Hiking the Pipeline

One fine sunny day Mat and I actually had a day off together, a very rare occasion! So Mat asked around about some fun hikes to do and it was suggested by our friend Silas that we hike the pipe line. The pipe line happens to be the way that all of the cities water gets down from a mountain lake as well as how all of the electricity for Petersburg gets produced. This is one of the things that I think is totally awesome about Petersburg, this place is pretty eco-friendly. All of the electricity is produced by a renewable resources, everything is super close by, gas is pricey so everyone shuts there cars off if they are waiting in line at the coffee stand which is all awesome!
This led Mat and I into a very thought provoking conversation...Why is green an option? Shouldn't everything we do be environmentally friendly? Really what is the point of not using our renewable resources? I mean sure Arizona can't use hydro-power, but they have the sun and surely they could use that to produce there power. Prairie states may not be able to us hydro or solar power but what about wind- generation. It seems illogical to me that we continue using non-renewable sources of power when clean sources that we will never run out off exist. Seems silly to me, but enough about my eco-rant.

Another neat thing about this day was that the pipeline starts right next to the Crystal Lake Hatchery. This is where local salmon babies get their start. These salmon hatcheries are the main reason why Alaska can keep up with the demand for wild salmon. You see if these didn't exists most of the babies would be eaten before they even had a chance to grow up into delicious wild salmon for our palate purposes. What happens is the big salmon swim up the stream where they were born and into a hatchery "pool" they lay their eggs here and die (which is exactly what would happen in nature). Then the eggs are collected and incubated in the perfect conditions so that the optimal about of the eggs hatch. They are then transferred into bigger pools were they are kept and fed until they are big enough to have a better chance of survival. Then the plug is pulled and its back into the stream that the parents come up from and out to the ocean they go. Travel safe little guys...