Alaska Winter

We started the day with breakfast at Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge, which had the most awesome views of the sunrise over the Alaskan range.  Not the worst spot in the world to have breakfast. The first activity today was mushing.  Someone crazy thought it would be a good idea to put us in charge of  a sled and dog mushing team. We arrived at he dog sledding place (whose name escapes me for now) and were ushered into the main reception area, which absolutely stunk of dog.  In a good way of course.  There were dogs everywhere, on the couch, coming up for a sniff, milling around, sleeping on a bed in the corner.  We had to sign the usual waiver, acknowledging that no-one would be held liable for any accident or damage.  Welcome to Alaska, please sign the waiver. Then we were given some simple instructions on how to "mush".  If you want to make the sled go left, put your weight on the left hand side of the sled, if you want it to go right, put you...

We started the day with breakfast at The Roadhouse at 8am.  Meena was only a few minutes late.  Again it was "homestyle" breakfast, where they just brought out food and we passed it around.  Pancakes, scramble  d egg, bacon, reindeer sausage, toast, biscuits and sausage gravy.Biscuits are pretty  much like a scone and these ones were toasted, and very good.  Andy arrived as we were finishing up, he has just delivered half a dozen snow machines (these are snow mobiles, not things for making snow.)  There has been so much snow here it was a mission to bring them to us, they are on a massive 30 foot trailer, which would have been difficult to manoeuvre at the best of times, but was impossible with the huge banks of snow.  So he has to park a distance away and ride each machine up, walk back to get the next etc.  So he gave us a briefing on safety, stay on the trail, keep an eye out for each other, don't panic if you get stuck and please sign my ...

Overnight we switched to daylight savings time, our clocks went forward an hour. Breakfast was at 8 this morning.  Mark and Kevin didn't arriving until 8.30am, so we were already eating when they arrived.  Meena never showed up at all while we were there. To save space in the vehicles, Jon's wife was going to take some of our luggage with her, so I quickly packed and schlepped my bag down to the lobby ready to go in her car. We had all assembled in the lobby by about 10 to 11, our scheduled departure time, and Meena had just dashed off to breakfast.  But she made to the SUV's on time for our departure, and in another hilarious twist, handed me a small paper bag to give to Claire. You guessed it, inside were two pairs of toe warmers.  We had a bit of a chuckle about that. We headed off, me, Belinda Claire and Alistair in Chris's SUV and Brett Mark Kevin and Meena in the other, driven by Jon.  It was snowing heavily so Chris and Jon were glad of their decisio...

We started the day early with a 5am coffee in our room.  Belinda is still on Toronto time and I was awake as well. We have nice digs here, but one of us is messy and one of us is tidy.  Guess which is my bed.  Hint: it's the far one. We all gathered downstairs in the lobby to have breakfast together at 7.30am, the first chance to meet the whole team that we'll be spending the next 10 days with. We have Brett and Claire who are South Africans now living in Brisbane.  Brett has run various airlines around the world, only every in tropical countries, and is currently CEO of Soloman Airlines Limited.  Claire is a Doctor, doing lab/pathology work for the central lab for Queensland.  So they are finding this weather ridiculously cold. Meena is a lawyer and works for NZ Post, Alistair works in IT for a company in Wellington and they both were awarded/gifted the trip by HP, I believe in some sort of incentive/reward scheme. Kevin is from Montgomery Alabama...

This morning was another cold one, minus 20 degrees. I schlepped all my gear out to the car, it seems to have doubled though I've bought almost nothing. I walked the long hallway of the Best Western Golden Lion for the final time and checked out.  Even though the car was clear of snow and ice when I left it last night, ice had formed on all the windows, and I had to run the car for about 10 minutes to get the heater warm enough to melt the ice on the windscreen so I could see. Yep, can't drive very well like this. Today I am meeting up with the rest of the tour group, and my room-mate Belinda, who I roomed with on the Polar Bear trip is arriving the morning, so I'm meeting her at the airport. She arrived on time, and Alaska Airline's guarantee to have your luggage on the carousel within 20 minutes was observed, and we headed off to explore.  For lack of a better plan, we retraced my steps from yesterday, and headed down the Turnagain Arm, though this time we w...

Another stunning day today, very cold but clear and sunny. I headed south from Anchorage this time, down Turnagain Arm through Chugach National Park to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Centre. This was mostly aimed at children, but in paying my entry fee I have helped conserve Alaskan natives, so there was a feelgood factor. This is an Oomingmak, or Muskox.  This grows really soft wool close to it's skin, under the outer layer that you can see here.  It is called qiviut (pronounced ki-vee-ute) and they shed it at the end of winter.  It is collected and knitted into very warm hats and scarves by clever Alaskan women. Oomingmak or Muskox Water troughs have to be heated to stop them freezing.  There was a huge amount of snow here, at least a metre deep. They have a sense of humour too. This could equally apply to some cats ! And while I appreciate the advice, I can't promise to follow step 2 - stay calm when you see a bear. Stay calm when...

Today arrived VERY cold, -18 feels like -23, but it was sunny and cloudless.  A stunner. I headed off about 9.30, it's a two hour drive to the glacier but I wanted to give myself plenty of time as I'm not sure what the roads are going to be like.  According to the travel/driving website 511.alaska.gov, driving conditions are "difficult" in Anchorage and "fair" further north. The roads in Anchorage still have a couple of inches of packed snow/ice in places, but are mostly clear.  You just need to be a bit careful turning corners and stopping/starting.  Well, I'm careful, but mostly there are trucks thundering past at great speed.  Four wheel drives with good insurance. The drive north was stunning, mountains covered in snow, frozen rivers, and more mountains. I stopped a few times for pictures. First glimpse of the Matanuska Glacier I arrived at the Long Rifle Lodge at about midday, the woman taking the glacier walk recommended it for th...