Summer of wildfires

This summer in Alaska has been very exciting. We have had more than 3,000,000 acres of forest and tundra burn with wildfires. Almost all of the fires have started from lightening. In the Interior of Alaska, where we live during the summer, we have a lot of black spruce trees. These trees can grow very tall and they have a lot of sap in them. This makes them burn very well when lightening or fire hits them. The fires have been burning around Fairbanks all summer, and this has created a lot of smoke. The Picture shows a helocopter carrying a bucket of fire retardent to drop on the fire near Chena Hot Springs. We spent an afternoon siting in the hot springs watching the fire fighters working in the hills nearby, which were ablaze.

Our cabin is in Two Rivers, Alaska, just 18 miles west of Fairbanks. Most of our neighbors are dog mushers. On smokey days, the sled dogs are outside breathing in all that smoke. It is impossible for the mushers to train their dogs in these conditions, so I'm sure this will have an effect on dog teams training for the YukonQuest.