Aurora Ice Museum

We visited some nearby hot springs this week. Near the hot springs is an indoor ice sculpture display. We toured the sculptures before heading into the hot springs. The sculptures were beautiful. The detail on the different sculptures was impressive. I have no pictures of the hot springs because when we got in at 4pm it was already dark. It was 5*F/-15*C. Our heads were very cold! My hair froze almost immediately. We could have waited until spring for the warmer weather, but where's the fun in that? Besides, as much as we would love to spend all winter inside, that just isn't possible.

Our beautiful drive to the hot springs (photo taken around 2pm)

An ice sea horse

A number of ice blocks had flowers or other ice sculptures inside of them. Crazy cool

Twins? 

Jousting knights

Look at that detail

For $600 a night you can stay on this ice bed

Lighted ice

There's always that one guy...

The stars of the Alaska flag were inside this ice ball

I found us a new home

Playing the ice xylophone

Next year we are making ice jack o'lanterns

The outside of the ice museum. They keep it a balmy 20*F/-7*C.

Living in a winter wonderland

We added a few more inches of snow to our winter wonderland over the weekend. One of the crazy things about living here is that the snow stays around. It does not blow because there is no wind (Thank goodness. This prairie girl definitely does not miss the wind!). It does not melt because, well, let's be honest: it's freezing cold here and the sun isn't in the sky long enough to melt anything. The snow stays pretty much where it lands for months. My friend R says we live in a snow globe. I tend to agree. 

These pictures were taken at a waterfowl refuge here in the city.  

Christmas in Ice

Today we ventured out into the cold (-13*F/-25*C) and made our way over to North Pole, where there was an ice sculpture display going on. It is amazing what someone with talent can do with a chainsaw and some ice! The sculptures were pretty incredible.

An Alaskan selfie. Notice my frozen hair and the frost on the top of Husband's toque (hat for my American readers).

Move over, Elsa. There is a new ice queen in town!

 Narnia! Look at the umbrella leaning against the lamp post. This was my favourite.

 An ice maze. It was amazing! Hahaha! I'm hilarious.

 Giant ice slide.

 We also said "hello" to Santa's reindeer, who were busy eating extra calories in preparation for their round the world flight in a couple of weeks. 

Alyeska Resort

A couple weeks ago, Husband had a work thing at the Alyeska Resort outside of Anchorage and I got to tag along again! Oh happy day. The resort itself was beautiful and the setting was unbelievable. We got to wake up to views like this each morning.

Not too far from the resort is Potter Marsh, a bird sanctuary. Two tundra swans were hanging out in the water. The swans were there on our last trip to Anchorage and I was happy to see them still there on this trip. 

We took the resort tram up the mountain, and wow! The views were spectacular. We could see 7 glaciers. We could also see the Turnagain Arm (this is where we saw the beluga whales last time. And we saw them again on our drive down!).  

The drive back was beautiful too. I had to stop and get a picture of these mountains because they looked like they were floating in the air.

And of course, we had the most amazing view of Denali for most of the drive back. We also saw a bald eagle but sadly didn't get any pictures.

Alaska in the fall

We went to Anchorage again last week. The drive was beautiful with all the fall colours. So much had changed in just 9 days. Oh, and not to brag or anything, but I took most of these pictures out a car window while Husband was driving. I'm an amazing car window photographer!