Teacher in-service week is over, and I planed to be home in my own bed tonight, but this Steese Highway is kicking my butt. The 162 mile drive home crosses three mountain passes, and for the third time in almost as many weeks, the road conditions have been  bad enough to turn me back around. High winds on Eagle Summit are drifting snow across the road in deep dunes, and seventy five miles into the trip, the road crews stopped me and told me the road was closed ahead. Now I am in another hotel in Fairbanks, even though I sorely want to be home.

This morning, we saw the start of the 1,000 mile Yukon Quest dog sled race on the Chena River in downtown. From there we  went to Sam's and loaded up with three flat bed carts full of groceries for the school, picked up a couple of my students heading back to Circle, and headed north. With all of the Quest traffic heading up the Steese this weekend, I thought for sure that the highway crews would be keeping the road clean as a whistle. But blowing winds are covering the road faster than the road crews can clear it. We’ll try again first thing in the morning.