Franzone Family Blog

Ice fog is any kind of fog where the droplets have frozen into extremely tiny crystals of ice in midair. Generally this requires temperatures at or below −35^°C (−30^°F), making it common only in and near the Arctic and Antarctic regions. (From Wikipedia entry on fog)

Today was cold. When we first arrived it was the type of cold where you go outside and shiver and laugh about how cold it is. Today when I had to go outside I just got angry at the cold. Why is my face burning? My are my hands burning? Why can’t I feel my legs? Seriously, it is no longer funny.

Sunday we headed out of town about 60 miles to the Chena Hot Springs Resort. Many people have repeated that this was a must see if you come to Alaska. Not only do they have the hot springs that you can dip into (if you dare), but they also have an ice museum. This sounded like a pretty cool outing and it did not disappoint.

On the way there we saw a lot more of the beautiful Alaskan country. We even stopped along the way at a park site (closed for the season) and snapped some photos. There was a river there and you could actually see some of the running water. It looked absolutely beautiful next to the ice and snow. The trip was a lot longer than you might expect. You see the highways here aren’t really normal highways in the winter. They’re more like snow-ways. Unless the portion of highway you are traveling on sees a lot of traffic then chances are you won’t be able to see the road. For the most part the highway had a worn spot down the center where you could kind of make out the center line. To either side though the snow got deeper and deeper. So as you can imagine you have to slow down quite a bit when cars are coming the opposite direction. Of course I think a lot of the natives here are used to this and so they don’t slow down or even move over that much. Thanks!