Some "Alaska in the Winter" photos for you guys...

These are from our road trip to Fairbanks this weekend.

Is that last one Denali?

The last one is Pioneer Peak (I think), outside of Wasilla on the way into Anchorage.

I meant to post this one, too.

n/t

:P Really though. Those are just gorgeous. I've gotta make the trek to Alaska before I die.

:)

Wow!

These are wonderful! How I envy you your incredible mountains!

But it's cold...:scared:

I also love the ice sculpture, and the men in canoes!

Thanks for posting these, sweetie!

:hug:

are in the Museum of the North on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. It's a great museum with so many cool art pieces, all done by Alaskans, plus a lot of cultural artifacts from the various Native groups, historical items from the Russian and Gold Rush periods, territorial times, the move for statehood, the Pipeline, all the big Alaska history things. Then they've got all these natural history displays too, like mammoth tusks and a mummified steppe bison that lived here during the last ice age. Really, you can just spend hours in there.

You must come up for a visit sometime -- if you come in the summer and bring a sweater, you won't get cold. :)

Inside Passage by boat. I want to see some calving glaciers and all the rest of it while there are still some to see!

Thanks for the info, sweetie!

:D

but wanted lots longer. (Especially once I realized that you could open all the drawers.) I spent a long time looking at the bison: didn't read the plaque at first, so my thought process was "how odd, a stuffed co- oh my god look at that!"

:)

http://www.ktuu.com/global/story.asp?s=6634764&ClientType=Printable That was just astonishing to me.

This was our second trip back to the museum and I STILL wanted lots longer. We spent a couple of hours just with the special exhibit, "The Way We Genuinely Live: Masterworks of Yup'ik Science and Survival." Those people are so amazingly resourceful and nothing goes to waste. http://yupikscience.org/

Alaska is on my short-list of places needing a return visit, especially since the Alaskans I know here have told me that, if I liked Fairbanks, I'll love the rest of it...

Thanks for the Yupik link!

I'd love to go there!

But, where's Putin's head. Word on the street is he reared it recently.

:shrug:

:hi:

I still plan to come visit. What a beautiful state!

It's one of the places in the world I want to visit most- right behind Scotland and Greece.

Those are lovely, btw.

I remember seeing programs indicating that things in Alaska don't freeze to the same extent that they used to...

than I'd seen since the '70s. We're in what's called the "Pacific Decadal Oscillation," which is a cold cycle that could last for a few decades. Last summer was one of the coldest and dampest I can remember, and we had the third longest and deepest cold snap on record in January. We've been getting so much snow that the Iditarod trail (which starts next week) keeps getting buried. They're having a heck of a time keeping it maintained.

But the '90s and early 2000s indeed were considerably warmer than normal.

It's hard to grasp how stunning Alaska is until you've been there.

Absolutely stunning; thanks for this!