Tuesday, June 29

Good Morning! Another wet, rainy, cool day here in Anchorage. The daily high temp runs around 62 and 52 for a low. We are finding out the sun shines only a few hours a week, and it is always gray and drab. Think Seattle in the winter, only it moves to Anchorage for the summer.

A few words about Anchorage traffic. They LOVE traffic circles up here, you know the kind where you have an inner and outer lane going in a circle and you have to decide which "spinoff" road to take to get out of the loop. Last night I found one on a four lane road that I needed to turn off of, onto an over head 4 lane interstate. The road I was on had TWO traffic circles, one on either side of the interstate, so you had to go in a circle around the first one to get to the other to go around so you could guess where the heck to get off! Think square dancing/square skipping only using cars and trucks.

They also like their U-turns up here. When you see something on the other side of the road, you need to go to the next intersection, wait for the left turn light and take a u-turn, so you can get to it. You spend more time waiting for lights than actually driving.

The last item is that they all use studded snow tires in the winter, so the roads get huge grooves in them where the traffic drives. They literally are 3 inches deep and 18 inches wide, just nice and rounded on the sides. Not bad to drive on with a motorcycle, until you switch lanes, then you need to fight it up the hump and back down again, several times, until you get where you want to be. It makes it interesting when you come to an intersection where the traffic grooves also run in the opposite direction. Just think plowed field on a bike for 40 yards. Interesting!

Today we head for Seward, with Jesse, to go Halibut fishing on Wednesday. Wish us luck! The only thing I want to see is Gayle catch a halibut big enough to make her squeal while she tries to reel it in! If that happens, pictures will be taken!