In Fairbanks, the sunrise this morning will be at 9:12 and the sunset at 5:57 this afternoon for 8 hours 45 minutes of daylight. The sun at its highest will be only about 13 ½° above the horizon – hardly enough to heat things up. There’s been snow, but there’s nothing officially on the ground yet. Daytime high temperatures are around freezing, though, and most days have “a chance of snow” in the forecast, so I fully expect to find at least a few patches of snow on the north slopes and hilltops by the time I get back Wednesday.

Here in Sierra Vista Arizona, it’s in the 80’s midday, though nights are decently cool. No snow, of course, and the days are still over 11 hours long and the sun gets more than 45° above the horizon. We’ve been to Tombstone and Bisbee, and I’ll have more to say about them tomorrow.

Yesterday I got to see the aftermath of the summer’s fires, and the fence along the Mexican border. The photo shows part of the road we drove up today to the Montezuma Pass. That faint diagonal line in the grasslands is the border fence. Swathes of burnt trees were still visible, and it was obvious that the road had been repaired after floodwaters cut new gullies in the hillside. We stopped also at the Coronado National Memorial, and one of my cousins tried on a Spanish mail shirt. That thing was heavy! Between the heat and the weight of their armor, those Spaniards certainly didn’t have an easy time of it.