4-10-19

Salamatof Beach

it was a fairly nice day on Monday, so we headed out north to check on the beach and see how it had fared over winter. There was a lot of drift wood and trees on the beach, and a little storm damage to one of the retaining walls. I am not sure when this happened but with the snow and ice clear of the beach it looks like they can start to do something about it.

Getting prepped for work

What work you may ask? I am pretty sure it is not for picking up the logs, although they will likely move some of the larger ones up to the base of the bluff. Here is what I believe they are here for, but since I did not ask I could be wrong.

Over our years of visiting the beach here, I would say that this was not totally unexpected by the owners/builders of the wall. The beach area directly in front of this wall was always wet, as if there was a small artesian spring or natural run-off area.

A slightly closer view of some of the drift wood/log roots

Equipment and damage and driftwood done, time to get on with the fun part of the beach. It was mostly overcast so not enough sun to find any agates, still I did have a fun walk and camera in hand I found some very nice Leverite Rocks and stones.

If you are young, and have never seen the movie "The Long, Long Trailer", just good plain old fashioned fun movie with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. That was where I first learned what a Leverite Rock is.

Here is my Leverite collection

Upper left: a little marblized black rock, like all the rocks, I have no clue what it's real name/type is, they are all just rocks that caught my eye.

Upper Right: A semi big grey beach cobble stone. Enough of these would make a nice cobble stone walkway, but then I would need to pick up and gather a lot of them, and that is simply not going to happen.

Center: One of my favorite rocks, I almost took this one home, I like red rocks, I used to have a big collection of red rocks, but you can only take so many rocks with you when you move. Nice thing about rocks - -There are Always more to find.

Bottom Left: A spotted rock, we have lots and lots of spotted type rocks on the beach here, some black with white to orange spots some white with black and grey and red and green spots, Lots of spotted rocks.

Bottom Right: An orange-ish kind of rock, it looks crumbly but is a solid rock, pretty light weight for their size, and I just find them interesting.

No beach Trip would be right though with out taking at least one rock home. This rock looked looked so much like an oreo cookie that I had to pick it up and pocket it for the trip home.

My Oreo Rock
It now has a new home currently in front of my TV Screen/monitor. I know in a few weeks or months I might forget about it, but I still have half a sea shell I found down on the Ninilchik Beach several years ago that survived three moves, so who knows where it's final resting place will be.

So that concludes the Destruction, trees and rocks, on with the views and the future.

Under the dock Mountain view

There are three overhead roads out to the big boat dock areas, used for crew transport so they can stretch their legs and get to town and shop, and mostly I am sure built so that the ship inspection crew can get their in comfort instead of having to taken out to the ship in a small boat so they can inspect the ship. Plus they have all the loading pipes along the pier bridges. They do frame the views a little bit, but mostly I find them to be in the way so you need to walk and get on the other side, but then you don't get the view you had before.

Here are a couple of rigs out in the water. As you can see in the image above and in this one there was a slight temperature inversion thus giving a distant mirage kind of look to the pictures.

Taking from the past
Even though it was a cloudy overcast day, this is one of the best views I have seen in a long long time of the Inlet rigs. They are generally not this visible.

Building the Future?

For all the talk of peak oil and running out of oil in the late 80's early 90's, I would guess their dire predictions back then were wrong.

Well Monday was a good beach day, and a good day for a walk, i enjoyed it, and the views, despite the clouds were very nice and surprisingly clear, you really could see a lot of the oil rigs in the inlet. It would have been nice to have some bright sunshine and find some agates, but then I wonder if the Oil Rigs would have been as visible. Bright and sunny days are coming and I am sure one of these wednesdaywalk's you will see a bunch of agates being posted.

#wednesdaywalk is bought to us by @tattoodjay here is the link to this weeks viewing, from him. So drop by and take a look.