Alaska Winter

I had a pretty decent sleep but thought I would have a cruisy day today while I acclimatise, both to the cold and driving on my own.  So after two cups of passable coffee from my room supply, I headed to the nearby Walmart to get something for breakfast.  I decided not to bring Dora this trip, she doesn't have US maps, and I was too cheap to buy them as I will only need them for a week and I don't plan to venture too far.  So Google Maps is telling me where to go, and doing a pretty good job of it so far.  I was convinced she was wrong this morning, but it was my sense of direction that was 180 degrees out of whack. By now it was about 11am so I bought a chicken wrap for lunch and scoffed it in the car, and then headed to the Alaskan Mountaineering and Hiking shop in search of insulated pants.  I wasn't able to get them in my size in NZ, and figured there would be plenty of choice here.  Not so, they either have Small, which I am not, or 2XL - 5XL, which I...

I flew to Auckland on the morning of Friday 28th February and spent the day hanging out with my sister in Auckland.  Julie kindly dropped me at the airport about 5pm.  I'd accumulated a couple of vouchers for the Air NZ lounge, and as I had a few hours to kill before my flight I thought it would be worth using.  Very nice it was too, good food and drinks available, including a sparkling water tap that I could fill my water bottle with for the flight.  But the best thing is you can just leave your stuff at your seat and go get food, and be reasonably sure it's not going to get nicked or tampered with.  Not possible when you are slumming it with the public, if you are travelling on your own you have to haul everything with you everywhere you go. I was randomly selected for extra security screening (denoted by SSSS on my boarding pass) so I was ushered to a side room and my socks, shoes, laptop, camera bag were all swabbed.  Nothing untoward was found of cour...

New blog to cover my adventures in Alaska. I will be spending a week Anchored Down in Anchorage, to experience Life in a Northern Town before joining Chris McLennan's photo expedition.  There will be about 8 of us, including Belinda from the Polar Bear trip who will be my roomie again this time - yay ! We will spend 10 days photographing the Iditerod dog sled race, Northern Lights (hopefully), Alaskan scenery and hopefully some wild life as we drive up the Dalton Highway as far as Coldfoot and Wiseman, made infamous by the reality TV show Ice Road Truckers. My bag is 23kg already so there won't be much room for souvenirs. Temps have been getting down as low as about -36 recently, so it's good I have boots rated to -100.  Yes those temps are in celcius not farenheit. I depart NZ on 28th Feb so the count-down is on !