He hooked up a team of Iditarod dogs, and we were out:

There were 4 of us on the tour, so Dario hooked up 2 sleds.  2 people got to sit in the front sled, which he stood on the back of to direct the dogs.  Then the front sled pulled the back sled, which had one seat.  The final person would stand on the back of the back sled.

Here's the view from the front of the sled.  We learned lots of awesome information, including that the word to turn right is "Gee" and the word to turn left is "Haw."  We also got cool bits of information about the Iditarod, including that it is an 1100 mile race where the teams will go for 6 hours on and 6 hours off.  Apparently the dogs are also most comfortable at -20 degrees, so our current 10 degrees was a bit warm for them.  They had to keep stopping to eat snow to cool down.

Here we are in the front sled enjoying the ride.

We also took some pictures from the back sled.  The guy standing is Dario.  He's leading the dogs by voice commands only; they are not hooked up to any sort of reins or anything like that.  So the dogs are pretty much in control, subject to a brake on the back of the sled.  It's a really cool experience and these dogs are also really smart.  You can also tell that they LOVE to pull these sleds.  The dogs would whine and bark every time we took a break.  They kept pulling, clearly wanting to keep going.  And when we got to the kennel, the dogs who were not hooked up started whining because they wanted to go.

Dario told us these dogs have been bred over the years to love pulling.  It's in their blood.  So the mushers job is to basically calm them down and keep them in control, because otherwise they would pull forever.

We also learned that while on the Iditarod each dog will consume 10,000-12,000 calories.  As comparison, Michael Phelps was eating approx. 8,000 calories during the olympics; and he is approximately 4 times their size.  It's quite amazing that these dogs can consume that much.

We also got to see some of the dogs Dario is currently breeding.  Here were the most recent puppies!

And here's Steve standing on the back of the last sled.

It was an awesome experience and for anyone in Alaska we highly recommend Dario at Chugach Express.    You can see video of Dario taking the Today Show crew around on his sleds here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4isFT2C8CY&feature=player_embedded

Keep warm!  We're heading into 30 degree weather next week, so we'll be keeping warm soon enough!

P.S. There's a new poll on the sidebar of the blog!  Check it out!

Spotted Again.

Hi, Everyone:

I don't know if this is getting old, but we had another moose spotting and given the title of this blog we thought we needed to blog about it.  This one has an interesting story to it though.  To give you some background:

The front door of our apartment is located on a street, but the garage and back door come off of an alley.  Once you park your car in the alley, you walk up a path to our back stairs, which leads to our apartment.

This walk is probably about 100 feet.  Ordinarily it's no big deal.  So, as usual, Tammy came home from work earlier this week, walked up the path to our apartment, and came up the stairs.  When she got to the top, though, she heard some rustling noises behind her.  Nervous, she turned around and saw this:

Yes, the moose had been approximately 1 foot off of the path on which she had just walked.  We're not sure if it magically came in behind her or if she walked by it completely oblivious.  But the bottom line is, this moose was close.

Thankfully, by the time she realized this she was safe at the top of the stairs.  Now we should break here to say that moose are not really aggressive.  They can be if you annoy them.  But mainly they just want you to leave them alone so they can eat.  So she wasn't in any real threat of danger.  But you also don't want to be that close to an untamed animal that is the size of a horse.  You just don't know what it will do.

Anyway, we ran inside and grabbed a camera.  Pretty soon thereafter the moose decided it was done eating, and just hunkered off down the path.

It then jumped the fence and went into another yard to play.

Moose spotted.

Cross-Country Ski Weekend!

Hi, Everyone:

It has been quite an amazing week of cross-country skiing.  Last weekend we hit the trails with a number of Steve's co-clerks, including John and Michael who were fresh to the sport.  It hadn't snowed in quite some time, so the trails were a bit slick.  But Michael was flying and John did an awesome job making it up and down some pretty big hills!

Along the way we saw our old friend, Mr. Moose.

Then on Wed night we got about 2-3'' of snow.  We took our skis and went back out to the trails on Thurs night to take advantage of it.  This was probably the best cross-country skiing we had thus far.  We went to a large park about 15 minutes outside of Anchorage that has miles and miles of ski trails.  A lot of the trails are lit at night, so we were able to see.  It was about 25-30 degrees, so it was warm enough to comfortably ski, and the snow was somewhat wet and thus really good for skiing.

