December in The Interior

Thought I would start out with a picture from our back door. This looks down to our garden, and then down the Chena River. Right now It is a - 4 degrees F with snow flurries. We have received about 8 inches of new snow this past week. And unlike New Orleans, whose snow has melted, ours will stay here till April, giving us plenty of opportunity to play.

Thought I would discuss what surprised us about December here.

When we first arrived in North Pole 5 1/2 years ago, we noticed that a lot of people still had their outside Christmas decorations up. Well we thought maybe a lot of rednecks had come here to escape the south. That September, we were sitting in the Badger Den talking to this gentleman, when he said he had to leave to go put his Christmas decorations up.

I asked him why so early. His reply, I would rather do it in 50 degree weather than in December when it could be -30 degree F. Good point!! This probably helps explain why people leave them up year round, cause you really cant take them down till it warms up in April. Plus we are at the North Pole where it is Christmas 24/7.

Our first Christmas here we noticed that there were no Christmas tree sales on every corner like there was in Omaha. In fact, I learned of only one organization that sold trees, and that is the
Kiwanis Club, who sell their trees at the fairgrounds, inside!

To get you in the Christmas spirit I have posted a video at the end of this post, of our home at this time of year. Please ignore my heavy breathing.


The picture on the left was taken about two weeks ago, same shot of the first picture above, however here the sun is up. Notice the hills in the background are lit by the sun, but the trees below it are in the shadows. This was taken at about two in the afternoon.

What I am trying to show here is the sun does not rise very high in the sky during the day during the winter. This leads me to our next major event here in December, winter solstice.

This will occur on December 21. Why is this important here, means we will start getting longer days of day light. That day will be our shortest day of day light. The sun will rise at 10:59 and set at 2:40 PM. To celebrate this, the city of Fairbanks plans a celebration, just like they do for the summer solstice. Celebration

Reading the link above, I did not know that the sun is actually closer to the earth at this time than it is during the summer. The reason it is colder is because of the tilt of the earths axis. Never stop learning.

Pike Fishing on The Black River

Hello all, to day it is 14 degrees F. What a difference from earlier this week when it was a -29 degrees. That is over a 40 degree difference. Like going from 30 to 70 degrees. Wow! We have received about 2 or 3 inches of snow this past week and more coming. We have about 10 inches on the ground now but need more! Going to move the snow machines to the house to get them ready for riding.

There have been some postings concerning Alaska becoming crowded. I am concerned about that too, but if you look on the positive side, there is one person per square mile here in Alaska. Now if you take out the population and land mass south of the Alaskan Range, I would suspect that that density is reduced to about 1/4 of a person per square mile.

One of my most favorable experiences here in Alaska is when we went to the Black River to fish for pike. There were eight of us and three boats. My boats gas tank capacity is 25 gallons so we put in a spare tank of 40 gallons and 4 fifty gallon barrels in the front. Got home with about 30 gallons to spare.

The trip was to drive from here in North Pole to Circle . and put in at the Yukon.

Circle is on the Yukon River, and is where we launched our boats. There is a link at the bottom of this write up that shows pictures of our trip and a view of Circle.

You will see a picture of a motel or lodge that was being built. What a stupid idea. Circle has a population of about 100 people , and the only reason people come there is to launch their boats to get out of there. Any way construction was stopped due to lack of funding.

So we got on the Yukon and navigated down stream past Fort Yukon and went up the Porcupine River to the Black River. Stayed for eight days. Out of contact with the world for those days.

Good food. good company, and the beer was good too.

Interesting thing is the only animal we saw was the mink, which is in the slide show. We did have critter alarms but the only thing that set them off was me at 2 in the morning. When I did set them off no one got up. So much for them!!

As you look at the pictures remember it is July and the sun is up 24/7.

Here is the link Pike fishing

You need to click on the pictures to change them.

Jim<