Our Homer Odyssey: Winter is Upon Us

It's the Winter Soltice today and the first day of winter break for the kids. We haven't started our chanting or drumming yet, but I'm sure we'll have time to fit it in and probably a few venues to choose from around here. Sunrise is 10:05am this morning and sunset is 4:04pm. As I am typing this, it is 9:11am and the mountains are illuminated from behind and the sky is a fabulous dark blue. I'm not keeping up with the blog as much as I had hoped, but I've decided getting it down is more important than formatting and looking for just the right photo etc. Here goes the report for the last six weeks or so...

November started off with the Homer Ski Swap. This was a much talked about event and supposedly a great way to pick up used ski gear. We make a mental note of the kids' shoe sizes and head in to the Homer High School common area. The first table was the Kachemak Nordic Ski Club, so we sign ourselves up for a family membership and Kate for the Junior Ski Club lessons that begin in January. Lessons come with skis, so now we just need to pick up boots and poles for her. This is great....and then overwhelming. I am stopping at various tables and looking for ladies size 9 ski boots etc. I am always met with the same question:

"Well, what kind of skiing do you do?"

"I want to learn to cross-country ski." (Always referred to as Nordic skiing. I've got it now.)

"Do you skate ski or classic ski?"

"I don't know, but I wear a size 9."

"Well do you want to tour or back country?

"Size 9?"

Perhaps I should just rent from the shop in town until I get a clue.

We buy cookies from the bake sale table and high tail it of there with no more knowledge than when we entered. Kate is beaming with skis on her shoulder and James is in tears because he doesn't have skis and is not in the Ski Club.

Things look up on the ski front when we decide to go to Anchorage for Thanksgiving. We make the trip in part because Brian is here, we have four days, and the roads are clear, but also because we have no other Thanksgiving plans. Cooking the full turkey dinner with bells and whistles for 4 doesn't seem like fun, especially knowing that 2 of the 4 of us will only eat cranberry sauce and pie. There is not much snow to speak of in Anchorage, but enough for a few downhill slopes to be open. I'm not sure why I am determined that our kids learn to ski, but I feel it's important. Maybe it's because I didn't learn until I was in college. My skills are pretty much non-existent and I've only been a few times, but somehow I have decided it's something we can do together as a family our whole lives. I have two college friends who have been skiing since they were little and have been taking ski trips with their dads ever since (shout out to Dr Kate & Judge Lane and Adrian & Norman (I know it's Dr Sas (no disrespect)). You guys have inspired me. It's such a cool thing to do together...family, travel, sport, and the great outdoors!

Driving the Sterling Hwy to Anchorage with a near full moon (above).

The sun is setting as we reach Turnagain Arm just outside the city (below). This is taken from the car window and the sky really does turn that incredible blue.

The dashboard thermometer registered 10 degrees when we rolled in to town at 5pm, and there was a line outside Sears. They still had five hours to go waiting outside for their... TVs? Washer/Dryer sets? That's commitment. We would have arrived earlier if we did not stay until the bitter end of the Lions's Thanksgiving loss. C'mon guys...you were so close to winning AGAIN!

Anchorage also has Target, Play-It-Again Sports, and every other chain store we might "need" to visit before Christmas. I've never been out shopping for Black Friday. I guess I lack the drive to navigate the crowds and I hate getting up early. I do, however, think that Black Friday shoppers in Alaska are much more devoted than their counterparts in the lower 48.

Tangent: People here refer to the lower 48 as if it's one state. I do this often when I talk about New England, but somehow that seems legit to me. If someone says they are heading to the lower 48 for the holidays that leaves a great deal ambiguity as to where they are going.

We stayed at the joint Army/Airforce base in Anchorage. When there is space available, we can stay in their furnished apartments for a very reasonable price. Having a bedroom or two where we can put the kids to bed early and a kitchen makes for better sleeping than the four of us in a standard hotel room. We can shop at the Commissary on base and load up on groceries and drug store supplies. We had Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant/cafeteria on base. Unfortunately, the stuffing and pumpkin pie ran out just before we arrived. Those are the only items I care about, so in the end I probably will make a Thanksgiving dinner for the four of us at a later date.

We spent the next couple of days wearing out the kids and shopping for winter gear like used skis and snow shoes. Kate and James both took a downhill ski lesson. Kate spend 1/2 hour on the bunny hill and then was ready to head up on the lift. We could hear James badgering his instructor to take him on the big swing with Kate. Brian and I almost fell over 15 minutes later when the instructor said he was ready to go up (or he just lost an arugment with a 3 year old). But he went up and came back down and loved it. Kate wanted more, so Brian rented some gear and skied a couple more hours with her.

