Summer is over

This last week we've started to get cabin fever. It's been raining pretty continuously... and Tom learned a new Alaskan expression: "termination dust." This is the first snow that dusts the mountains, marking the termination of the summer. We saw termination dust all week long.
Despite the rain, we tried to hike on Saturday. When we started our hike, it was drizzling... no problem for an Alaskan with rain gear, so we started up the hill. Within 2 minutes in was pouring, and then sleeting. We turned around and went back to the car -- our total hike was maybe 5 minutes.... oh well. We came home, got cleaned up, and spent the rest of the afternoon honoring a Phoenix summer tradition (but for different reasons): "hiking" the mall. Hahaha. Fortunately later on that evening the sun actually poked out for a little while.... as we were walking from our car to a restaurant where we enjoyed a fabulous dinner. I had the herb-crusted halibut, and Tom wisely chose the crab legs. These were the biggest crab legs I'd ever seen -- probably 2 feet long! We both stuffed ourselves on the crab. Tom didn't touch his side dishes (veggies & rice) and when we were done he remarked that he was FULL of crab... so full he couldn't eat another bite, and he'd had nothing but crab. Delicious.
Sunday the weather wasn't as bad, so we hiked another section of the Tony Knowles trail (a beautiful bike path along the water surrounding Anchorage). We stopped for a snack, when a fox came trotting our direction. He got within a few feet of us! I was very nervous: foxes are not supposed to seek out human contact, and I assumed the fox was rabid. Tom was smarter than I was -- he simply broke off a part of his peanut butter sandwich, and threw it about 10 yards away... and of course the fox happily ignored us and ran off to gulp down the PB&J. So much for rabies -- just very accustomed to people-traffic. After the fox was a safe distance from us, Tom was able to snap this picture. I must admit, the fox's coat was a lovely color red.
We are looking forward to Lanie & Cherie's visits -- the State Fair starts on Thursday (opening with Ted Nugent -- oh, yeah), and we are hoping for a few more days of partly sunny skies before the winter truly settles in. Today the sun is peeking out, which means that Tom will be able to resume fishing... hopefully by the end of the week we will be ready to ship a box of salmon to Phoenix.

well, hello there!

Today we took a nice walk on the Tony Knowles trail, which is a walking/biking path that follows the Anchorage coastline for about 15 miles. (We only walked about 5 miles.) We were walking down the path when we noticed this "little guy" -- at first we stopped & gave him room, but he clearly wasn't bothered by us in the least (and he definitely wasn't going anywhere), so eventually we walked on by him -- about 10 feet away from where he was chomping. From the relatively small size of his velvety antlers, I suspect that he was born this spring, and is far from full grown. Until today, Tom has been diappointed that we haven't seen very many moose... so today he got his "up close and personal" fill.

Very cool shroom

We saw these neat mushrooms on our hike today. I have no clue what type they are, so we certainly didn't touch them (or eat them!).

Air show this weekend

Yesterday we went to an air show at the local air force base. It was pretty cool -- of course, much less crowded than typical air shows "outside." They had a lot of "static displays" (missiles, various equipment, etc.). Tom liked the old jeep display the best. I didn't like the displays targeted at exposing kids to guns. For instance, there was a booth where you could purchase a magazine of bullets for $1, and fire some sort of automatic weapon (I didn't look too closely) -- even the 2 and 3 year olds were allowed to fire these weapons. Ugh.
The highlight of the show, of course, was the Blue Angels. They were spectacular! I got several good pictures -- and if I can figure out how to zoom & crop the pictures appropriately, I'll put them up on the blog soon.

Anyone have a marshmallow?

They actually had a "race" between an aerobatic airplane (twin prop) and a 'truck.' The 'truck' was a wheeled vehicle powered by one of these jets. Despite the fact that the plane started the race at full speed, the truck (of course) blew the plane out of the water: its top speed was over 400 miles an hour! Tom couldn't believe that the truck managed to stay on the ground.

Dad: it's not too late to enlist!

Who knew there were gliders in the air force?

P107

There were several planes on display from the Royal Canadian Airforce.

P51

There were lots of cool, older planes... and unlike some of the bigger air shows, you were allowed to walk right up for close inspection. Several of the planes had their pilots/owners nearby, who would let people climb into the cockpit for a closer look. Tom made sure I took this picture specifically for Steve Metz....

Tom, are you out there?

We only walked a few hundred yards out onto the glacier (because of those nasty looking clouds!) but we were impressed by what we saw. The "dirty" looking areas are actually places on the ice that have been covered with rocks -- that have been picked up along the way -- starting from the middle of the ice, then pushed laterally towards the edges (called the lateral morraine)about to be deposited at the terminal morraine.

Out on the ice

Tom decided that the Matanuska glacier could provide for an awful lot of margaritas....

Matanuska Glacier

This spectacular glacier is only about 120 miles from our house. It is unusual because the glacier ends on land -- most of them hang off the rocks and drop into the ocean. It is the easiest glacier to access by car in Alaska. It is 24 miles long, and anywhere from 2-4 miles wide, and moves a whole foot every day.
Of course, things in Alaska are a little different. Although the state park system owns the land where we stopped to take this picture, and also owns the land that the glacier is actually on, they have never built any road access to the glacier. So back in the 1960s, some guy bought a bunch of land near the glacier -- and built a road up to the terminal morraine of the glacier. Although his property stops there, he has a corner on the market: so he charges $15 per person to access his private road to go see the glacier. I have no idea why the state park people have not built a neighboring access road and opened it to visitors (their usual parking fee for state parks here is $5 per day -- which I would be happy to pay, especially if it went toward some good cause such as maintaining the parks or educating local children); we assume that the guy who owns this road is paying someone off. I figure the guy is pulling in around $250k/year -- and in return he maintains an access gate and a dirt/gravel road. Not a bad racket...

Out on the glacier

We walked around on the glacier for about an hour -- it was beautiful. We would have stayed longer, but there were some pretty ominous-looking storm clouds rolling in, and we didn't want to get caught on the ice during a huge storm.

What awesome color!

Up close and personal on the Matanuska Glacier.

Thunderbird Falls

This waterfall and creek is actually quite close to our house. The hike to the waterfall is only about 3/4 of a mile, so we've always passed it by... but last weekend we decided to take a look. It was a gorgeous day, and we enjoyed the walk. The falls are taller than you can see here -- but the trail stops short of the base of the falls. Up above the creek there is a viewing deck where you can see the whole thing, but it's quite a distance from the base of the falls.