Patty and I leave for Fairbanks, Alaska today to spend Christmas with our daughter Shelly and her family. We have gone up and visited them fairly often in years past but never in the winter, so this will be a new experience. It most likely will be below zero in temperature and 24 hours of dark. We have six grandkids up there so we are expecting this to be a very enjoyable visit. Also, if it works out, my son-in-law, Philip, is taking me ice fishing. For all the fishing that I have done, I have never been ice fishing, so I am looking forward to this new experience.

Alaska requires a COVID test within 72 hours from boarding the airplane but don’t accept the ones you can get results on in an hour so we are waiting today for our results to come in. If they don’t arrive we will have to quarantine when we get there until the results are emailed to us. The literature that we read while waiting in the waiting room to get our test said that there were about 30% false-positive readings. If either of out tests end up being positive, we will have to take another one at the airport for $250 and quarantine the 3 to 5 days it takes to get the results. I was getting a bit cranky reading all this, and then I read some of the ”most often asked questions, ” and one of them was ”Where can we legally quarantine?” and one of the spots was a residence. No problem then, I can quarantine at Shelly and Philip’s house and out on the ice with a fishing rod in my hands.