Happy Mother's Day to all of you wonderful Mom's. I stopped by to see my Mom after church and got a Momma-style hug before my family and I were all taking off on a Mother's Day 4 - Wheel ride in
Eklutna Lake State Park. What a beautiful day! This is the first time I have used an ATV in a State Park and I loved it. Saw so many other Mom's out there enjoying their families on 4 wheelers and on bicycles.
I definitely felt the "cold shoulder" from bicycle riders in the park! Against my peaceful loving nature I decided I will make a comment about that. It is not only on the highways that bicyclists appear to claim more rights than they safely should but they appeared to have that same annoying attitude in the parks too.
My opinion of bicylists continues to plummet due to recent unsolicited blogger comments and by encountering bicyclists on the highways. (I was going to say, by running into them on the highways, but...) Nevertheless, while in the pursuit of having the best Mom's Day yet, I still waved and smiled at them while we passed each other on the ATV trail in the park. Yep, on the ATV trail, some of them were not even on their own bicycle trail there either!
Alaska should stop wasting money on paving over the ATV trails to make bike trails--we are willing to share our ATV trails! Bicylists need to be a little more thankful to your fellow trail riders. ATV's may be dusty but they are the reason there are even bike trails anywhere anyway! Besides all the now-paved ATV trails along the highways (complete with ATV's Not Allowed signs) we figure that the road into Eklutna Lake was probably blazed in by those daring ATV riders too! The only thing that makes seeing our ATV trails turned into paved bike paths agreeable is that joggers and Momma's pushing their sweet babies use them. I would pay for that willingly! But more bike paths? No, they have enough that they don't use!
There is so much driftwood on the beaches of Eklutna Lake. Wish I could bring all of it home with me! :-) We noticed that that water was so low! I know this lake supplies the Anchorage Bowl with water. While here during the summer with my daughter Marie, the lake was so high! This happens from melting snow, glaciers and rain during the summer. During the winter everything is frozen so the water level drops.
You can see the nice road in the park in this picture. I told my husband that of all the trails (deep-woods bogging trails) we have rode, I think this one is my favorite! It was pleasant. It is open all year and people can even use snowmachines during the winter! Very beautiful spot with all the mountains around and close up. I didn't do it yesterday, but there is a trail at the end of the road that one can walk to get close-up to a glacier.
While we slowly drove back out of the park, enjoying the scenery, we met the park ranger and he stopped to ask if we saw anyone racing up and down the river bed (illegal activity in a park). He said there was a report that two ATV's were seen racing on the river bed and when confronted about it they became "mouthy." We had not seen any racers out there but we definitely felt like we were guilty as charged just for being caught sitting on top of an ATV at the moment. Guilty until proven innocent. Another park ranger told us that he had our vehicle license numbers and we may be getting calls later in the week ---after they look at their cameras.
Whatever! Always someone somewhere trying to look bigger than they really are! I wonder if the tattletale was a disgruntled dusty bike rider?
We saw mountain sheep and I got this picture of a porcupine while we were up there as we drove out of the park. Doug stopped the truck at a safe place and I jumped out to get this picture. He was gently hissing at me. I wondered if that is what you call a having a hissy-fit.
Anyway, hope you had a great Mother's Day. I did!
Lexie, Ashlee and AJ will be spending several nights here and tomorrow we plan to find all the big black beetles we can find and smoosh them! We are having an infestation. A plague. A pestilence.
