More fun in Fairbanks 2008

As the weather improved, I took a few trips around town and got a few pictures of the Chena river, always frozen solid for much of the year. It’s slowly melting, as you would expect. Usually, it’s mostly free flowing by mid-April. Here it is near the end of April and it’s just now opening up. But the 12″ of snow I had in my front yard is now nearly all gone. It’s hovering around 40-50°F these days with it flirting up to 60°F some days. Won’t be long now and it will stay above freezing all night too.

Anyway, here are a few pictures around the cabin two weeks ago and then just a couple days ago…

A couple days ago we got another dusting of snow. Here’s my front yard:
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This avalanche of snow hanging from the cabin roof has been creeping to the ground for a month now. It’s almost a foot and a half long but doesn’t seem ready to let go yet:
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Today I went downtown to get a few winter shots. This is the small park at the visitors center:
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Here’s the Chena River all frozen, note the tire tracks in the snow:

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Then here is a shot looking west, down the river. This is where they stage the start of one of the many dog sled races that happen in Alaska. The last race started here was a couple weeks ago and I was to busy to get downtown to watch it. I didn’t know at the time how fun it would be either. I learned all about it the next morning in the local paper. Damn.
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A couple weeks later and here’s a shot of the cabin roof without the snow beard. I wasn’t around when it let go, I wanted to watch it. Maybe next year:
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Here is the set of pictures of the melting river just a few days ago…you can see that it’s still nearly all ice with some surface water but it’s hanging in there. It’s late April too. You can see that jeeps and trucks get down there and drive off somewhere. You could probably drive all the way up to Chena Hot Springs…60 miles up river. The dog sleds do that:
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Down at the Ice Park:
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But even then, we’ve had a camper drive in and get settled, and this week another two campers showed up.

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