Alaska Fun!

Overall life here has been fairly normal, but the past few weeks have been filled with fun "Alaskan" things. We saw the Iditarod Restart, watched the Northern Lights, and I went on an outdoor women's retreat. Besides that, we have just been looking at houses, getting things like car insurance switched over, and hanging out.
Sunday, March 4, Cody and I went to Willow, Alaska to see the Iditarod Restart. They have a ceremonial start in Anchorage on Saturday and then the real start Sunday in Willow. The race starts on Willow Lake, which is completely frozen. There were 66 teams competing this year. It is not a huge event with lots of things going on, it's just watching 66 different mushers take off at 2 minute intervals. Here are some pictures from the afternoon.

Here are a few of the Northern Lights pictures I took last Thursday, March 8. That was when the "solar storm" was going on. We went outside and there was a big streak all the way across the sky and then more streaks appeared. Those streaks moved across the sky and kinda danced around. Then they faded and disappeared. It only lasted around 5 minutes, but it was pretty incredible. Next time hopefully I can get better focus with my camera.

This past weekend I went to the Winter Becoming An Outdoors Woman Workshop (BOW) put on by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Outdoor Heritage Foundation. It was a Friday-Sunday retreat where I was able to take classes in different outdoors Alaska activities. I took classes in snow shoeing, snow machining, cross country skiing, and bow fishing. We went snow shoeing for 2.5 hours, in 3 feet of snow in parts, and snow machined 30 miles. Here are a few pictures of me snow shoeing and snow machining (It's NOT a snow mobile. Alaskans get mad when you call it that.).

Snow Shoeing

We walked up that hill you see in the background in our snow shoes.

Snow Machining

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I got to babysit the three Whitson kids. Their dad works for Alaska Missions, a missions organization up here that does lots of ministry at Alaska events and to native Alaskans. He was in Nome doing ministry with the Iditarod, and his wife is a nurse and had to work at the hospital, so I hung out with the kids for 2 days. We colored and played and went to the park and set up a movie theater in the house. Here are a few pics I took of the kids.