Litter Notes for Memorial Day Weekend

Oh, boy.  The highway guys don't work Fridays and they have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off for Memorial Day weekend.  Plus, if I go litter-picking late Thursday, the bags don't get picked up that day.  That gave me five days to clean up litter along the Seward Highway, five days for the bags to sit beside the road where all the passers-by can see that CARE about how our road looks.

It's just a theory I have, one that I pretend keeps me from getting too discouraged.  I theorize that if people see the yellow litter bags and someone out there cleaning up, it will make them think again about littering.  And then maybe they won't.  I'll never be able to prove this theory though.

Anyway, here are tidbits from the weekend, though they can't top the bear story I wrote about previously.

 

This is my truck.

This is my truck parked twenty-eight miles from home.

This is my truck, parked twenty-eight miles from home, with the keys locked inside it.

: /

(Hitch-hiked, got the spares, found a neighbor at home who gave me a ride.  Thanks again, Erin.)

I found this stuff (all empty) together, discarded in a pullout.  Seriously, do these not work at counter-purposes?

I find bongs frequently, little glass bongs.  But this?  Zowie.  The beer bottle is for size comparison.  Maybe the bong was using the product above?

This is in Silvertip, my favorite area for litter-picking, a two lane highway with a bike path adjacent.  This is the nice and placid Sixmile Creek.  Just downstream from here it turns into roiling, raft-upturning Class V and VI rapids.  Like so:

I noticed the wowie in the guard rail along the bike path and thought a car might have hit it this winter.

 Not so, when I reached this side, I realized Sixmile Creek was trying to eat the bike path.  Notice the cracked pavement along its edge.

Someone had placed these well-chewed remnants of small moose antlers along the bike path.

Ah, the wild violets.  They range in color from this deep violet.....

....through lavender blue....

...oh, dear....

...I can't help it....

...here it comes....

♫ Dilly, dilly…♫

On May 31?  You've gotta be kidding me!

There were 60 plus litter bags lining Miles 50 through 66, like yellow caldelaria, when I quit for the day yesterday.  I am two miles from my goal, the rest areas in Turnagain Pass and this is the earliest I have ever been this far by two weeks.  Then I'll start working closer to home, but making the occasional run to Turnagain to "police" the roads.   My feet are holding up okay with just an occasional twinge from the complaining ankle.

Last year I set a new record by going all the way down the pass to Turnagain Arm saltwater at Ingram Creek, another eight miles away, and the end of the Silvertip Maintenance section.  With gas prices the way they are, I'm not sure I'll do that this year.  Each time I go that far takes five gallons of gas.

Total litter bags to date:  309