First time for everything

As I walked out my backdoor yesterday afternoon to take a bike ride, I noticed the most unusual thing sitting atop our wood storage shed in the backyard. It was a long, thick piece of something wrapped in almost a potato-like sack, but it was dripping red residue everywhere beneath it. Upon further investigation and a good whiff of the odor coming off of it, I realized that it was a full leg of Moose. I was mesmerized. I have seen many moose in my time here in Alaska and had talked to many people that had been out hunting and had "nabbed" one, as they say. But to see a full Moose leg, skinned and ready to carve was one of the coolest things in the world. i asked my neighbor what it was doing there, and she explained that it had been brought to her father as a gift from a friend who had been north for the last three days. At night, Eleanor, the woman who lives next door, and her sons carved the meat up and even gave my roommate and I a hefty bag of the succulent red meat. I don't know how to prepare the Last Frontier mascot, but I do know that I look forward to eat bullwinkle for the next couple of weeks. So long from the Last Frontier!


P.S. If you have any suggestions of how to cook it, let me know!!!

Freezing

My last post I spoke about the coming winter and it really came back to bite me. This weekend... Sunday morning specifically... Fairbanks North Star Borough (we have boroughs here not counties) was thirty one degrees... marking the first below freezing temperature of the season. Oddly enough, though, we are actually two weeks behind than the average time of year that these temperatures begin. It is forecasted that this winter is supposed to be a bit warmer this year, but much more wet, meaning more ice to slip on and more ice fog to dread in the mronings. It is weird to live in such a different community than the Bay Area. Here, winter is talked about all year long, even in the summer, people make comments like "Wow, it's really nice out today, can't believe winter is only 56 days away". They count down the days until the first official day, and no one seems to care that it gets close to fifty or sixty below!!! Well, I guess it's time to pull out the scarves, gloves, snow boots, and the all important shoe spikes so that you don't slip on the ice every five seconds.

P.S. Sorry for any grammatical mistakes Mom.

Fall Time

In Fairbanks we have two seasons, winter and summer. Right now we are just getting done with summer and waiting for winter to bring its cold snap. While many other places around the country have a couple more months until they feel the freeze of winter and the looks of it, for the last week or so, we have been expecting snow to fall. The trees have really changed colors within the last two weeks... going from birght green to yellow and red. It really is an odd spectacle when things change so quickly. With the winter cold also comes the darkness that we have to deal with here. During summer we were getting almost twenty one hours of sunlight and not even a hint of darkness for about two months. Right now we get about a normal days worth of sunlight and it really stinks!!! But, it is much better than twenty one hours of darkness that is creeping upon us. I'lll be updating this blog every couple of days so I hope you all enjoy!!!!