Bull Moose

Upper Chena in Angel Creek Valley

Some Scenic Shots of Last Weekend

Fairbanks Ice Art Festival 2012

Aurora

Just a quick background on what makes the aurora...the sun gets so hot that is releases a thin layer of gas that expands outward into space. This gas is primarily made up of electrons and protons. When it expands it encounters the Earth's magnetic field (or planet's with magnetic poles), which also expands into space until it is balanced by the solar wind! When the energetic particles penetrate the upper atmosphere they collide with atoms, which take and store some of this energy. When the atoms do this they become excited and to return to an un-excited state, they release a photon (the light!). So now you know!!!

Last night was a fairly active aurora and we walked right outside the cabin and looked up!

Chena Hot Springs

Michelle and I drove out to the hot springs yesterday and enjoyed every second of it! It's about 56 miles north east of town and with all the nice weather we've been having we couldn't pass up the opportunity. All though it would have been neat to go when it was 30/40 below, because then your hair freezes and you get some crazy icicle formations! So like I said it's just outside of town...we followed the winding Chena river to the end of the road and hopped in!

This is one of the run off springs from the river:

This is the hot spring you get in:

Yukon Quest 2012

The Yukon Quest covers 1,000 miles between Whitehorse, Yukon and Fairbanks, Alaska during the depths of the Arctic winter. It is by far one of the most extreme winter sports out there and it has now made its way onto my bucket list! I'm sure if I ask Kitty she could tell me all I need to know about mushing...Michelle and I went down to the Chena River this morning and watched all the dog teams take off on there 1000 mile journey. It's a good time to start the race, the weather is supposed to be nice for the next few days as a high pressure fills the eastern interior of Alaska. This mornings temp at the starting line was around 8 below and the mushers might see some daytime highs above 0 along there way! The teams start on the frozen river and travel from check point to check point. They all carry Spot GPS systems and are easily tracked all the to Whitehorse:

http://yukonquest.com/site/live-tracking/  


We took a video and posted it to youtube:

 http://youtu.be/DIfOt-FEj0A

Here are some photos we got (keep in mind we are all standing on the Chena River!):