Blue Skies Kinda Day

Couldn't resist the urge to stop and snap a couple mountain shot coming home from the bank earlier today. I never get tired of the view around here. These are taken from one of the parking areas in Idita-Park, looking east.

Wasilla Library's Iditarod Book Display

Wandered into the Wasilla Library and discovered that my book is on display as part of an Iditarod Display. How cool is that?

Icy

Someone was asking what the 2003 name tags we had looked like. Here's a view, front and back.

The glare of the setting sun does a good job highlighting the ice that has formed on my driveway lately.

Meltdown patterns are slowly but surely emerging around the trees.

Looking down the driveway toward the street.
Temperature gauge about mid-afternoon. Does it look familiar, Bonnie?
Looking to the east across my backyard. The snow cover is deceptive as it's mostly ice and/or a very thin covering of snow.

And then the meltdown began

Wasilla Lake's park area, around high noon today.
Wasilla Lake itself. The pole holds up Christmas lights and I think serves as part of the barrier for spontaneous hockey games that I see happening here occasionaly.
Looking back toward my house from the end of the driveway. Those bare spots weren't there a couple days ago. Even where you're seeing snow cover, it's thin. Less snow down the hill in Iditarod Park where it gets more direct sunshine than my yard does.

Looking straight up my driveway. The driveway is pretty much all ice, not fun, but it's melting pretty darn fast, too.

Snowy Snow Blower

Sometimes it seems like moving around snow is a never-ending chore. This is what it looks like when the chore is done, in this case moving 5" of fluffy snow that came down overnight.
Keeping the side gate available in case of emergency is a real struggle, especially when it's windy and the snow blows and drifts. The snow blower can't even budge the snow behind the gate right now. Sigh.
Somewhere under all that white stuff, there's a red snow blower. Take a good look and then imagine me covered with just about as much snow, too.
Blowing snow on glasses isn't fun, so I keep this pair of goggles handy. I'd already abandoned them, but this was the look they had going for 'em by the time I finished the other day.

Honest, the front chute is red, while the taller, blower chute, so to speak, is all black. Hard to tell under all that windblown snow, huh?

The cold continues

Gotta love the layered look of the sky
Company at McDonalds
Mountains were a bit hazy or, even worse....
...clouded over like this or....
...covered like this.


















Finally some clearer mountains
Piles of snow like this one, which was taller than my Camry, are common this time of year around here.
Talkeetna Mountains don't have the pointed peaks like our more stereotyped images of mountains. BTW, that's a raven, alas, not an eagle.
Looking back through a cleared opening