On Friday the sun was shining bright and it was a beautiful, warm day.  (Sidenote: we have been gaining about 6 min of sunlight per day, so we are seeing much more sun.  It's now bright, bright, bright from about 9a - 5:30p. Real hours of sunlight coming back!  Pretty soon we'll be falling the other direction . . . all sun, no night).

Steve and his co-clerk Rebecca wanted to take advantage of the beautiful sun, so we played hooky from work around 2:30p and went back to the trails.

It was incredibly beautiful:

Here's Rebecca!

The clearness also opened up awesome views of Denali (Mt. McKinley):

Then yesterday Tammy had a conference, so Steve rented some skate skis and tried it out.  The difference between classic cross-country skiing and skate cross-country skiing can be seen here:

Classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXk0vo2HsbA
Skate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brGZlZkCwyk

Skate skiing is crazy intense.  It works your upper body and lower body, and takes a huge amount of force to propel you forward.  It was one of the best workouts Steve has ever had.

Now we're going to John's to watch the superbowl with some of Steve's other co-clerks.  In honor of Neha (and Charles Woodson), Go Pack Go!

Official Lawyer Business

Hi, Everyone!

As you may remember, last July Steve took the Mass. Bar Exam.  In November we found out he passed.  As a result, he can be an officially licensed lawyer assuming he agreed to the oath of Mass lawyers.

The oath is usually administered in Boston in November.  Because we're in AK, however, Steve wasn't able to make it to MA.  So, instead, Justice Morgan Christen agreed to administer the oath in Alaska in the Alaska Supreme Court courtroom.

Last Friday, Steve was sworn in.

Steve with some of his co-clerks in the courtroom.

Us in the courtroom.

Steve agreeing to the oath, including not to lucre clients.

Steve taking the MA oath in AK with the AK seal behind him.

Signing the paperwork.

Hooray for being a lawyer!

More to come later.  Hope everyone is doing well!

Fairbanks Weekend (Part 2)

Hello again!

Welcome to Part 2 of our Fairbanks installation.  After snowmachining at the cabin, and eating a delicious lunch prepared by Justice Winfree and his wife (thanks!), we drove over to Chena Hot Springs.

Chena is located approx. 60 miles east of Fairbanks, and is known worldwide as one of the best places to go to see the Northern Lights.  It's also a resort, filled with tons of activities including hanging out in the hot spring pools, checking out an ice museum, a nice restaurant, and lots of snow activities (dog mushing, snowmachining, etc.).

The hotel offers a wakeup service for people to see the Northern Lights.  Because the rooms don't have phones in them, an attendant will run around the halls banging on doors screaming "Aurora" if the lights are out.  It's a lot like a college prank, but we pay for the experience.

Anyway, we signed up for the wake-up service and headed into the ice museum.  This is basically a giant building filled with massive ice sculptures.  The sculptures include a full hotel, with 4 working rooms.  Only 26 couples have stayed and made it through the night, but the rooms include massive amounts of caribou hides.  It also costs about $600/night to stay there.

The building is kept at 20 degrees.  This was about 50 degrees warmer than the temperature outside.  We found it kind of ironic that we were going into the ice museum to warm up.

The sculptures include a full working chess set:

A working xylophone:

Jousters.  Note that the jouster on the left is standing up on the horse.  This is about 300 lbs. of ice being supported on the legs alone.

An igloo:

And a full-scale bar, including drinks served out of glasses made of ice.

They used to serve coca-cola to the kids out of the bar, but the drinks kept freezing into the ice.  So they switched to appletinis (not for kids), and only serve those.  The booze doesn't freeze!

After hanging out in the ice museum, we headed into the hot springs.  Because we didn't want to damage the camera, we don't have any pictures.  But just imagine a GIANT outdoor pool, surrounded by rocks, really really warm, surrounded by a dense fog (because the heat from the water creates smoke).  With it being -30 degrees outside, our heads were cold despite our bodies being warm.  Within minutes our glasses had frozen, and our hair had turned gray from the fog rising off the water, and then freezing onto our hair.  We basically looked like we had aged 30 years.

