Wherefore Wert Thou, Carmageddon??? Right Time, Wrong Place

So the much-feared Carmageddon never materialized in Los Angeles last weekend, huh?   I can tell them why:  They had the location wrong by about 2400 miles.

You know what Carmageddon was, don’t you?  The 405 freeway was closing for the weekend for maintenance and the LA powers that be expected massive traffic jams—more massive than LA’s legendary traffic jams already are.  So, they scared the bejesus out of everyone and things went well.  Not with a bang, but a whimper.

The 405 even opened well ahead of its schedule Monday morning opening.

As I said, they had the location off by 2400 miles.  Carmageddon happened, all right.  It happened right down the highway from me at Tern Lake.

They never realized Carmageddon wouldn't be in LA, but right here at sleepy Tern Lake.

This is how the perfect storm of conditions collided over a peaceful, shallow little lake where the terns and ducks and gulls are raising their young.

When you leave Anchorage and head south, you have one choice of route—the Seward Highway.    About ninety miles south, you reach a triangular-shaped junction where the Sterling Highway meets the Seward Highway.

Junction coming up.  Straight ahead to Seward; right to the southern Peninsula.

At the top end of this junction, there’s no problem.  Traffic heading for Moose Pass and Seward continues straight down the hill on the Seward Highway.   Traffic heading for Cooper Landing, Kenai, and Homer veers off to the right on a one-lane road to the Sterling Highway.   No stops, no merges, no nothing.  And certainly no traffic lights.  Just keep cruising’.

See?  Seward straight, Home right.

Traffic going back to Anchorage, however, drives the Sterling Highway along the shore of Tern Lake and comes to a stop sign at the Seward Highway.  Just a stop sign.  Look left for traffic coming down the hill from Anchorage, right for coming from Seward, then make a left turn and you’re on your way to Anchorage with no traffic control until you reach the city.

The two white vehicles at the right are waiting to make a left turn and follow the black truck up the hill towards Anchorage.  The white SUV in the center in coming from Anchorage, heading towards Seward.

Most of the time, it works just fine and the lower part of the junction is quiet and almost sleepy.

Wait for traffic, make a left, head for Anchorage.

Then comes that perfect storm I mentioned before.

Imagine this:  a weekend; absolutely spectacular weather; low tides for clam digging; the fabulous Kenai River and Kailof River dipnet fisheries were open; and, a more than a quarter million salmon leaving Cook Inlet and swimming en masse up the Kenai River—right into the waiting nets of all the folks standing waist deep in cold water holding onto fifteen foot long poles with a huge net strung on a hoop at the end of that pole.

They say you couldn’t miss.  They report multiple catches in one net.  They claim one woman caught five red salmon at one time.

Add the final ingredient:  all those people heading home.  All those people driving up the Sterling Highway on the narrow two lane highway through Cooper Landing and reaching the junction with the Seward Highway.  Each vehicle had to stop, look left and right, wait for all the traffic leaving Seward after a weekend of touring, hiking, fishing for silver salmon, halibut, and rockfish, plus all the traffic coming down the hill and heading to Moose Pass and Seward.

Add in  all the delivery trucks, the fuel haulers, the cruise boat busses, the normal everyday traffic of back and forth, the motorhomes and campers and fifth wheel trailers, trucks pulling boats, the drive-by tourists, the mountain bikers and hikers heading home after communing with mountains and mosquitoes.

What happens????

Carmageddon at Tern Lake is  what happens.   Miles and miles of vehicles backed up waiting to make that one-lane left turn onto the Seward Highway.  All the way back ten miles to Cooper Landing, some swear.  For four days it was like that.

Then, Sunday, the State Troopers came to the rescue.  In bright yellow safety vests, the troopers directed traffic, allowing those left turns more frequently than usual.  

Mid-Sunday afternoon and the troopers, whose vehicles are parked at right, have the traffic jam well under control.  They're just allowed a long line of vehicles to make that dreaded left turn, holding up traffic heading for Seward, which  usually has the right of way.

Carmageddon died Sunday afternoon, thanks to the troopers.  ‘Bout the same time the 405 opened ahead of time in LA.

