My Ash :o)

I didn't take this first photo. Someone took it from Kenai Beach, which is directly across the inlet from Mt. Redoubt, yesterday afternoon.

Mt. Redoubt has been erupting several times a day for the past week. It's wreaking havoc on air travel in and out of Anchorage.

And all social plans are qualified by the additional, "if the volcano allows".

Social plans includes everything from church, parties, grocery shopping, school, work, prom, etc.

It's cool to have our very own volcano erupting nearby. But it's also a nuisance. Basically, all plans are tentative until about 30 minutes prior to the event. (I think that's a Michael J. Fox quote from American President.)

We got our first ashfall in our area last night. Just a light dusting that coated everything in grey. Stephen collected some off his truck. I am trying the snowtop collection method. I'm melting the snow and draining off the water to leave just the ash.

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BOOM!

Looks like "to blow" wins!
Mt. Redoubt erupted 5 times while I slept last night. The most recent blast being the biggest at 4:30am. According to the AVO, a tower of ash 50,000 feet tall was thrown skyward. Of course, this is hard to photograph in the dark. So the picture above is from the last big eruption, which conveniently happened during the daytime in April 1990.

The volcanic ash plume is projected to miss Anchorage and head directly north towards Petersville, possibly Talkeetna. So folks headed from Anchorage, up the Parks Highway to Fairbanks today may possibly have some engine trouble. Engines and ash fall don't mix.

For that reason, many flights in and out of Anchorage are cancelled or delayed. Mostly, I think these are flights to western/northern regions of Alaska which would intercept the plume. Although, I did hear of one flight which turned around and returned to Phoenix in the night. Better safe than sorry!

Well, no day off for us today... So I'm off to drag my little princess out of bed to get ready for preschool. Today is "Mismatch Day". So we're wearing a fluffy pink skirt and a mini-football jersey along with 2 different socks and 2 different shoes. :o)

To Blow Or Not To Blow

The volcano is rumbling again. We'll be swaddling the computer equipment in trash bags tonight to protect them from ash fall... just in case.

There has been heightened activity over the past 2 days apparently. I don't know if the Alaska Volcanic Observatory (AVO) and/or the news media is afraid to cry wolf one more time for fear of being ignored, or what. But I've heard almost nothing about it over the weekend except for small little clips in the online newspaper. And if you go to AVO's website, it casually mentions the 40-50 seismic events (aka earthquakes) occurring ever hour in the vicinity of Mt. Redoubt. Hmmmmm.

Into the Sun

Well, Lance Mackey's done it... again! That makes three Iditarod wins in a row! And this time it was a complete blowout. Lance arrived in Nome many hours before the 2nd place finisher, Sebastian Schnuelle. They faced some very tough conditions on the overland portion from Kaltag, where they left the Yukon River to Unalakleet where they hit the coast. The windchill got down to -55 degrees! That's just insane. And the winds were whipping in the form of ground blizzards.

Lance was in the lead from early on, and never let it go. He made it to the halfway point first (the historic village of Iditarod) where he received a sack of gold. Then he made it to the Yukon River first (at the village of Anvik) where he received an 8 course meal and another sack of gold. Then he of course made it first to Nome for the big win. Congratulations to Lance and his team of superdogs.

In other news, Alicia started going to her new preschool this week. Good daycare is hard to find in Alaska. And even bad daycare costs an arm and a leg. We're enjoying our new school. It's very close to my work in midtown Anchorage. So Alicia commutes with me both to and from her school. Sometimes I will pop over there on my lunch hour and visit her while she eats her lunch. She brings her lunch to this school. We're using a Barbie lunchbox which had previously been used to tote around toys and crayons.

Each day of the month has some sort of theme. This week we had Crazy Hair Day, Cooking Day, St. Patrick's Day, etc.... One day soon it'll be "Wear your PJ's to school day". We can't wait!

We're in the sunlight now! We've crossed that threshhold where we now have more daylight than nighttime each day. Wahoo! The sun rises around 8am and sets after 8pm right now. I'm liking the early Daylight Saving Time situation. It gives me lots more daylight after work during which I can enjoy doing things outdoors. I hope we do it this way every year.

Feeling Lucky?

In between running Tess around yesterday (Saturday) to an SAT test, prom gown shopping, and an interview for a scholarship to study Turkish in Turkey this summer... I spent the rest of the day making this charming shamrock cake.

