8/27/2019
Busy Time of the Year
Swan Lake Fire Information Update
Summer is beginning to unwind here in Alaska. We still have September to go. Hopefully a little bit more rain than we have had this month, we need the Swan Lake fire to go out. It has been burning since June 2nd. It started as 5-7 acre lightening strike, they waited, as they should have for mother nature to take it's course. Now at 155,000 acres and close to habitation and peoples livelihood they seem to be getting a bit concerned. Mostly it is the smoke that is causing issue where I live, and of course the fact that it is on both sides of the only road out of/into town is a concern also. The road has been closed for hours at a time, I am not sure of the longest closure length, but I had heard there were delays of several hours, and they are advising people to take food and water with them if they plan on the drive.
Cooper Landing: Cooper Landing remains in a SET status due to fire activity. All residents should be SET to evacuate if the situation warrants. If you feel uncomfortable or need additional time, consider leaving before an evacuation notice.Here is the official Incident Information System web site. It has today AUG 27th updated information report. (Source of the above quote)
Construction
Steemit has it's hard fork that they have been working all summer on, and in Alaska we have a lot of construction going on. I liked the clouds in this picture, so I took three of them and stitched them together with Auto Stitch. The picture also happens to highlight one of the many major road constructions we currently have going on. The road here is the Kenai Spur Hwy. It connects the cities of Kenai and Soldotna, There has been a substantial amount of growth in these two areas over the last few years, so they are taking it from the two lanes to five lanes, (a center turn lane).
Today's trip to town had three constructions areas we had to pass through. With the fire along the Sterling Hwy, they had to shut down a couple of construction zones there, and I think those crews are helping with some of the road work we have to pass through every day. We will be glad when the season ends. In Alaska the locals only get about two weeks of snow and ice free roads at the beginning of spring/summer to ourselves, after that, the road crews start to show up, and of course the tourist. This year they are planing to work until the end of October. The last few years October has been pretty much snow free in this area. Hopefully it will stay that way.
Being Busy
Steemit, the Alaska road and fire crews are not the only end of summer approaching busy crews. The bees have been pretty busy also. I am not sure what kind of a bee these are, other than some pollen grabbers to feed their hive. They are pretty cool looking bees though. Not like the fuzzy flying bumble bee picture I got a few weeks ago. I just call these ones fly bees, like I said I don't really know their name. Here is a cutout close up of one.
Not a lot of choice in flowers right now, but the yarrow is still plentiful.
This is the image the bee was cropped out of.
Just because I like these little bee's and yarrow, here is one more image with three bees.
Conclusion:
Look at the HF as a digital construction zone, there are always delays in constructions zones, things move slower for the safety of not only the workers but for those that you are sharing the road with. There may be a few more delays or pot holes to fill in, but in a week this will all be past history. Things change, roads change, they come and they go. My wife and I were very fortunate one day to be the absolutely last ones on one particular stretch of road. The road was closed down to traffic and we were the last ones on it. It was rather nice to be the ones to lock the gate as we left.
Stay busy, stock up on steemergy via posting commenting voting engaging, help the system grow.
About the pictures
All images were taken by me with a Nikon D7500 camera. Today I had my landscape lens on. I was surprised that I was able to get so close to the bees and keep them in focus, at least on those two pictures. The panoramic photo was comprised of three separate images.
The below links to my feed, and post from those that I follow.
