Thanksgiving Day in Anchorage

Happy Thanksgiving from NorthtoAK! Today we woke up to more snow to go with the snow from yesterday and the day before. The streets continue to be covered in white snow and many of the side roads are not plowed.





Last night, I remarked that the roads were not so bad, and that how my definition of "not so bad" is much broader after a year in Alaska. In the midwest, if the roads look like they do up here, people would be banned from being on the road.

So, Frank had fun using the snowblower in the driveway this morning(notice the tennis shoes):


Sadly, the driveway has about two-three inches more snow on it, so it will need to be plowed again, likely tomorrow.

We then got a chance to speak to our families, and Mandy taught me this cool thing that I have missed called text messaging. The only problem with text messaging is that every time my cell phone goes off with a text message, I get all jumpy since it's the same tone that pages me for work! But I think txt is gr8! I am going to learn lots of lingo like "LOL" and "ROTFL".

At noon, we went to Thanksgiving Dinner at Mick's at the Inlet, which is a great restaurant in the Inlet Tower downtown.




Mick's is a really cozy place to eat, with upscale food but a nice laid-back atmosphere. The music is really great as well. Sometimes, people mistake non-overbearing music for boring, which is a mistake. Mick's had a nice balance of music, from jazz, oldies, and even world music, to actually enhance the ambiance. We also had a very nice Pinot Gris from Maryhill Winery, which tasted very green and fruity. The food was great too! The highlight of my lunch was twofold -- I got to eat pomagranate seeds, which I had never eaten before, and also had chilean sea bass for Thanksgiving! The chilean sea bass was flakey but very tasty with a spice mixture on top and a chili oil sauce. Frank had the porterhouse steak, which was also good as well. Galileo, of course, got the scraps of steak, for which he was very happy.

After lunch, we scrambled to the grocery store to get supplies for the next few days, since the stores were all closing around 4pm. After a brief nap, Galileo and I went on a walk around the block, which was more difficult than usual since we had to break trail. The sky was hot pink in the southwest as the sun went down as we walked along (4pm!).


There's a bit of snow on the trees...


How do these branches stay up with all that snow?

We also got to ski for the first time all year! One of the coolest things about Anchorage is the lighted ski trails in winter. We went to Russian Jack, and it was beautiful -- everything sparkles in the lights, and the trees are just incredibly magestic. You'd never know you were right in town!

Anyways, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!