Alaska really does have Daylight Savings Time, and I'm thinking that it's in the category of flabbergastingly inane.  It is not even the equinox yet, and before they decided to Spring Forward, the sun was rising around 8:00 in the morning and it was getting dark around 7:30 in the evening.  That worked out quite well, but then the week passed adding almost 40 more minutes of sunlight to each day, and then AKDT has been implemented, and the sun is now setting close to 9:00pm.  My girls need to be in bed by 8:00pm, and with the sun glaring through all the windows, and their bedroom window in particular, they now have quite the large obstacle to their sleep.  Of course we knew that long days would be coming, and we were very much looking forward to it, but we weren't expecting it the first week of March.  If ever a place didn't need to add an hour's daylight to the end of the day, it would be here.   I can see falling back in the Spring actually making sense here, as the sun would rise closer to the start of the day.  Of course, if you go above the Arctic Circle, it doesn't matter either direction, so where we are, just below the 66th Parallel, is perhaps the most noticeable.

I also learned more about driving on the river.  Although the ice is quite thick, in the category of three feet thick after all the melting that has been occuring, and I'm sure that a 747 could land on it without a concern for the weight, there are other concerns.  The Kuskokwim River is extraordinarily wide; far wider than any part of the Mississippi River of which I am familiar.  I am not familiar with the Mississippi Delta, which I believe is only slightly larger than the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, yet this one freezes.  Even still, there is a tide, and the ice bends and flexes and cracks and bows as the tide moves the ice four times per day.  Add melting water on the top of the ice, into pools of water the size of small ponds, and there is very real danger.  The safest place to drive therefore is close enough to the edge, where the ice can rest on the bottom of the river, but not so close where the tide causes large cracks.  While this is ideal driving for a snow machine, with its track and sleds and light weight, it is only manageable for a truck.  Although safe when following others who know what they are doing, I don't think we'll be going out on the ice again until we have the absolutely perfect method of transportation.

When we moved from Iowa to Tennessee, the drive into town was reduced from 45 minutes to five minutes.  The ability of the kids to sit still seemed to have evaporated at that very moment.  Since our arrival into Bethel three months ago, our children have not been in a vehicle for more than ten minutes, and that is the bus ride into school.  I was amazed at how frequent the, "How long until we get there?" questions were asked on our first trip out of town, when all it took was 45 minutes to get to the fishing hole.