New Years Moon with Venus

35 below at the house and I just got home from work. The moon has been looking pretty amazing these last few days with cold clear sky. Today though, ice fog has moved in. Not too bad at our house which is a little higher up, but really thick and gross in town. Just imagine all the exhaust, steam, smoke and dust all swirling around between ground level and 50 feet up, as a nice fine particulate freezy mist.
Tried out my new camera from the driveway. Heres what the crescent Moon and Venus looked like at 4:45 pm. The blobs are particles from the ice fog that reflected the flash.

3 dogs in a cold cabin.

Squirrel, Gunnar and Snorri (fatty)

Heat wave

Ice fishing without a proper hut... not so good.

A couple of Sundays ago we went ice fishing with a couple of friends. We drove about 40 miles out Chena Hot Springs Rd to a pond not too far from the springs- which was the real motivator upon my agreeing to partake in the excursion. A nice soak in piping hot water sounded like a decent trade off for spending a few hours on the ice. I think it was only hovering around zero that day, but the wind coming off the hills was wretched. April and I built a fire on the pond with some wood we pulled out of the nearby trees. It didn't do too much to help keep warm because the heat was blowing away from us. The act of hauling the wood out was doing a better job at that than the fire itself. Honestly, I think I was the only one not having a good time. I stuck it out as long as I could and finally admitted that I thought the whole thing was bullshit. They all had a good laugh and we packed up our stuff and left. For me it was a lesson learned. I will try ice fishing again, but it's going to be in hut where there's no wind.
oh yeah... I forgot to mention that we only caught one fish and it was about 4 inches long.
Chrissy