Winter

The Lagoon that our house sits near in Kotzebue has finally frozen over. Today when I went out on the deck, there were people ice fishing. Here are a few pictures from 11:30am.





On the other side of town is the Kotzebue Sound. This will most likely be frozen over by the end of the week. Here is a picture:



Seagulls pick up the scraps left behind...and snag fish themselves from the holes in the ice:







Hopefully, temperatures will remain below freezing until Spring. When we get a few inches of snowfall, and with everything being frozen, we will be able to get outside the town on the snowmobiles. I've felt trapped lately - too cold to go out on the ATV, no snow for the snowgo's.

I will be eligible to hunt November 10th, and I plan on shooting a moose and a caribou.
Life above the Arctic Circle is great.

Nothing New

Things have been pretty boring lately, which I don't mind at all. Part of the reason of moving to Kotzebue was to relax and slow down, which we have done. I'm not a social person, so I'm in heaven in Kotzebue. Stephanie has found a lot of positives about this place as well. She doesn't worry about crazy stuff that happens in the rest of the world...you know - the random horror stories you hear on the news all day. No Amber Alerts in Kotzebue, no horrible car accidents, no murders, no abductions, no life threatening natural disasters. It's nice - this place offers peace of mind.
I'm trying to get over the swine flu, I'm feeling much better than I was a week ago but still have a bad cough.
The kids are doing great. Patrick now has "homework" that we do together nightly. Chris is obsessed with ice cream.
The season is changing quickly. Most of the lagoon is frozen now, and the temperature stays below freezing most of the day. We have a dusting of snow on the ground and more snow in the forecast. With any luck I'll get to ride the snowmobiles in a week or two.

Winter

Winter is here. It's September 24th and we are having high temperatures in the mid to upper 30's with lows in the upper 20's. The sea surface temperature along the Kotzebue Sound is drawing closer to freezing, it's around 35 now. At this rate, we should have freeze up by the end of the month. I'm excited to try out the new snowmobile.
Patrick and I are sick with swine flu. We were running temperatures in excess of 103 with all the typical flu symptoms. We are over the fever, but this cough never seems to give up. I've been working overnight, so we have been spending our days together at home. Hopefully by Monday he'll be well enough to return to school. If I'm feeling up to it this weekend, I'm gonna go to the range and get my guns ready for hunting season. I'll be eligible to hunt beginning November 10th.

Here's me sick


Here's Chris eating fruit snacks:


Here's the kids trying on their Halloween outfits:

Lazy Summer Days

It was sunny and about 70 yesterday with light winds, so we took the inflatable boat out on the lagoon for the day. The kids had a good time, we all got a little sunburnt. This place looks completely different in the summer - it's not what you would imagine a village North of the Arctic Circle would look like.









Got my new gun in - a 454 Casull with a 2" barrell...that should be fun to shoot...

4th videos

Here's a couple videos from the 4th of July. The first is Patrick and Chris dancing, the 2nd is snowmobiles trying to ski across the lagoon behind our house, 2 of them sink...the quality isn't the best.

4th of July in Kotzebue

Yesterday we had record breaking temperatures, with highs reaching 80 degrees just after 6pm...which felt nice after 100 degree temps in Arkansas (I was in Arkansas the whole month of June). So, today, the 4th of July, it's only 52 degrees and the winds are about 15mph...it felt freezing. Anyway, for the 4th the town has a big celebration which started with a concert yesterday and will last through Tuesday-no fireworks though, since it's light out 24 hours. The various outlying villages surrounding Kotzebue participated in the fair and put together some pretty cool floats and trucks. Here are a few pictures from this morning, my favorite was the bear hide on the front of the pickup:

New Videos

I'm gonna start recording short videos of routine life here in Kotzebue. Thanks for the idea Jim. I think it will help illustrate life here. These videos were shot in May and there is still over a foot of snow on the ground. The puddles are from the melting snow, and the entire town is a mess from them.

Blogging

I don't have the drive to keep up on blogging. I really enjoy reading other blogs, but I can never keep up with one for myself. Anyway, I posted a couple of pictures today and will try to post more later.
Spring is here, and temperatures are remaining right at their average - which is about 20-25 for the high and around 5 for the low. We have about 4 feet of snow still on the ground and it is melting at a rate of about 1 inch every 2 days. The sun is coming up at about 6:30am and setting around 11pm, making for some long days. After May 7th, we won't see any darkness until the end of summer.
I have been accumulating hunting gear slowly but surely to prepare for hunting season. I will be eligible to hunt beginning in November for large game. I traded some gas for caribou the other day, ran it through the grinder, and we all ate it as meatloaf tonight. It was good, but we cheated by mixing in regular ground beef with it.
The ATV and snowmobile are a blast, and I'm thinking of selling the Durango and buying a UTV. I can get top dollar for the Durango up here since it costs about 8 grand to get one delivered.

McMaster's in Kotzebue

First Blog

We've established this blog to keep friends and family updated with pictures and comments on our lives in Kotzebue, Alaska.

We have been in Kotzebue since November, 2008. We originally moved to this part of the country because I accepted a job that I always wanted. The plan was to stay here for a year, then move back to the East coast, preferably Philadelphia. That plan has since changed, as this unexplored frontier turned out to be just what our family needed.

Everyday offers a changing perspective above the Arctic Circle. Daytime is continuous in the summer and sunlight is limited in the winter, but not to the extreme as most people think. There is never a day where we have complete darkness for 24 hours, but there is about a month in the summer where the sun never sets. The cold is easy to get used to, the blizzards are not.

The kids, Patrick and Christopher, love it here. They are 4 and 2 1/2 years old, respectively, and enjoy their lives here immensely. They go to preschool M-F and Patrick will be starting pre-k shortly.

Life is expensive here, everything costs about double what you would expect to pay in the lower 48. Here are a few common examples: milk is $10/gallon, day care is $1200/month, gas is $7.13/gallon, and all food items are just about double. The gas being so expensive isn't much of a problem, since we generally drive the Durango less than 4 miles total round trip per day. I can have food shipped here from Anchorage and my employer reimburses me for shipping, so that cuts down on cost as well.

Kotzebue is the hub for the Northwest Arctic Borough. There are multiple villages outside the town where the Eskimo's live more traditionally off of subsistence (they hunt out of necessity instead of sport). About 3500 people live in Kotzebue and 5500 people in the entire Northwest Arcit Borough. Kotzebue is 33 miles above the Arctic Circle and you can get anywhere in the town by driving or walking about a mile. Their is a gun shop, a couple of grocery stores, a bank (where Stephanie works) a few restaurants (all chinese) and NO BARS...the town is "damp" so you can consume alcohol in your home, but you can't buy it or sell it, so you have to get it shipped in from Anchorage.