Signs of Spring???

I made it home last week and was hoping to come home to a few more signs of Spring. After seeing that Minneapolis was still frozen and white, on my way home, I wasn't getting my hopes up for a lot of warmth here. It was in the forties however, making for rotten snow and slushy driveways. Most places have Spring; in Alaska we have Breakup, and they call it that for a reason. The ground is still frozen so the water from the melting snow and ice doesn't absorb into the ground right away. This causes the ground to be a mixture of mud, slush, and ice. In addition to this mixture, it started snowing here yesterday and we now have about four inches of great powder on top of a lot of really rotten knee-to-waist deep snow. I took my snowmachine out the other day and it was like riding in wet concrete. The snow was so dense I was getting stuck going down hill! It was pretty hard to maneuver in, but was still great fun.

Sandi said that last week she was talking to a friend of my parents that said his best memory of me when I was a kid was that me and my friends' favorite thing to do was go out and get our snowmachines stuck. She told him that not much has changed. So following tradition I spent a bit of time digging out of the concrete the other day. Getting stuck has never been one of my favorite things; it is just a consequence of playing in deep snow.

Last night we sat around our first fire in the outdoor fireplace since New Years. It was really nice to sit there with snow falling and a nice fire roaring while we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.
With the time change it is light until nine thirty now and getting lighter later every night. Summer will be here soon enough!
I took a few pictures on my ride the other day that I think turned out pretty good...

Doesn't this look like a sign of Spring?

The sun was trying to burn through the clouds and I couldn't pass up getting a picture of it through this tree. Sandi thought it might look better in black and white and as always she was correct.

I couldn't determine which one of these I liked better so I posted them both.

Low hanging clouds and rotten snow.

Stuck in the concrete-like snow, a favorite pastime.