The kids spent the next day jumping their little hearts out at Bouncin Bears while Brian and I took turns shopping. On our next trip to Anchorage we will drive directly here so the kids can jump after the car ride. We did pay them $1 and a piece of chocolate for every hour of good car behavior on the trip. I don't care how ridiculous it sounds, I'm not above good old fashioned bribery for my sanity in the car. I often feel like the Griswold's on any road trip except Kate and James argue more than Audrey and Russ.

Even Brian and I got in some jumping and sliding.

The morning before we left, we hit a sports bar in town to have breakfast and watch the Michigan v. Ohio State game. We were pleased to walk in to a bar full of Michigan alumni complete with inflatable wolverine and maze and blue decorations everywhere.

With a $10 in singles, a bag of Hersey kisses, a DVD player, and the iPad, the drive home went well. The best part was running into a mess of Dall sheep hanging out in the rocky, mountains of Turnagain Arm driving out of Anchorage. Why do I never have my good camera? Like all photos in this post, these were taken with my phone.

I stuck my face in here as proof that I'm not stealing these photos from the interweb. This was a band of male sheep (we saw at least 8).

We also saw a few moose on the side of the road as we got closer to homer. This is only my second moose sighting so still exciting.

The sun was setting in Cook Inlet as we drove down the Kenai Peninsula. This is Mount Redoubt.

A dusting of snow and a bit of rain mixed with cold temperatures equals a town full of ice. Our driveway is a sheet of ice. Now I know why everyone here was blathering about their studded tires as soon as the first snow hit in October. Thankfully, I followed suit and bought studded tires for my car. I am happy to report the Subaru is driving well on the ice. My new boots appear to have a lot of tread, but it must be purely fashion tread. I looked like Benny Hill in the parking lot of James's preschool trying to get from one side of the car to the other. I let myself slide to the back of the car, but could not take a single step up the very mild incline to get around to the other side. Finally, I lunged for the bumper and held on the the underside of the car, scooting around like a 3 year old does on the edge of a pool.

Future embarassing and potentially hazardous incidents have been mitigated with a pair of ice cleats that stretch overy my shoes. I keep them in the door of my car. It's no surprise that Kate thinks the ice is cool. She has been putting on her skates after school and skating around the driveway.

Not only is Homer filled with interesting people, but extremely friendly people. As I've said before this is our ninth move and I do think it is a bit easier to meet people with school aged children, but still the peope here stand out as genuinely friendly. A girl I met one time at the gym invited us to her Christmas party where Santa would be arriving by helicopter to hand out presents to all the kids. She lives "up the hill," about 4-5 miles up and outside of town. There are breathtaking views and abundant snow up there for anyone willing to brave the drive throughout the winter. The dusting and rain that turned our driveway to into a skate pond left just enough snow up the hill for the kids to sled at the party while waiting for Santa to circle around. The helo landed on their hot tub deck and Santa came inside to pass out toys. It was the coolest.

December was also the start of our classic ski lessons. Classic Nordic = what anyone else would call cross country. There are over 75 miles of groomed Nordic ski trails in Homer. The town is crazy about skiing. The Women's Nordic Club has organized workouts twice a day six times a week. There are organized night ski outings with tiki torches, races, and more. The ski community is also very inviting. There are many highly competitive racers, but they still invite us to ski and seem to take pride in the number of people who use the trails. Our first lesson was at a resevoir since there was not enough snow for any of the trails. Although well frozen, warmer temperatures early in the week made the frozen water groan and echo. At first, I thought the ice fisherman across the way had bass thumping music coming from their tent. It was a little eerie. Despite cold toes (toe warmers are a must for me in the future) the lesson was great. Our instructor was a retired Humanities Professor and local artist.

We ran into Atz Kilcher again skiing on the resevoir. He stopped to chat with our group and again I failed to get a photo. The Last Frontier show is a bit overly dramatic and staged, but I have to admit I still love watching it.

Each week, we would ski a new spot. Week two was a small loop (3 kilometers) at the top of the hill with some breathtaking views of Kachemak Bay. There were more downhills than I would have thought and it was a lot of fun.

Week three we tried skiing in groomed tracks. This felt a lot more like the Nordic Track at the gym. There was a 2-3 kilometer, relatively flat loop with tracks (used by our class) and also a very technical course with lots of valleys. It is the home course is used by the high school Nordic team. Although my skill level is not there yet it is kind of my goal now. I have no idea how to get up such a steep hill on skis...yet. Hopefully I'll be able to try it out at some point. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures from either week two or three because it was unseasonable cold (or at least I hope it was), and it's quite difficult to get your mittens and poles off to get the camera out.

We returned to the resevoir later to cut down a tree for Christmas. Alaska opens up most state forests for tree cutting (one per family, cut by hand) between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Most of the evergreens here are tall and very skinny.