New Years

For New Years this year we went to some friends' cabin on a lake. By January most lakes are frozen enough to drive a bulldozer across them. And that's what some people do to haul buiding supplies to properties that are only accesible by the water during the summer. To get to our friends' cabin we had to drive a mile across the lake, and then park on the ice.


New Years here is like having a slumber party in a big tool shed. The floor is slanted with a few holes in it, but it's actually much nicer now in general than it was when they first got it. At that point it had been abandoned for years.




Although it's in the middle of nowhere, fireworks are legal here, and there are tons of cabins around the lake network full of firework enthusiasts. There were so many fireworks going off that cloudy night the sky looked like a warzone. It drove the dogs nuts. Fisher would see some blasts in the sky that had to be at least a mile away and he would take off running after it at full speed. By the time he got tired of running another one would go off in the same place and spur him on until we couldn't see him anymore. We had some of those star hovering fireworks and he kept attacking them when they went off until he got a little burned.

White Christmas

An Alaskan Christmas is always a white Christmas, so it's the one time during the winter that i'm actually a little reluctant to leave. We always go to Maree's aunt and uncle's nice cozy cabin far up in Crow Pass Valley, near Girdwood. Maree's uncle is a master carpenter, among many other things, and built his cabin by himself, with help from one of his friends in moving the largest timbers. It's also Fishers favorite place to go. There are lots of squirrels, and all the dogs run free, although they have established their own territories and stay in them. At times some of them have joined us on long walks and returned to their homes afterward. It's the only place where he doesn't want to get back in the car when it's time to go.





The home runs off of a generator in the morning and around dinner. Batteries provide power for the rest of the day. They use oil for their heating and have well water. It's a total of 3 stories with a separate shop and even has a hot tub in the basement.




Since it has just two oil heaters, one for the basement and one for the top two floors it can get pretty cold, to a suburban person. Upstairs where the bedrooms are it's certainly cold, but that's compensated for by lots of blankets on the beds. The weight of the blankets makes you especially cozy while gazing out in the morning at the spectacular views just outside the windows. Sometimes you can even catch an avalanche on the opposite side of the valley. The valley is narrow enough that although they live in a safe area, the avalanches on the other side give you the feeling that you are too close, close enough that the sound gets to your ears only moments after it's started.




This Christmas, unfortunately, was probably the last Christmas we will get to spend up there in the valley. They have gotten tired of living for a decade up in the mountains where winter lasts 9 months, and have purchased a new property on the banks of the Matanuska River, where they started work on a new house last summer, and so they hope to sell the cabin, which, untill just 2 years ago, was the biggest residence in the valley. For comparison, there is a guy up the street who lives in a shack that is permanently attached to an old u-haul truck. I think the truck is his "bedroom". I should have taken a picture of that by now. Anyway, the house if for sale if anyone is interested.