Loss of Inspiration and Midsummer

June 20, Midsummer Eve?It is not that nothing has happened since my last post, it's just that my head has been completely blank. What should I write about? what do I want to show? I have done so much since I last wrote, but as any other blogger I have been busy, and also had zero inspiration.

The last couple of days it has been raining, a lot! The staff gauges at our watershed are under water, last week when I reinstalled one of them, the water was maybe up to around my thighs, and the staff gauge top was up to my neck...approximately. Now that does not tell you anything, but I would think that is around a 40-50 cm rise...So yeah, it has been raining. A LOT! Unfortunately the forecast has rain rain and rain as the future prognosis. So the longest day will probably be darker than it should be.

Here is a summer picture for now, from a hike I did in Yellowstone,

Happy Friday

Pre-Spring in Denali National Park

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April 19th

Spring

    A couple of weekends ago we ventured off to Denali. We had such a beautiful weather, almost not a single cloud. It is like that a lot here, no clouds blue sky throughout the seasons. Well, almost always. But compared to Stockholm it's a huge difference. We drove by might Nenana, it scares me in the summer time. It is so big, and during snowmelt it rages like crazy. Last summer it was extremely high. After about an hour or so we finally arrived in Denali. I like the fact that there are few other people visiting Denali this early. I don't like Denali in the summertime, it's too crowded, but overall Denali gets very few visitors compared to many National Parks in the lower 48. We brought our skis, just in case, but as we thought, a lot of the snow had already melted and we decided to go for a short hike instead, and try to get up in elevation for some views!

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Hiking in Denali

    It's amazing how easy this is, to just go to Denali, just like that, for a day hike. I love being able to hike around in the mountains, look up on the ridges and see if I can find any animals, which I never do, but still. The mountains have these amazing shapes that I just get mesmerized by. After a couple of hours of hiking we were done for the day. 

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    After that we drove back home again, through fantastic views of mountains

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    Later that night the Aurora made an appearance. These pictures below are from a couple of weeks ago, so nowadays it is harder to catch the Aurora, it doesn't really get that dark anymore. But on the upside the summer is approaching fast....well ok spring is approaching fast.

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    Have you been on any nice spring adventures lately?

Endless snow

Sometimes we tend to forget about the fact that winter in Alaska stretches over several months. A couple of weeks ago I for sure thought it was spring time, snow was melting and they finally plowed the bike/walk lane from my house to work. Blue sky and sunshine, bad skitrails and I was really looking forward to an earlier spring this year. [gallery type="rectangular" ids="1867,1866,1861,1863"]

But then the weather in Alaska switches pretty fast, and before we knew it we were back with snow and below freezing temperatures.

And then again the weather turns and we are back to that endless dripping. Drip, drop, drip, drop, all day the snow that accumulated is continuing to melt. According to the research group at UAF we actually had less snow than normally, but we don't really care about that now, now we just want all that snow to go away. Well, at least I want.

Tycho doesn't really like the snow when it's this crunchy and unstable, and he tend to freak out when he sinks into the snow.

We tend to have a frequent visitor by the house, a squirrel....I guess it is a love hate relationship. He/she is not affecting the cabin...but he is stealing the bird food....sneaky little creature.

Anyway, we have above freezing temperatures and the sun rises early, and sets really late. So the spring is definitely on its way (cross your fingers).

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