In Search of Snow

Anchorage hasn't had much snow yet this year.  We saw in the paper that Portage, which is a place we love to visit anyway, got 20 inches the other day, so on Saturday morning we packed up the dog and headed out to Portage to play in the snow.  

On the way we stopped at Beluga Point to check out the beautiful (as always) scenery.  If the water looks weird to you, it's because it's frozen.  THAT'S how cold it's been here the last few months.  

The water isn't a solid frozen sheet because the tides are so crazy in the Cook Inlet that the ice breaks up.

You couldn't tell until we stopped, but the water was moving really fast.  We took a video:

As we headed towards Girdwood (and dealt with all the ski resort traffic heading to Alyeska....I have to admit I was pretty jealous of them...what a day to go skiing! Even if the snow IS all manufactured right now), the ice in the inlet got really deep and looked like giant frozen waves:

Here's me playing with the camera taking pictures out the window.

The campground where we stayed back in August was totally closed up, so we headed straight to the Portage Glacier visitors' center, which was also closed, but parts of the parking lot were at least plowed.  We were alone except for one other couple who was there to cross country ski on the lake.  Now, I know it's PROBABLY frozen solid, but I'm not quite ready to go running around on a frozen lake.  Not yet anyway.

Look how deep the snow is! (And yes, Andy did wrap his face up like a mummy because it was -6 outside.  I took about 25 pictures and then had to put the camera away because my fingers were freezing even with gloves on and I had to put another pair of gloves on. Brr!

Here's the lake looking towards the glacier.  Everything is white!

A little bit different than how it looked this summer, huh?  Heres a picture from our camping trip:

The snow was so deep Ripley could barely run in it.  It went right up to his belly!

After we walked around by the lake a little, we headed back to the car for me to put on more layers and to grab the chuck it so we could play ball in the snow.  Ripley even got the hang of bounding in the snow:

Ripley liked chasing the ball as always, but he didn't like that we'd throw it and it would sink into 12 inches of snow.  He acted like it was a trick every time he couldn't find the ball.  Despite feeling perpetually betrayed by his owners, I think Ripley had a great time.

Look how handsome!