Update On My Summer Bike Ride Across Turkey Using Anchorage Bike Trails, Wanders Off Into Otter Attacks And Feeding Ducks

This summer's goal has been to bike from Istanbul to Cappadocia.  By my initial calculation, that was 750 kilometers (466 miles).  So that was my target until I found a site (Ride with gps) where people track their bike rides.  I found someone who had made my trip. Ending up in Avanos.  But he was taking a longer route - it looks like he tried to avoid the main highways that would have more traffic.  His route was a total of 889 kilometers (552 miles.)

So yesterday I got up to 751.8 kms.  Using the Ride with gps site, you can find exactly where that is. You can toggle between km and miles.  You can see the distance (and other factors) by putting the cursor along the route.  I can see I'm riding along a lake, but on the biking map there wasn't a specific place to look up.  Had to go to Google maps to find Aksaray and some pictures.  This seemed the nicest.  

Photo from Google Maps

Of course, I'm doing this along the bike trails of Anchorage - anywhere from about 6km to 20km on any given day.  To make it to Avanos, I've got about 140 kms left to go.  Cappadacio is a region of Turkey where there are lots of caves.  Here's a link to a site with a short video that gives you a sense of the other-worldly landscape of the area and some of the towns there.  

But I only have pictures of the Anchorage bike trails, but they're pretty amazing too.  So here are some from the last several days of biking mostly along Campbell Creek trails.  

Campbell Creek near Lake Otis.

Going east from here, the creek winds back and forth, leading to a series of bridges along the trail.

Much further up the creek is this bridge near Campbell Airstrip.  There is a mix of hiking, mountain biking, ski trails, and dog sled trails in this area.  

This part of the creek, and the trail, is west of Lake Otis and goes south to Taku Lake and beyond. 

Yesterday there were lots of people fishing at Taku Lake.  I was taking a picture of three people fishing together (looked like a family) when this guy moved from the group.  If you look closely you can see the fish he just pulled out of the lake.  

Below is Goose Lake on another day in very different light.  Yellow leaves are starting to show.  This is a spot where people feed the ducks.  I stopped to take a picture and all this ducks moved in my direction looking for handouts.  Here's a link to a National Geographic website with a long explanation of why feeding bread to ducks is not good for the ducks.  Just one of many points:

“White bread in particular has no real nutritional value, so while birds may find it tasty, the danger is that they will fill up on it instead of other foods that could be more beneficial to them,” says a spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

There's a lot more on the subject at the link above.

At University Lake near Alaska Pacific University, which has become a popular dog park, I found a warning for another hazard.  

It's only recently that I've become aware of river otters in Anchorage.  In August 2021 there was a report of river otters attack dogs in Anchorage.  That story made it to The Guardian in UK as well as many other news outlets.  The earliest report of aggressive river otters in Anchorage I found was 2019 which called the river otters "a new menace for Anchorage dogs."   Sea otters, in the ocean, have been here for as long as I've been in Alaska.  

Here's a picture of Taku Lake yesterday.  The 2019 otter attack was here.  I've never seen river otters in Anchorage, but I did see a beaver once at Taku.