Dog mushing!

I had a friend come to visit who wanted to try mushing. So we did! We drove to Nenana where there's a big kennel and did four miles out and four miles back. We took turns, one in the front sled, the other on the back sled - in control of the brake at least.

I must say we were darned lucky with the weather - it was close to 30 F. I would have needed more mittens if it was any colder. It didn't feel like we went very far, but we were still outside for about two hours, including helping put the dog harnesses on. Chris asked us to help move dogs, but that didn't go well. Heh.

Chris getting the dogs ready

We made it back

Chris putting things away

Potatoes

Before all that snow, Rob told me the ground was too hard for digging potatoes. It has since warmed up somewhat and I knew the driveway under the snow was soft. Today I finally went out for the potatoes:

It's not necessarily more potatoes than ever before, but there's more big ones for sure.

Change of seasons

Earlier this month Rob and I went berry picking and I took some pictures in honor of the Knitsonik book on knitwear design:

Lingons were good this year

Mushrooms were out too

Since then, I've taken some more pictures:

View towards Denali, no mountain today

Tanana river through the trees

View from the garage, showing the bottom of the Mazda leaving scrape marks last Friday

Snow-plow action

Snow on the trees

Sun came out (view from Seth and Jen's)

We shovelled last Friday and Saturday and now we've spent another day shovelling on and off again. It's still snowing...

Another rainbow

This was last week sometime as I was leaving work:

Rainbow

We came home the other night to find a lovely windy evening, with rain in the distance. Then the rainbow came out. It just kept getting better and better - until the rain drove us in.

We have no pictures of it, but today was the third day in a row in which we saw moose on the way to work.

In other news, we just got back from a meeting at the fair. There are big changes that will be quite upsetting to the weaving guild. We have traditionally gotten free passes for booth sitting, in which two people sit with the weaving entries, do fiber arts demos, sell raffle tickets, hang out and enjoy the people for three hours or so. No more booth sitting passes, no raffle ticket sales, no chatting up new members. I've missed being at the fair for the last several years because we were always travelling in August. Now we're here and the fair is going to be a sadder place without friends in the guild space.

Update: We can always buy our own fair passes to do the booth sitting. We'll see if the gang is up for it.

Sea ice images

OK, it's a bit silly, but I want these online somewhere for a game for an online Python class. I may end up not using them, but who cares? These are pictures of sea ice to the west of Greenland back in May.

New England

I know I owe you some Europe photos, but meanwhile, we were in New England last week. We went to a Gordon Conference in Biddeford, ME at the University of New England (no photos) and to a Tai Chi workshop in Exeter, NH (no photos). What I should have gotten pictures of was a sea kayak adventure on one of the afternoons at UNE. A former fisherman runs a sea kayak rental across the water from UNE and over 30 of us took advantage of a lovely day to try it out. He took people across the water, 12 at a time, and we were on the third and last trip over. One fellow didn't want to go in a solo kayak and it got down to the three of us, so we took pity on him and I paddled with him while Rob went solo. He did fine.

Between the two events, we went up to Wiscasset, ME to see a couple friends, Bill and Esther. We stopped in Portland, ME on the way there to see a lighthouse, then Esther took us to see another lighthouse. So I do have a few photos to show:

Portland's Head Light

Rocks by Head Light

The new fog horn and some more rocks

Pemaquid Point Light

Rob and Kate at Pemaquid

One of the sights on the road to Boston