Summer, Such As It Is

We're less than a month away from the summer solstice, and the days are deliciously long already. It's daylight when we get up, and daylight when we go to bed. 

We're some 300+ miles south of the Arctic Circle. That's the line above which the sun doesn't set in the summer. It does set here, but only just. There's a six-week window (three weeks on either side of the solstice) where it just barely dips below the horizon, and comes right back up.

That gives us 24 hours of daylight, of which about 90 minutes is dusky. It's our reward for surviving the seven months of winter, especially the month of December when we only get about 5 hours of daylight.

Of course, with the typical perversity of Alaska summers, it's often cloudy at night. But still, it's light outside at 0400 when I get up. And the temps are still cool, with only two days above 60° so far. That will change, of course.

In the political world (shudder), Anchorage just elected a far-left mayor to go with its far-left Assembly. Generally speaking, taxes will go up. Roads will continue to deteriorate, and things will not get better.

We are ever-so-glad that we moved away from that mess, years ago. Smallville is a great place to live, and the Anchorage mess to the south bothers us not at all.