Friends,

Looking north, south, and west from Fairbanks we see mountains.  The mountains to the north are the White Mountains.  They are more like big rolling hills.  They are just next to Fairbanks.  Driving north one goes directly from town to the White Mountains.  The White Mountains curve around to the west of town also.  Going west also takes one directly into these rolling mountains.  The Alaska Range is to the south.  But this is a hundred miles or so to mountains.  Denali or Mt. Rushmore is in this range.  There are many other very high peaks in this range.  These are a part of the Rocky Mountains that extend north of Colorado through Canada and end up being the Alaska Range.  These same mountains extend south through Central America and become the Andes Mountains in South America.  To the east and south east we see no mountains.  One cannot be in Alaska and not be aware of mountains.

Yesterday (Monday, October 14) we drove northeast into the White mountains.  Our apartment is just across the street from the Chena River and where we stopped to walk was just across the road from the same river.  The thought occurred to us to wonder how long it would take to go by canoe from that spot to our apartment.  But the cold water soon banished that thought and we went on our walk.

The higher nearby mountains were covered with snow

The path we were on was going up Mastodon Dome.  (Generally the very rounded mountains are called domes.)  It is a new path, not yet finished.  So there was mud, rocks, and trees across the path.  We ran out of time before we reached the top of Mastodon Dome and had to turn around to get back to the van to return home.

There were still gobs of blueberries.  Within sight of where this picture was taken there were probably a couple thousand berries.  By now they had frozen and thawed many times so their texture was like little sacks with a few drops of juice inside.  But they were very sweet, better than the ones we picked when they are supposed to be picked.  The bears have missed a lot of good food here.

Trees grow EVERYWHERE.  As we walk around town trees grow in the cracks of the sidewalks, between the sidewalks and streets, and along walking paths.  These little black spruce trees were near the Chena River.  Those in the top picture are about two inches tall.  In a three-foot square area there were 20 or 30 trees.  The bottom picture is more close-up.  These were about one inch tall and we think they were little trees but not sure.  Nearer Christmas we hope to go out someplace and just clip a Christmas tree for the house.

The weather does not seem like winter is getting very close.  The temperatures have stayed about the same for a month or so.  The highs are in the low to mid forties and the lows close to thirty.  Most of the days are cloudy.  The sun, however, does look like winter is rapidly approaching.  The highest it gets in the sky is only about 16 degrees.  Week by week the morning sun is slower and the evening sun is gone more quickly.  For comparison I used the same website to find some of this information for Des Moines, it did not have Wayland or even Iowa City.  At noon in Des Moines the sun is 39 degrees from the horizon.  Here the sun rise and sun set times are 8:45 a.m. and 6:27 p.m.  In Des Moines they are 7:27 a.m. and 6:33 p.m.  The reason the sunset times are so close is that Des Moines is near the middle of its time zone.  All of Alaska is in the same time zone, except the Aleutian Islands.  Fairbanks is not near the middle of its time zone.

God's  creation continues  to astound me.  Creation certainly shows the wisdom and love of God.

Larry and Elva