Some friends from church have twin sons who will turn 1 year old on St. Patrick's Day. We brought the cake to a church potluck today. It was a big hit! Yay!

We won't hear back about the SAT or interview results for a little while. But, we did score a prom gown! It's slightly too big, so we're going to see about having it altered before the April 3rd prom. But it's very lovely. I'll post photos after the prom.

This afternoon at the church potluck someone gave us some tickets to the last home game of the Alaska Aces hockey team. So we went to take in the atmosphere of Alaska's second most popular sport (after dog-mushing). It was a good time. The Aces won it 7-1 against the Phoenix Roadrunners. During the game, the announcer gave an Iditarod update (Mackey's just about got it in the bag...). He also mentioned that Redoubt had sort of erupted... just a little. But not to worry. If it really blew it's top, we'd all have a big party at the Sullivan Arena, since we'd be stranded there for a while.

Alicia May starts at her new school/daycare tomorrow. We've laid out her clothes and packed her lunch in her Barbie lunchbox (which previously held crayons). She's a little anxious about the whole thing. But she can't wait to eat the healthy lunch we packed. The school is very close to my work. So I'll probably try to swing by there at lunch time just to check on her.

Fetch Doggy

Alicia met a four-legged friend at the Sled Dog Adventures Mushing School near Fairbanks.

Dog Days of Winter

It was a beautiful day for the starting of the 37th running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race at Willow, Alaska. The crowds were large, but the venue was larger...

Dogs dogs everywhere...

Martin Buser dons his gloves as his dogs pull him out of the starting gate.

Here comes DeeDee Jonrowe!

Alicia spent much of her time at Willow playing on the play structure.

We caught Hobo Jim's act at the Pioneer Lodge on our way home from Talkeetna.

In Talkeetna, we saw lots of snow and a few moose.

Iditarod Themed Fun

We watched the Ceremonial Start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage this morning. Some of our viewing was done from the upper levels of our parking garage which conveniently bordered 4th Avenue.

Lance Mackey, defending champion, leaves the chute.

Alicia May brought her toy sled dog to the festivities.

After watching some dog mushing, we also visited the Alaska Native Heritage Center. We saw a great film about an Alaska Native dog musher. And we took a walking tour of the village sites.

Rebecca at the Musher's Banquet posing with mushers, DeeDee Jonrowe and Lance Mackey.

We wrapped up the day with a quick jaunt down to Turnagain Arm for some scenic vistas. The weather was clear and beautiful today. We're hoping it's equally nice tomorrow when we head to Willow Lake for the Official Start of the Iditarod.

Getting Ready to Hit the Trail

We spent a brief time sledding on the hill in Eagle River yesterday after work and before dance class. It was 17 degrees. We had the hill to ourselves.

Tonight we'll be headed to the Iditarod Musher's Banquet at the new Dena'ina Center in Anchorage. The mushers will pick their bib numbers for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race which begins this weekend.

There are lots of interesting folks signed up to run this year's race. Rebecca and Tess drove into the Iditarod Store in Anchorage last night, after dance class, to pick up our banquet tickets and a couple of race guides (to use for musher autographs). The guide has bios on each musher. Pretty interesting group. We'll be meeting them this evening at the banquet.

Some folks I personally find interesting are Gary Paulsen (author of the Hatchet), DeeDee Jonrowe, Karin Hendrickson (rookie from Chugiak), and Aliy Zirkle (originally from NH).

Usually the musher bios are on http://www.iditarod.com/ so you can read about them there.

Alaska Bound

Rebecca's on her way to Alaska. She got waylaid for about 6 extra hours in Chicago. And she'll be taking an unexpected detour through Seattle... But she should finally make it to Anchorage by 6am Wednesday. She was supposed to get here at 9:45pm this evening...

I'm going to get some sleep tonight after all. Hopefully she does too on the plane...

This Friday, Tess will be headed back out to Yentna to help out with the Iditarod. Instead of flying this year, she'll be taking a snowmachine the 30 or so miles from Willow. She'll return Monday in time for us girls to head north to the Chena Hot Springs on Tuesday/Wednesday.

Fur Rendezvous 2009

We spent the afternoon at Fur Rondy today. The weather was good. We were appropriately bundled.

The girls went on several rides. We had some fair food. Alicia got her face painted, and we watched the 2nd Annual Running of the Reindeer (at least the small glimpses we could see).

Luckily, although the crowd was very large, it was not too overwhelming. The ride lines weren't too long. So all in all, it was another enjoyable people-watching expedition.