We spent about 30 minutes in the hot springs, and then headed back to our room to relax and fall asleep.  At about 12:30, the "aurora" guy came running through the halls, so we ran outside.

Our definition of Northern Lights clearly is different than theirs.  We were expecting the colorful lights dancing and jumping in the air.  But the "aurora" guy's yelling was spurred by the appearance of a slightly-tinged green cloud hovering above the mountain.  We tried to get a picture, but there wasn't any real color or light, so it wouldn't catch.

We've been told that this year is a fairly light year for solar activity, so that may be the best we get.  We're going to keep trying around the Anchorage area based on a "aurora alert" one of Steve's co-clerks set up.  If we see them, we'll make sure to post pictures.  In the meantime, we aren't crossing it off the list just yet.

Although we didn't get to see the lights, the trip was well worth it and tons of fun.  We got to hang out with great company, experience true Alaska winter temperature, snow machine, hang out in hot springs, and see some amazing views on the way home:

That's all for now!  We have tons of exciting activities the next few weeks, including Fur Rondy (the beginning of the Iditarod) in late-February.  Stay tuned!

(Hi, Neha!  Miss you!)

Fairbanks Weekend (Part 1)

Hi, Everyone:

We're coming off of an exciting and cool weekend here in Alaska.  Given the 3-day weekend, which allowed both of us to have an extra day off work, we decided to go on a road trip up to Fairbanks.  Now it may seem nuts to go to Fairbanks in the winter, but we wanted to try and see the Northern Lights at the Chena Hot Springs up there.  We also thought it would be a great way to visit Justice Winfree and the Fairbanks Alaska Supreme Court clerks.  So we packed our bags, borrowed a car (ours wouldn't do so well in the extreme cold), and started to drive.

The theme for the weekend was as follows:  (see the temperature on the dashboard)

Now, to avoid deceiving you, we need to be clear.  The temperature was not -22 degrees.  No; that's just as low as the thermometer in the car would report.  The temperature was actually much lower.   We believe it got down to about -40 degrees at night.  This raises whole new concerns for us about tires deflating, liquids and engines freezing, etc.  And once your tires deflate, you have to fill them with air.  But the metal on the air hose freezes, so you have to warm it up using your car exhaust:

It certainly made for an interesting weekend.  We finally feel like we've experienced the true Alaska winter!

The drive to Fairbanks (which takes about 7 hours) was gorgeous.  We passed through Denali State and National parks.  On the way, we watched a tow truck pull a semi out of a ditch.  It was quite exciting, but slowed down our trip a bit.

We then met up with Gabe, one of Steve's co-clerks on the court.  Gabe showed us around town, including the Fairbanks Curling Club and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.  He also took us to the local brewery, called Silver Gulch.  It had some really interesting and unique beers, including a barely wine that Tammy really enjoyed called "Happy Hippie."

The next morning we woke up and drove to Justice Winfree's cabin.  On the way, we passed by North Pole, Alaska, which of course warranted a stop and some pictures.

Ice carving is HUGE in Fairbanks (mostly because these things have no chance of melting in these winter temperatures!)

All of the light poles look like candy canes.

The north pole.

Reindeer!  Which was actually pretty depressing to see since they're locked up in this cage, in the extreme cold, with not much to do.  They definitely looked pretty bored.

Finally, we made it out to Justice Winfree's cabin.  We had both been very excited about this opportunity, because this was going to be our first snowmachine experience.  In Alaska, they like to call them snowmachines . . . most people know them as "snowmobiles."

Anyway, we got on them and began zipping around the frozen lake.  Then we got an amazing tour/lesson from Jimmy, who took us onto a nearby frozen river.

He also showed us these awesome chunks of ice that had come loose from the first freeze, been pushed down the river, and then refroze.  It made for a pretty good picture for Tammy, Steve, and Gabe:

Thanks to our incredible guide, we ended the day snowmachine experts . . . and are eager and ready to get back on them again.

Thank you so much to Gabe, Justice Winfree, Jimmy, and Justice Christen for such an amazing weekend! 

Tomorrow we'll have Part 2 of the adventure: our Chena Hot Springs exploration.  Until then, have a warm night!