Weather thwarts Knik River Valley invaders

Two nights ago a new critter popped out of the brush onto the road. Pretty sure it was a mink: the right dark color, too small to be a wolverine or an otter and too big for a weasel and too dark to be a martin. It ran with that hunch and stretch motion weasels have, so that's my guess anyway.

If omens are to be believed, there is now some indication the mink may have been one. The next day heading for work, I noticed the parking lot at Del Roi's tavern was packed full of matching Winnebagos. It seemed awfully late in the season for a tourist caravan, but what it could have been puzzled me until the next day. Again they filled the parking lot, but farther on there was a lot of activity on the wide gravel beach at the Knik River that included several large trucks, a pagoda type tent and lots of people milling about.

The movie! There has been a crew in Anchorage for the past several weeks filming a movie about a serial killer who operated in the 1980s and who actually released his victims in this general area and then hunted them. Nicolas Cage and John Cusack are in it and have been spotted around Anchorage.

Nature was not cooperating. Blasts of wind gusted down the valley from the glacier, actually stirring up whitecaps on the river and sending clouds of glacial silt over the camp and the road. Welcome to Alaska, I thought as I made my way across the bridge.

Coming home that night it had built into a whole lot worse storm. Along the blue highway wind rocked the car. At the sharp curve that turns on the bridge at the south end, wind tends to be strongest and dust and silt blown up from the river bed sometimes builds up across the road creating a slippery surface right on the sharpest curve along the whole road. It can also create a washboard effect that can easily send a car flying. This night I hit that curve wrong, just as a gust blew up a dust cloud so thick I actually had to stop because I couldn't even see the guardrail right next to the car. I could hear bits of beach dust hitting the car. It let down and I went across the bridge to see lights on at the movie camp and guys working tying their tent to pickup trucks so as not to lose it to the wind. Welcome to Alaska again, I thought.

The next day still blowing like snot, two helicopters had joined the equipment at the camp on the river. but there didn't look like any work was under way.

That night going home, I noticed the camp had disappeared and the parking lot at Del-Roi's only held a few local vehicles, no rolling campers or equipment trucks.

It all tells me to pay attention when another mink hops out onto the road.