Photo Friday

 

Two photos for this chilly Alaskan Friday. 

My dog Panda LOVES the cold weather! Any time it is below 20° she begs to go outside and hang out. She doesn't even mind when it is below zero. Crazy husky girl.

It was -3° at one point today. This morning the sky was bright but there was a big cloud bank moving in. The mountain you see here is nearly 6,400 feet tall.

Photo Friday

Last Friday, November 23, 2012, about 9:00 am on our way to Anchorage for a little non-combat Black Friday shopping, hanging out, and lunch. It was our annual "Saturday after Thanksgiving" shopping day, a day early due to conflicting work schedules. More photos from that day soon.

Bento by the river

I finally got around to making us a bento lunch, mostly to get my hubby out of the house. He's been working hard on a project and I couldn't let him miss this lovely warm-ish weather we're having today. We haven't had too many super nice days this summer, and we can already feel a crispness in the air. Fall isn't far from us. Some of the trees are already starting to show little spots of yellow leaves.

I snapped this pic with my phone. Not too bad for a phone picture. The mountain in the distance is Pioneer Peak, and that little dark green nub below it is called the butte. The elevation of the butte is only about 850'.




Our bentos today were made quickly, and aren't terribly creative, but they were tasty and served their purpose.

Mine is at the top of the photo and had turkey and cheese stacks, caprese salad with fresh from the greenhouse cucumber, graham crackers, and apricots on top of brown sugar yogurt.  Dave's was quite similar, but he had an actual turkey and cheese sandwich, same apricots with yogurt, and popped bbq chips.

This is one of my late-blooming Martha Washington geraniums. Beautiful!

Bento & Sky

We are supposed to get a big snowstorm tonight - storm warning and all. They are calling for 12" but it's still kind of decent looking out. I took this scenery pic today at lunch time. We drove across town and sat in the sun while we ate. I just love the dramatic sky and clouds we get in the winter.

Not only did we have sun we also had a simple bento lunch. I had the one on the left - strawberries, pineapple, string cheese (it's buried under the animal crackers) animal crackers, celery & pb, and a flatout with cream cheese, carrot, & raisin. Dave's was basically the same, minus the fresh fruit. He had a babybel cheese too.

Photo Friday

Thought I'd share a couple of morning sky pictures. These were both taken around 8:30am a couple of different days last week.

 This one is taken looking south east. Pioneer Peak is the mountain on the right. Taken in my backyard.

This is another shot of Pioneer Peak taken on the drive into Anchorage.

Yep - The Snow is Coming

The last several days we've had a terrible wind storm. Gusts to 80 mph, power out for hours (ours was only out 5 hours, I've heard other reports of power out over 24 hrs so far), trees & limbs down all over, lots and lots of glacial silt blowing around & an air quality alert in effect until Monday morning (although the wind has mostly died down and the air isn't bad now). I noticed it was very cloudy by the mountains and had a look of snow. There's a certain look the sky and clouds get when it's thinking about snowing. You just know it's coming. I took out the garbage and noticed we were getting flurries. Not many, and they didn't "stick" but it was still enough to remind us it's not far off. Once the clouds lifted . . . well, see for yourself.

 This is taken right in front of my mom's house. Lazy Mtn on the left and hidden in the clouds is Matanuska Peak. It's got a good bit of snow on it. Lazy only got a light dusting on the top.

 The sun came out a little on Lazy and you can see Matanuska Peak better through the clouds in this one.

 This is the view from our office parking lot down town. This is Pioneer Peak.

Another shot of Pioneer Peak and the Palmer water tower.

Where's the rest of my post?

The previous "scenery" post is lacking another photo and the written part describing what was going on.
We took the dogs for a walk by the Matanuska river today. The mountain in the background is Pioneer Peak. Neptune loves to chase sticks and play in the water but we have to keep to the side chutes of the river because the water is so fast moving & the whole river comes from a melting glacier 60+ miles upstream.

More Scenery

Blogging from my porch

Still hot summer wherever you are? I happened to find a moment to sneak out to my porch and have an afternoon coffee in the sunshine. This is one of the nicest days we've had in a while so I had to take advantage of it. The first photo is my porch glider - all decked out in SUNSHINE! Can't contain my giddiness I just love the sun. The other two photos are from my drive this morning. Big clear skies & big dark mountains. Hope you enjoy!

Today's Scenery

Took this picture today at lunch sitting outside the Flight Service Station at the Palmer Airport. Starting at the left you'll see Lazy Mountain, then the next one is Matanuska Peak (still very snowy) and then the large one on the right is Pioneer Peak. The shorter looking ones in the middle of the pic are very snowy, a ways away, and covered in glaciers.

The photos isn't the best since my little camera did the stitching on it's own. The sky obviously didn't have those dark spots.

Scenery

A beautiful shot of some Alaskan mountains that I took last week. The big one on the left is Pioneer Peak. It's 6,398 ft (1,950 M). It's not a terribly tall mountain, but we live in a fairly flat valley, where the mountains shoot up pretty much from sea level, so they look gigantic. Enjoy!