Turnagain Arm in the Winter

Ryan and I headed up to Anchorage this week for my Lasik surgery.  We hadn't made a trip up since October and it was neat to see the change in scenery.  On our drive up we had rain, then snow, then rain, and finally snow.  Like I've said many times before, it was beautiful.  Alaska takes our breath away every time.  These pictures are taken from the Seward Highway.  The picture above is of Turnagain Arm, and in late summer/early fall many belugas can be seen migrating south for the winter.  

Another beautiful sight was of the frozen waterfalls we saw hanging from the rock walls on the Seward Highway. 

If you listen carefully you can still hear some water trickling down.  There were many frozen waterfalls and there was even an article in the Alaskan newspaper of people practicing ice climbing on these.  

Our drive through Chugach took us through areas with heavy snow.  Ryan felt some jealousy seeing snowmobile tracks and just imagining how fun that would be.  Hopefully we'll get out there soon.  

My Lasik surgery went off without a hitch.  It's a weird sensation to have things done to your eyes but the outcome is so worth the 5 minutes of discomfort.  My eyes feel a bit tired right now because they are healing and every couple of minutes I think to myself that I should take out my contacts.  I worry that I'll try to take contacts out, which would be a huge disaster!  It's definitely an exciting feeling to be able to see as soon as I open my eyes in the morning. 

Ice, Ice, Baby

Everything is frozen!!  The streets, trees, sidewalks, driveway, and everything else you can imagine.  The picture above is on a road we took during one of our adventures this week.  You can see that the road is still snow covered.  Actually, it's ice covered.  Road management in Alaska after a snowfall is as follows;  plow as much as you can and sand the roads.  What ends up happening is that the snow on the roads melt during the day and freezes up again during the night.  Hence ice on the roads.  But everyone here seem to be used to this concept and drive accordingly.  A lot of people have steel cleats on the bottom of their shoes so they don't slip in a store's parking lot or on their driveway.  There is absolutely no salt used ANYWHERE.  Can you imagine if they did this in Chicago?  There would be wrecks all over the place and people suing businesses left and right!

This was waiting for us at the end of the road.  Super creepy!

Everything being covered in ice means that the lakes in the area are frozen!  This gives us an excellent wide open area for Zeph's favorite activity, fetch.  The above picture shows Ryan and Zeph walking on Sport Lake.  Yes, this means that there is a truck parked on the lake!  The red tent is actually a shelter used for ice fishing.  Sport Lake had sharp icy chunks on the surface so we went over to a smaller lake, called Loon Lake.

While out on the middle of the lake, Ryan and I heard a "BOOM" and felt vibrations under our feet.  We gave each other a look and did a fast walk/run back toward our car.  On our way we realized that the ice was not caving in so we stopped to check it out.  We decided the noise and vibrations was the ice splitting.

When we were at Ryan's parents' over the holidays I saw that Ryan's mom, Laurie, had pictures from her visit here beautifully framed.  I realized that I had forgotten how lush and green it is here in the summer.  Here's a comparison of how it looks now and what it looked like in July (same bend but down by the river).

Happy New Year!

Ryan, Zephyr, and I are back in Alaska after spending a wonderful Christmas and New Year's Day with our families.  Another perk of being a Hospitalist is that Ryan can actually have real vacations!  We were lucky enough to have time to also go on a warm vacation together before heading to Illinois. 

We spent time in Riviera Maya and also Playa del Carmen.  It was so incredible to be able to go from subzero temperatures to tropical weather in 1 day!  While on our awesome vacation, Ryan thought it would be fun to go scuba diving.

I have at admit that I did freak out at the beginning of the pool course.  After realizing that I wouldn't drown if I just breathed out of my mouth, it was smooth sailing from there.  We went on 3 dives, 2 in Cozumel and 1 near Playa del Carmen.  The Cozumel dives were so beautiful, the above pictures are from that dive.  I loved it so much!  Although it was beautiful in Mexico, we were very much looking forward to being with our nephews.

The boys have grown so much!  Ryan and I were especially amazed at how much Reagan has grown, he is officially a little boy now.  Time seems to have gone so fast when seeing our nephews grow.  It was so nice to spend actual Christmas Day with family, Ryan hasn't been able to do that for the past several years.