Warning: Picture overload ahead! I tried to cut down how many I put out there but we started with a lot, so forgive me for making them small and including so many. These past few days we arranged our work schedule so that we could go north for a few days. We spent the first day driving to Chena Hot Springs, where we stayed over for 2 nights before driving home. It was a little icy sometimes, but overall not bad. We saw some beautiful scenery. There are so many trees it reminds me of the "earth" series DVDs where they talk about how so much of the world's oxygen is produced by the trees in the Arctic circle. I just wanted to breathe it all in! We stopped in Talkeetna for lunch and did some Christmas shopping there, then got back on the road for dinner in Fairbanks.
At the resort they had all these old rusted things on the property. This dragon apparently actually breathes fire.
A snowmobile from the 1950s.
We learned a lot about dog mushing when we went to the kennel. I had no idea how intense some of the races are. These dogs are all race dogs now and super skinny and fast. The don't really use big huskies anymore because they don't pull a lot of freight anymore.
Riding the dog sled.
This one is retired now and up for adoption.
They have a year round ice museum there so we got to check it out. This sculpture was huge. The pictures don't do all the detail justice. They have ice hotel rooms that you can stay in if you pay some outrageous amount of money. The lady told us that no couple has ever made it the whole night in one. Someone writing a book or doing a documentary will stay the whole night, but people who pay to do it just for fun give up cause unless you are in bed it's cold, there's no bathroom, it's boring. I can't believe people are still willing to do pay to do it!
The ice from the river next to the resort is supposed to be the clearest ice in the world.
They carve designs into 2 halves of a sphere and then melt them together to create these orbs.
Same with this rose. Carved from the inside and then painted.
Chillin by the ice fireplace. They also had a xylophone made of ice that played in tune. I can't imagine how long it took to carve that.
After dog sledding and the ice museum and learning about how the whole resort runs off of geothermal energy supplied by the hot springs we went on our own little adventure cross country skiing. We finally found a good deal on some skis for me just in time for our trip. Neither of us really knows if we are doing it right, but we have a lot of fun doing it and it's a great workout. Unfortunately this far north and this close to the solstice, we had to do it in the dark. It was only 4 in the afternoon! Though the resort isn't far enough north to be in the arctic circle, it is in the mountains so the sun doesn't ever rise far enough at this time of year to directly shine down on the valley. It just kind of gets lighter for a few hours in the middle of the day without any actual sun, and then before you know it it's dark again. Luckily while we were there there was a full moon so that gave us plenty of light to go cross country ski through the woods.
As an added bonus to our trip we got to spend time with our friend Ashley, who is working at the resort this winter. She was a kayak guide with Drew this past summer and she works in their greenhouses now. She is a lot of fun and we had a good time getting to see her again. We had a good dinner together first at our room (she made us curry!) and then we headed to the restaurant for round two!
One of Ashley's hobbies is hula-hooping, and she is great at it. At forest fair this past July she got her picture in the paper hula-hooping at the concerts there. She ordered a special hula-hoop online this winter...one she can light on fire! it was really cool to see her do it. She couldn't do any tricks where she held the outside of the hula-hoop, and once she kind of messed up and we had to make sure she wasn't on fire, but other than that she did great!
The next morning we all met up again and soaked in the rock pool hot spring together. Drew and I spent a lot of time in the hot tubs and the rock pool. It was so crazy because you would just be so hot even though it was 15 degrees and snowing. Your hair would be totally frozen and you didn't even notice. We were lucky to be there when the cold snap had finished. The week before it had been 50 below. Walking inside after soaking wasn't really a big deal either cause your body was so hot after being in the rock pool so long. We were hoping to see the northern lights while we were out soaking, but we weren't lucky enough to catch them on our two night trip this far north. Oh well, just means we'll have to come back before it starts getting to light up here! Before we left that morning Ashley showed us around the greenhouse and sent us home with a bunch of fresh basil, sage, and vine ripened tomatoes. She also gave us a geranium. I bet it is the northern most geranium in the world at this point in the winter!
After leaving the resort we stopped by North Pole, AK and checked out their Christmas shop and the ice carving festival that was going on there. The whole town has street names like Santa Claus Lane and the street lamps are all striped like candy canes.
The ice carvings there were pretty cool. They were all Christmas themed and they were all over the town. We saw the artists working on some of them in the yard too. It's pretty cool they can just make ice sculptures and leave them around the town without any worry they will melt.
This was a pullout on the road home. This is about as far up in the sky as the sun ever got. Very pretty.
We stopped in at Denali National Park for just a few minutes and chatted with the rangers. They showed us around the visitor's center and told us about what things we could do at the park during the winter. It was already getting dark when we got there, so we didn't snowshoe like we had been planning to do. But we will definitely go back and do it. Hopefully on that trip we'll be able to catch the northern lights!
