Warming Trend in AK, while San Diego 'freezes?!'

 Happy Monday!  It's warmed up here, and it's not raining.  We got nearly all our Christmas cards written and mailed.  We have Kelli to thank for the best Christmas cards we've ever had, by far!  It will be fun having both Kelli and Brady and their families here for Christmas.  We are all looking forward to a White Christmas, and taking a family picture in the snow for next years Christmas cards.  

View to the north along the Craig-Klawock Road, Klawock Inlet of Pacific Ocean.

Looking south along Craig-Klawock Road.  This stretch of about two miles is one of the most beautiful drives I've ever seen.

It's Sunday evening.  The sky is overcast, but it hasn't rained all day, a refreshing change.  The temperature today has varied only between 39 and 41 degrees.  I write this to lay the foundation for the picture below.  This morning around 10:30 AM in San Diego, it was 55 degrees.  

Cassie, Cecil (nearly hidden), Naomi, Bill, and Dawn, enjoying coffee at Rebecca's Coffeehouse, South Park.

Hilarious!  They are dressed like they're in Alaska, for pete's sake!  

After the phone conversation with my friends, we were off to St. John's Catholic Church.  We really enjoy Father J.P.'s masses, plus the church is literally around the corner from our house.  After church, we took a tour of Craig, looking to do some Christmas shopping, but the stores were all closed.  Imagine that, a Sunday after Black Friday, and the stores aren't open.  Try to find one of those in California!

Next we took the dogs on a walk to Cemetery Island.  It's been a long time since we did this, due to Lakota's torn ACL, and the bad weather.  Today, we could not resist.  The 41 degrees almost felt warm.  The trail, as usual, was nearly deserted.  The bald eagles were calling, and one lit on the top of the great snag near the Veteran's flagpole, a favorite roost for them.  We watched three pickup trucks loading chunks of tree trunks off the shoreline:  the Park and Rec Department must have been culling some damaged trees.  

We cut short our walk, not wanting to push Lakota too far.  They both miss these nice walks, but she is still injured.  She is loosing weight, a very good thing.  It was nice to stretch our legs, too, and take in the fresh breeze of the ocean inlet.  


Friday, another weekend coming, yippee!

The weather will be decent, no wind like yesterday.  

I've finally gotten into the habit of wearing my rain boots.  I resisted for too long, and ended up with damp, cold feet.  Partly to avoid that, and partly because it's so easy to slip my feet into the boots, with no hassle of shoelaces, I've finally come around.  Then it's the nice warm overcoat, and usually a hat:  any breeze at all has a chilling effect on my too-near hairless skull.  Lately I've even been using nice warm gloves, too.  Then it's leash up the dogs.  They don't like this, and it still seems strange, but the police station is about two blocks away, one of them lives in a house even closer to us, and they've warned Kathy twice about leashing the dogs, blah.