Skilak Lake Road

The tourist are gone, the mosquitoes are gone, and the on the lakes fishermen are done. So it was time to make the whole drive along Skilak Lake Road. The rains were done, and there was no snow yet, only a few pot holes and rough patches along the road so 35 MPH was a doable speed without the teeth falling out or the nuts and bolts on the vehicle falling off. It was a good day for a drive.

Bottenintnin Lake

One of our favorite stops. It got pretty cold monday evening and never really warmed up. So the surface of the lake is pretty much frozen. No winds to speak of the last few days and wit little flow to this lake it was iced over pretty good, not real thick mind you, maybe a quarter of an inch, (0.635 centimeters). The budding willow tree on Tree Tuesday post is by this lake, so was very odd frozen lake and budding tree.

Lower Skilak Lake

Lower Skilak Lake was our next stop, this is the view from down at the bottom of the boat launch. The road to the campground is pretty nice and has some unique things a boulder held in place by trees, and we got a few pictures of a lot of mushrooms along the area also. There are a few people that harvest the bark from the birch trees for baskets and other art/craft projects. I would not be in the least surprised to learn that some of them are used for sap harvesting also. A pretty nice and versatile area.

Engineer Lake

A nice pull-out and a very nice view, however today the view this direction had the Howard Hughes dilemma, no clouds to make for an interesting sky, so most of the sky was cropped out. As you can see in the right hand part of the lake there is a little bit of ice left on the surface.

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Lichens; Who does not find them rather fascinating, little pieces of life clinging to where they can get a foothold. There were several large boulders to stop people from driving their car or accidently rolling down the hill to the lake. Most of them had some nice lichens and moss growing on them. I do like the different colors and the orange lichens are pretty cool looking.

Upper Skilak Lake

The primary boat launch for Skilak Lake. Most people get dropped and launched here, then get picked up at the Lower Skilak lake launch. There are a couple of nice campground areas to explore and a few footbridges over some ot the creeks that feed into Skilak Lake. It was getting to be late and we were getting hungry so we did not stay to long at the boat launch. We did run into one area of ice in the parking lot, I really am not looking forward to frozen Ice covered roads soon.

Skilak lake road view

Just a view of Skilak lake road. This was taken just past the Upper Skilak lake access road. As you can see a pretty clear day overall and it was a pretty cold day also, only about 28F, (-2.2C). Still with the sun and very little wind it really was not that bad a feeling day.

Roadside Reflection Pond

It was beginning to get close to sunset, we saw this nice little roadside reflecting pond and I thought it made a nice picture. I cropped most of the sky part out and sun glare and even though it is a little dark still a very nice reflection. As you can see the sky was not totally void of clouds just in a couple of directions.

Sunrise Inn Parking Lot

They had a small dusting of snow in Cooper Landing, The snow started showing along the road just past that little reflecting pond but really not noticeable til almost into Cooper Landing. After eating it was time for the car lights, it was getting dark and would soon be full dark. They were/are still working on the road between Skilak Lake Road on the main road, by the time we got to the first stop for construction it was full dark. What was rather surprising was the amount of traffic on the road both heading to and coming out of Sterling area. On our road trip up, hardly any traffic at all.

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It looks like Kenai, Soldotna area are going to have one of those very rare Halloweens. Right now there are no clouds, just one chemtrail, and no snow on the horizon. Still it is a few hours yet til it's dark and there can always be the possibility of a snow fall, unlikely but stranger things have happened.

I want to publicly thank @tattoodjay for his Wednesday Walk tag, I have enjoyed it, and viewing the post by people participating. Most of my walks have been after a drive to one of the many lakes we have so I started a wetwednesday tag to sort of go along with his walk. there are so many things to take pictures of by lakes and water features.

I hope you all enjoyed some of the pictures I snapped along the way. It was a pretty fun day we had on Tuesday. I hope everyone has a nice and safe Halloween.

Google Maps Skilak Lake Link. Yeah it kind of sort of looks like a sperm whale.