Loving living in Alaska!

Today was absolutely beautiful!  It was sunny again with clear blue skies.  I was able to stand outside on the deck in a light jacket and feel the heat of the sunlight on my face without being frozen!  The natives here say that spring is coming, which is evident by the streak of sunny non-snowy days, however they also say that spring is the season that they have the most blizzards so it will be something to see!

After going to the bank earlier, I got a taxi to come back home, and they had to drop someone else off first.  She was young, about 22-ish and told me she was from a coastal community and had to come to Bethel to find a job.  There are few jobs for the natives in their villages for the young people and because of their growing populations, many have to go elsewhere to larger cities for work.

She lived just off of the Kuskokwim River, so I got to see it for the first time today!  It was huge and completely frozen over!  There were snowmobiles and vehicles driving up and down both sides.  I noticed there was a fire truck sitting about 50 feet in, on our side.  I asked another taxi passenger if he knew what they were doing and he explained.  When the river starts to melt at the very bottom, sometimes it creates a dimple on the surface of the ice, where people drive and which can create very dangerous driving conditions.  So the firemen drill a hole a little further out in the ice, all the way down to the melted water.  Then they spray that water into the dimple on the surface to fill it up.  As the day goes on, it will freeze and level out the surface again for the drivers.

It’s really interesting here to see how many people own snowmobiles and use those as their main transportation.  Between us and town is a large flat area, about ½ mile.  Numerous times a day I see snowmobiles racing back and forth between us to get to the town.  On their way back from town, a number of them have a small sled trailer attached and loaded down with what is likely groceries and other goods.  But seeing them makes me think of that scene in Star Wars where the snowmobile-like machines are flying through the woods on the chase.  It’s pretty neat!

This morning, we received a text message from our cell phone provider stating “The whole coast line of Alaska is on Tsunami warning! Our estimated time of being hit may be at 1pm.  Pass message on!”  Apparently that is one way of communicating to large areas of people all over the coastline, in this case as to possible dangers.  It turns out that they didn’t mean to send it to us, but to the coastal communities instead but mistakes happen.  If anything, it made us a little more wary!  What did cross my mind briefly is that we are quite a ways in-land, however we do have a frozen river going right through our town which could aid serious waves.  Luckily we never had to worry.  Thank God!

Since the southern side of Alaska is located along the Ring Of Fire, 

there is also the possibility of an earthquake.  My worry was that if I was sitting under either of these antlers hanging in this house, 

I might get skewered on a rack! LOL

Have a great day!