Spring? Hopefully . . .

This afternoon, I decided I was done with winter. So when I came home from the dump with a truck full of garbage, including our old bathroom shower surround that was made from 80's vintage linoleum and the water damaged wood laminate flooring, I put the shovels away and the skis in the back shed.  Gus had his last day of snowboarding at Alyeska yesterday, so I instructed him to get rid of his boots and board, and sleds that were hanging around the yard. I engineered a few water routes in the driveway and now I'm crossing my fingers that spring has finally sprung on Knik River Road.     

This past week we've had daytime temperatures in the upper 40's, and Bryant and I were able to ride road bikes. Granted we had to load the bikes into the truck and drive the 1/2 mile out of the subdivision to the dry paved road.  On Saturday, we got in a 40 mile ride and it wasn't until I was about halfway through that my toes started getting cold, the clouds came in, the wind blew a little harder, and my body started feeling the pain of the first long ride of the season.  

Bryant spent Sunday afternoon cleaning up the tools and supplies from bathroom project and the garage.  I got a kick out of the line of bikes he had spread out.  While I was taking the picture, he told me we weren't done, because next year two more winter bikes with the fat tires need to be added.   

The best part of the weekend was getting our toilet out of the kitchen! The project that was only going to take two days is now almost complete after the 3rd weekend.  There was a combination of variables that got in the way of progress, including running out of supplies, the wrong supplies, a needed tool, no energy to deal with a project, and of course the nice weather that begged for us to bike ride in it.  But in the end, we just decided to roll with it and do what we can when we can.    

Improvement

Yesterday, Anchorage broke the record for the snowiest season, so you can imagine 45 miles away the weather didn't look much nicer. 

So it was nice to wake up this morning to a little sunshine. I had Bryant snap a photo from the back deck with his new helmet cam he's learning about in between Bathroom Remodeling 101 (the current house project). It's a tiny video camera that mounts on a helmet or held in your hand while doing different activities. It's waterproof so he's looking forward to using when we sail and snorkel in Mexico.    

This afternoon though it is going to be used at Arctic Valley Ski, a non-profit volunteer run ski area just north of Anchorage.  It has been a few years since we've been there, but the weather is right and the bathroom project is on standby until things dry.

April Fools' Day

The house taken from the road

Looks like nature is making a fool of us all. Last week we started to see Spring and actually believed some of our snow was finally going to melt then . . . well, you see what we woke up to this morning.

Last week we enjoyed some sunshine on the front deck.

Granted it was only a dusting of snow and that in itself isn't unusual for April, but the unusual part is having 2 1/2 feet of dense snow that doesn't seem to want to melt!  This is our 7th winter in this house and it is the first time we haven't had the snow disappear at some point this winter.  In February, there were a couple of days of warm weather and rain, but it wasn't enough melt the snowpack.  While no one keeps records in the Knik River/Butte area where we live, Anchorage is 3 inches from a record snowfall, which is 132.8" in a season.  Here are a few pictures from around the yard:

The trampoline

It will be awhile before I switch the hubs out of 4WD.

The cabin and driveway snow berm

It's a grey snowy day and it makes me wonder what kind of fools all of us are who live up here!

Alternate Car Wash

At first I blamed the kids for scratching dirt into the side of the truck, but before I even had the chance to even give the proper verbal beating and allow themselves to point fingers at each other and profess their innocence, I put the pieces of the puzzle together.  Looking down at the split hoof marks around the car, I knew I had drawn the right conclusion.

Realizing we've had these two moose hanging around the neighborhood all winter, I figured out what all the strange marks were on the the truck. 

Moose right outside our front door fence

Earlier in the week, there was a moose in our school parking lot licking the salt off one of the cars and that is what actually clued me into what happened.  

Notice the moose in the bottom right corner.

Spring Break

 Although it is Spring Break, spring hasn't sprung yet.  We were lucky enough to enjoy some clear blue skies over the weekend and through today, but the temperatures are still hovering around 20 in the day and the single digits during the night.  I took the snowmachine down to the river valley to get a glimpse of the Knik River Glacier.  I hoped to find the moose hanging around too, but they were off in some other corner of the woods.