The frozen north

As some of you know Audrey and I spent Christmas somewhere that was quite snowy. I was given the option of going to Fairbanks, Alaska and I jumped on the offer. Then they suggested that I take Audrey along, and I didn't think she would be interested, but I asked anyway. I prefaced it with the fact that it would be very cold and dark the entire time, but she was ecstatic. She was a little surprised to find out that we would be leaving in 12 hours, but she wasn't disheartened. We packed up and I went to sleep to see how much I could get before it was time to go (don't worry I got enough to operate the plane).
We took 15 passengers, mostly other air force memebers going up there to do their job, and then also Audrey. Audrey slept for a few hours on the plane (which took off at about 4 AM) and when she woke up she sat in the cockpit. The flight was uneventful, although we went through one of the shorter days I have ever seen. The sun came up right as we were nearing the aleutian island and went down about an hour after we got on the mainland of Alaska; just a taste of things to come. I did the approach and landing into Eielson, which has the longest runway i have ever seen, 14,000 feet. The approach and final weren't very pretty, but luckily everything came together really well about 3 feet above the runway, and we had a really soft touchdown. Sometimes even a blind squirel finds a nut.
It was obviously night when we arrived at eielson. It was night about 85% of the time we were in alaska. We were even there on the shortest day of the year, 21Dec. The sun would generally come up around 10 in the morning and around 2 in the afternoon it would begin to set. It wouldn't be totally down until around 3, so we would have about and hour long sunset, which was usually pretty (save the two days straight that it snowed). This amount of light would confuse anyone, and what we found that we would do is get up with the sunrise and then stay up until around 2 in the morning. It just felt natural to do that because you want to get up with the sunlight and after it is dark its hard to keep track of time. We wouldn't have a clue sometimes whether it was 7 at night or midnight.
It was also cold. they were apparently having a heatwave because it was only about -10 degrees F, normally this time of year it is around -30 to -40. so we were lucky in that respect. We even got to go snowboarding. They have a small hill at the army base there. luckily we are used to snowstar so the short slopes didn't bother us. we wanted to have snowball fights and make snowmen, but the snow wasn't packing snow. it was way too dry.
We went out a few times to eat in the City of Fairbanks, which is fair (banks- haha- this is the first and probably the last time Erik lets me read what he wrote before posting it! haha- I couldn't resist the pun.) sized for how far north it is. Audrey had some good salmon and I had steak. I almost got an elk steak, but it was ground meat, so the regular steak sounded a little better. We pooled our resources with all the other people who were there from Kadena and had a nice Christmas dinner. We had turkey and ham and green bean casserole and pies and cookies and all sorts of other things. One thing I really enjoy about Alaska is that the beer there is really really good. The most northern brewery in the country is called Silver Gulch, and they have some very tasty stuff.
Anyways not to make this too long, we got home before new years and enjoyed the holiday with our friends here on the island. But thats a different story altogether.