Snow in September?

Hey everyone! I know we've been MIA lately.  Three weeks ago, I went down to Oregon to attend my grandma's memorial service.  It was a really nice time with family and I actually got to see some of my favorite Oregon people while I was there, too, but I didn't have much blogging time with all the activities and with dealing with stuff with the house.  We decided to take it off the market and try to rent it, which involved visiting the house, cleaning stuff up and tending to the yard.  Just what you want to do on vacation - pull weeds!

Then, two weeks ago we had a really fun weekend planned in Talkeetna.  We've heard nothing but great things about the town, which is about two hours north of Anchorage.  We even booked a cabin and scoped out the restaurants (two of which had been on the Food Network, which is the most watched channel in the Naylor household).  Sadly, the day we planned to drive up, this happened:

you can find the original story at adn.com

Andy got a call around lunchtime on September 21 from the owner of the lodge where we were staying apologizing because the town was getting evacuated and she couldn't keep our reservation.  No need to apologize! And we promise we'll stay when we finally do go to Talkeetna.  The big pull of Talkeetna, aside from excellent restaurants and it's close proximity to Denali National Park, are the several breweries they have in town.  Of course we'll eventually make the trip.  In fact, they probably needed more time to prepare for our visit.  (Kidding aside, things were bad there, and we're happy to hear that there was no loss of life or any totally irreparable damage done by the horrible storms we've been having.  The town will recover and we'll be happy to spend some of our dollars to help make that happen when we eventually get to take the trip).

So with Talkeetna not happening, and probably not happening now until the springtime because there's not a whole lot going on up there in the winter from what we understand, we just hung out.  No need to blog about all the movies I watch on Netflix while Andy plays videogames, right?

Finally something exciting happened this weekend.  All week everyone was talking about it.  People were placing bets in my office, and mostly everyone was doubting the weatherman.  It was only September - sure it's Alaska, but it couldn't possibly snow already, could it?

It. Could.  Also, this means that Marni, who said it would snow "in September," (as a joke because she's mean like that) wins a prize.  I need to visit the tourist shops one day this week and pick her up something tacky fabulous.

On Friday night it started snowing along with the rain that was falling around 10 p.m.  By the time we woke up in the morning, we had more than an inch on the ground.  It was pretty and Ripley was loving it.  We decided it would be a fun adventure to head up to Flattop and check out the snow in the mountains.

As we headed up the hill, it started to stick.  As we approached Flattop the snow started to get deep.

No, I wasn't driving when I took this picture.
Unlike all the other people in this state I'm not totally enamored with my cell phone to the point that I would endanger the health and safety of everyone around me just so I can play with it.
CAN YOU TELL THIS IS A PET PEEVE OF MINE??

As we approached the turn to the parking lot for Flattop, we were met with a roadblock.  There was easily 6 inches of snow or more on the pavement and it continued to fall.  The subaru was handling it like a champ (thanks to the new $800 tires I put on her right before I flew to Oregon...ugh), but the turnoff was totally blocked by fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars.  We were not going to make it to Flattop that day.  As a consolation prize, we went to Hilltop - the little ski resort almost literally across the street from where Andy grew up.

When we got there, we were met by a large group of hardcore Alaskans ready to hit the trails.  We initially thought they were going to be skiing, which would have been impressive, but they were just meeting up to run...in the snow.  People here are crazy.  I can barely walk in the snow and I can barely run on dry pavement.

The scenery was pretty hard to beat up at Hilltop.  While we walked around, we even saw some blue sky.

Ripley discovered that the only thing more enjoyable than running aimlessly in the snow is catching snowballs with his mouth.  He's really good at it, too.

We spent the rest of the day hunkering down and avoiding the freezing temperatures.

When it's cold outside, Ripley likes to be wrapped up in a blanket.  He got off the couch to see what I was doing in the bedroom and took the blanket with him.  The picture was too cute not to share.  

At night, we were treated with a fantastic view of the Harvest Moon from right off our decaying deathtrap of a porch.  Yes, despite the snow, we did just experience the first full moon of Fall.

Happy Fall everyone!  I see that today in Salem it was 85.  Despite the advent of the early snow, we really are not sad to be "missing out" on that weather.  

Oh and we got some good news about the house this week - we have renters! Andy will be down this week to move out the rest of our stuff (observe the movers moving our stuff).  Aside from having some money coming in, the best news is that by the end of the month we'll have our bed back! I can't wait to be back in the king and not sleeping in a contorted mess to accommodate a sprawling dog and two cats in search of body heat as the outside temps drop into the 20s at night.