My, what a big ----- you have!

(Expanded Version)

Ice rink.

As in, "My, what a big ice rink you have!"

The downpour of rain we had recently took away more than half our ground cover of snow. That ground cover does amazing things, like insulate our buried water and sewer pipes, keeping both from freezing. The snow provides warmth and safety for the many grouse and ptarmigan in this area. They nestle into it where, I've read, they can find a comfortable 20 degree environment. I don't know if I believe that, but I'm sure not going to go nestle in a snowbank with a thermometer. I'll just believe it's got to be warmer than being fully exposed to the night air.

The snow also banks up against the foundation of our houses and provides insulation. Ditto with the roof.

When it rains, the highway guys spread copious amounts of sand fortified with calcium chloride (or whatever they're using these days) on the asphalt. I walked out to the end of the driveway get my newspaper one rainy day and saw a spruce grouse happily pecking at the grains of sand.

And the snow (need I remind?) provides what we need to enjoy winter--skiing and snowmobiling.

The rain, however, can be dismal and disappointing. Sure, we don't have to shovel it, but it also saturates the snow on the roof, increasing the weight until we just might have to shovel the roof to keep it from collapsing.

It turns our driveways and city sidewalks into ice rinks, and we have to strap ice cleats to our boots to avoid concussions and broken extremities.

On the other hand, it floods the nearby lakes. And when the cold returns, transforms those lakes into gigantic ice rinks.


On my drive to Seward Tuesday I saw that Kenai Lake was frozen. That isn't something that happens very often. The lake is huge and subject to many currents and winds that keep the surface too disturbed to freeze, but it's happened.

I stopped to take a photo and noticed something on the shoreline.


This is but a wee part of Kenai Lake. There's a large portion to the left in this picture, and a much, much greater expanse that wraps behind the mountains on the right all the way to Cooper Landing, which by highway miles is more than twenty miles away. At the mouth of Kenai Lake in Cooper Landing is where I take the swan pictures in winter.














Thursday, I went to post office in Moose Pass. I looked down over the road shoulder as I drove along Trail Lake, and sure enough, the skaters were out.

Trail Lake is a large "Y"-shaped lake. It isn't anywhere near as large as Kenai Lake, but it isn't a little pond, either as you can see by the tiny skater.






Down around the corner, I spotted something else.


Ice fishermen, vehicles and all, parked on the lake.



Kenai Lake, Trail Lake, and Tern Lake are all smooth skating rinks now, thanks to Mother Nature's Zamboni rains.

Moose Pass has become something of an ice-skating community. The guys play hockey, and the women and little kids have a great time. All dogs welcome, as long as they mind their manners.

End of Day at Tern Lake

My Kingdom for a Sack of Trash

The following photos of tonight's sunset at Tern Lake are brought to you courtesy of a sack of forgotten garbage.

I'd loaded up the truck late this afternoon with trash and recyclables, and drove the twelve miles to the Crown Point transfer site where we drop our trash into huge green semi-bear-proof containers. I stopped at several pullouts along the way and picked up litter, which I also loaded into my truck.

When I reached home again, I discovered I'd forgotten to take the kitchen garbage, which was the whole reason for going to the dump in the first place, that and stopping by the post office to get my mail. The other stuff could have waited, but the kitchen garbage was making its presence unpleasantly known.

So, I put the kitchen garbage in the truck and headed for the Cooper Landing transfer site, only nine miles away. Of course, I stopped along the way at a couple more pullouts and picked up the weekend's litter.


I was almost half way there when I remembered that the Cooper Landing Senior Citizens group closes the gates to the transfer site at 7 p.m. They have a bear problem over there. I stopped at another pullout, picked up litter, looked at the sky, and headed back to Tern Lake.


This was going to be special, so I stayed around the lake, just waiting.







Yeah. Special. It really isn't as dark as it seems in these shots. They're backlit and I stopped down the white balance a notch or two so the camera would capture the true sky colors.

As I said, courtesy of a bag of forgotten trash. Had it not been for that, I would have spent the rest of the evening inside, writing a post for this blog. I'll have to do that tomorrow.