Its a Sign

Sign sign everywhere a sign,

making life a mystery, blowing my mind.

Do this, don't do that,

can't you read the sign ???

Well I got to looking at last weeks post and couldn't help but notice that in the background behind Orv and Al was this sign. Yikes, here we are in this quiet slough with the turquoise water gurgling by and the only man made things in sight are my boat and this obnoxious sign. Now the intent of the sign is fine, its just the details that kind of bug me. If you enlarge you'll see that they have the bank closed to red fishing from July 1 to August 15. The idea is to keep people from stomping down the fish habitat. so I kind of figure why not have the signs up during that period and take them down afterwards, and maybe just put them where its been a problem and not where nobody red fishes anyway. Yahtzee, visual pollution problem solved.

But those people at State Parks might be hard to talk to. As you can see by this picture they think more is better. Obviously they have a study somewhere that showed many people will ignore one or two signs but very few will ignore 15 all within 100 feet of each other. But these signs here were thoughtfully printed in green to match the local flora. Genius.

Now that thing that looks like a mailbox is really a piece of scientific equipment. 20 years ago the U.S.G.S. had a zealot area scientist that wanted to prove that boat wakes were accelerating the erosion and causing harm to the Kenai River. So he built this contraption to count and measure the boat wakes. Inside the wire cage is a float gauge and then a paper counter and battery is housed in the Mailbox. He built it right next to a harbor, after all what better place to find boat wakes. Well, 20 years have gone by, Joe Dorava moved on, the boat wake issue moved on, the mailbox is still there......mmmm....do you guys see what I'm getting at? The people that are worried about our impact on the river are ....well....kind of trashy really.

But you know me, theres always a bright side. There has to be or it wouldn't all make sense right? So I've found that that the signs make perfect pads for the tongue of my boat trailer. They slip right under the wheel and are the perfect size to help you get a little role when you're hooking up to the trailer. That particular sign is a Stream Bank protection sign but my favorite is under the guideBoat, its a 'more courtesy, less regulation' sign'. Hows about a 'less signs sign'...