Kenai Alaska or Bust: Cold snap....make ya snap!

Mama moose behind the sauna.

One of the babies....still not far from mama!

We are in the midst of a cold snap. We are at day 10 of "bitterly cold" sub zero temps. The days have barely creeped above -15 below 0 with the night time lows as low as -32....below 0! Mind you, most days the sun has been out and abundant in the short time it traverses the sky, but it is just too cold to want to do anything. The woodstove has been packed on the hour daily and through the night to maintain warmth, and we have given in to keeping the furnace on periodically through the day and night to keep the temp in the house steady. Mind you, with heating oil prices dropping, we are much more open this winter to using the furnace a little more. Which is a blessing because the poor folks who converted to or have natural gas got sticker shock as natural gas went up 22% last month! Ouch, baby! We finally caved on Saturday and had to get out. We dressed for an attempt at warmth and loaded up the dogs to go out for a 'sunshiney happy day' walk. Fools, we are I tell you. We went to Nikiski High and parked in the parking lot. We walked, as the dogs frolicked ahead of us, around the entire school....the dogs frolicked but only for the first 5 minutes. Now this little swary of utter bliss lasted all of about 9 minutes total for us, a brisk walk at -21 below 0. You know it's bad when you circle the school, and the dogs, totally stressed out by now, notice that the truck is now in front of us, not behind us where we left it, and make a bee-line for it when they hear that it is still running. We approached the truck with Kenai waiting obnoxiously to be let in! A dog wanting to forfeit a walk! Cherokee the big fur ball teddy bear head that he is was completely unaffected by the extreme cold. His wolf instinct and thickly coat allows him to endure the cold, and in fact most times he digs a hole in the snow and lays in it for a duration. Then Sunday morning we were all laying around the family room listlessly pulling our hair out, and Maryann noticed a moose outside the window. Then another....and another. Turns out mama got knocked up again and is showing. The 2 little cute babies....aren't all that little anymore! Kenai of course was beside herself running from window to window as they moved across the back of the house, telling us in distressed concern all of the time that we needed to let her out so she could make them go away. Or whatever it is that she intends in her feeble mind to do with them! As they eventually grazed off towards the back of the garage, another adult moose and a calve came up from below, and the 5 of them quietly wandered off into the thicket! Too cool. No snow since Christmas yet, but we are hopeing for some towards the weekend. Jonh is avidly seeking a more full time run of employment now that he is getting out of school at 11:30AM from here on out. Maryann is getting back to the grind with her home office now that the "Christmas" season is over. I included a bevy of pics from the moose-capades as well as my journeys about this morning. As beautiful and peaceful as it was out (I was the only one out), I endured a hurtful -32 below 0 to give you a peek at the world around me. No pity needed here....just enjoy them! Hope all is well and everyone is stressing out like me, for all of the foolish self-indulgence and gluttony that we cast upon ourselves the past 2 weeks. Oye! Be safe and stay warm!

Beach in Kenai overlooking the ocean...which is frozen!

Sunrise over the Tidal Flats.

The Kenai river....yes it is frozen with only a
glimmer of water in the foreground.

Mt Redoubt on the right with Mt Illiamna to the
left. This is not the beach we are overlooking...
it is the bay...frozen!

An Air Force E-3 AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft taking off from
the Kenai airport, just a couple hundred
yards above my head! The rumble warmed
my otherwise cold ass!!