North Pole

While we made our trip to North Pole over a month ago, the timing to talk about it is really more appropriate for the weekend before Christmas. Our friend, Kelsea, moved from Homer to North Pole for a 3-month stint at the PT clinic there. Now, notice I am not saying THE North Pole, just North Pole. North Pole is a small town about 30 minutes from Fairbanks. While very cold and dark, it is not nearly as cold and dark as THE North Pole. Today, which just so happens to be the solstice, North Pole's sunrise time is 10:55am and sunset time is 2:40pm. Homer has a much lengthier December 21st from 10:02am to 4:06pm. Anyways, we headed there for a long weekend in November when there was "plenty" of daylight.

A common sight to see in the Far Far North

Snowy, cold tundra

Chena Hot Springs-NOT cold 

Inside the ice museum/hotel at Chena Hot Springs. This is a king-size bed carved of ice
you can stay in for the night. Comes complete with caribou hides to keep you warm.
Rumor has it not many actually make it through the night. We elected for a heated hotel room. 

Ice Bar inside the Ice Museum

Playing the ice xylophone

The alter where a wedding took place inside the ice museum earlier the day we were there.
Isn't my wedding dress pretty? And aren't you all glad we didn't decide to have our wedding here?  

Appletini in a glass carved from ice. 

They provide you giant coats and caribou hides on the ice stools to
 try to make your experience as enjoyable as possible.

The outside of the Ice Museum

So happy to see snow. At this point, we had yet to have any in Homer. 

Wintery walk in the forest

Snow angels

Visiting the Santa Claus House

Yes, they do have street names like this. And candy cane light poles.

View of Mt. McKinley/Denali on a lucky clear day from the airplane

While we will be missing all of you in Colorado this Christmas, we are excited that Kelsea will be spending Christmas with us on her way to her next adventure in Kodiak.  We will be sharing the holiday with our "Alaska Family" as well and are grateful we've made such wonderful friends here. We are also very grateful for the packages that have arrived from home! I think we did our part to keep the U.S. Post Service in business. 

Our tree. Complete of course with some Dane and Swede flags.
Grant surprised me with a Black Friday skiing adventure in the forest to get our tree.
I believe the wind chill was -9 but he had even thought to make homemade Wassail
 to keep us warm--what a guy!

Christmas cookies-note the 2 mittens bottom right for our 2 homes :)

Merry Christmas to everyone!!!! We miss you and send our love from Alaska!