Kenai Peninsula Trip

I spent Monday & Tuesday this week working on the Kenai Peninsula. The city of Soldotna is 140 miles south of Anchorage. Homer is another 75 miles farther south. While at one of my accounts a young moose came right up to the entrance and began eating the dead plants from the planter. I grabbed my camera from the car and snapped this photo.


I left Soldotna for home Tuesday around 2pm so that it would be mostly daylight for the approximately 2 and a half hour drive. If all went well, I would be home by 4:30 plus or minus a bit. It was a snowy and windy trip. I took a number of short videos of the blowing snow beginning just south of the Portage Glacier junction but had a difficult time deciding which ones I wanted on the site. These five made the cut from a total of 15 vids.



I stopped at Girdwood to get some additional fuel and then began what should have been the last 35-40 minutes of the trip. Twenty miles from Anchorage I came upon what is shown in this next video.


I changed my listening to the radio news and learned that I was stuck behind a head-on collision which had occurred just about 5 minutes ahead of me. The accident site is just around the visible corner of the road. The Seward Highway was closed and estimated to re-open in 4-5 hours! All emergency and towing vehicles had to come from Anchorage. One person died and two others were critically injured. The infant of the woman who died was unhurt. I spent the time reading and playing a game on my cell phone. Eventually a few cars were let through a few at at time. Because I was close to the accident I was able to get past it after three hours while the road was cleared and opened again an hour after that.


What a sad, sad thing to happen. I have often thought about what it must be like to lose control of the car (this is usually when after I feel the car slip a bit and my tummy clenches while I tense enough to ease the car back to where it is suppose to be. Over reaction is often the cause of complete loss of control and tragedy) on a curve and slide over the edge of the road into the trees/void or slip into the lane of oncoming traffic. Sometimes it seems a miracle that so few accidents happen at all. So I got home late and missed a dinner appointment with friends (yes... I do have a few; well, two). Others were not so fortunate. A second person lost their life today in another collision in town not four miles from our home.

To walk safe and sound into our warm home and into the arms of my sweet wife last night was a blessing not to be unappreciated.