Out on the river!

Friday morning Avery and I decided to go for a walk around town. We walked down to the river and decided to walk across it. The Kuskokwim river is officially frozen solid. And when I say solid, I mean solid enough to drive a truck on solid. You can see a truck and a snow machine driving on the river. The truck was just pulling out onto the river from the snow covered beach. You can see the spot where there is some overflow. Over flow is when a bit of water gets up onto the ice. It is not open water, there is ice underneath, but it is still pretty scary looking.
Here are our tracks that we made walking through the overflow to get out onto the river. Mine are the ones on the left and Avery's on the right. It was our first time walking on a frozen body of water and was a little scary, but when a huge truck drives by it eases your nerves a little.

Once we got to where there was no overflow Avery made a snow angel. This is the whole river in its frozen glory. You can see all the tracks from vehicles, snow machines, and dog sleds. Notice how high the sun is in the sky. Looks like it may be either rising or setting, right? Pretty low? Think again. It is at its zenith for the day. That's as high as it gets right now. That's Avery lying in the snow by the way. You can see how far across the river is and we were already out on it about 50 or so feet when I took this pic.

I've really been wanting to go ice fishing and everybody says that all you need is a stick, a line, and a hook. We found this spot out on the river where a couple of people had already dug holes in the ice. They put those sticks down in to mark their spot and help keep the ice open. I've been thinking about just going out and opening one of those holes back up and dropping in a line. Think I'd catch anything?Here's Avery by one of those ice fishing holes. We found the piece of ice that had been cut out to make the hole, so you can see how thick the river ice is. We are all the way on the other side of the river in this picture and you can see the city of Bethel in the background. It gives another perspective on just how wide the river is.

After moving some snow around...We found the river! It's under about 6 inches of fresh, soft powder! It was so weird to think...we're standing on a massive river right now. Pretty crazy stuff.
Right before we were about to leave, I heard some dogs barking in the distance. Finally, they came around the corner and we got to see a dog team mush on bye.
The musher was a woman who waved and call out to us, "Beautiful day." Gorgeous was my reply. And it was...about 20 degrees and the sun was shining. Believe it or not...it was warm!As I write this, I am putting iron on reflective strips on all of our winter gear. It is dark so much of the time and it seems we are being invited to go out on more and more adventures all the time. So, I thought it would be wise to make sure we were visible when we're out there. More on our other adventures later.

We're gaining over a minute every day now. How exciting! Winter is definitely here to stay for awhile, but at least we'll see a bit more sunshine each day.

Latest read...Playing for Pizza by John Grisham. It was an easy, fun, and fast read with a little finding oneself and Italian culture thrown in. The book is light and uplifting and sometimes even full out funny. Good for a leisurely weekend. The focus is definitely on football, although you could read and enjoy it even if you knew nothing about football, but if you absolutely detest football or sports in general then I wouldn't recommend it. The story line is strong, but the ending is weak. Toward the end I felt like maybe Mr. Grisham might have been in a rush to get this one out to the publisher.