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Over the weekend the birch trees greened up here in Fairbanks, a bit early this year. It probably helps that we’ve had a few days in the 70’s already. The mosquitoes have also come out in an awful way already. Luckily, the first batch of the year are these giant Jurassic Park type of mosquitoes – they’re huge, slow, don’t bite too much, and are really easy to kill. In about a month a different species comes out that are small and have some kind of steel shell that prevents you from killing them even after multiple hits.

On Sunday Kate and I took the dog out to Angel Rocks to go for a short hike. Angel Rocks was one of the first places we went hiking after moving to Alaska – it’s nice because it’s not far from town, about 50 miles out on Chena Hot Springs Road. The trail is steep in places, but it’s a fairly easy walk and well travelled. On the way out we stopped on Chena Hot Springs Road for a moose.

It always feels special to get to watch these giants so close to home. After watching for a while we continued on to the trailhead and started on the trail. We were the first ones there, but a few others arrived as we were packing up. It follows the North Fork of the Chena River for a while before breaking off uphill. The backside was pretty muddy and still had some ice and snow, so we went back the way we came from the top instead of finishing the loop. It was a really gorgeous morning for a hike, but got to be pretty hot as we were hiking down. I’m glad we went early in the morning. Here are some of the pictures.