Sketches: Creatively Yours - Frost Heaves

Happy April's Fools Day!  Ah, there's nothing foolish going on in my world today, but there are several exciting things to see!  Sketches:  Creatively Yours  is back online with a new design team after a 6 month hiatus.  Be sure to check out the sketch and maybe try your hand at it!   All of the DT's sketch interpretations are posted and they are great!  Below is my take on the sketch.

Journal:   Frost heaves, they are a part of traveling in Alaska and can do some awful damage to your vehicle if you're not paying attention!  When we drove to Alaska in 1995, we encountered a lot of road construction along the way. At times, we would have to wait for 30 minutes or more for the “Follow Me” truck to lead us through the maze of construction equipment. There were a couple of construction zones where we were driving on roadbed consisting of baseball size rocks. Mom and Dad also came through this kind of construction when they visited us in 1996; they cracked the windshield, headlights and incurred much paint chipping from the flying gravel on their just about new Honda Accord. For this trip, we decided we would be prepared, both having been scouts and all that! Dick built a substantial shield to protect our Jeep from the flying rocks. We encountered almost no road construction the entire trip and what little we did encounter consisted of nicely graded gravel roadbed that was actually better than the paved roads. But, oh my, let me tell you about frost heaves.

Frost heaves occur when a road is built over permafrost, which is permanently frozen ground. When the surface is paved, it causes the earth beneath the roadbed to heat up, thus melting the permafrost and turning into a Jell-O like consistency. The melting causes the road bed to “heave” creating a highway that is much like a roller coaster with dips that can be as much as a foot. It heaves from side to side as well as front to back. Imagine cruising along at 55 mph and hitting this, you will be AIRBORNE! We just heard about several people who broke their tow bars between their motorhomes and tow vehicle because they were unaware of the seriousness of frost heaves. We thought the frost heaves were much worse on this trip than before and that is because the road is older now. Frost heaves are a way of life up here and engineers are still trying to devise a road construction method that will preserve the permafrost. We drove over several different experimental sections of highway illustrating the engineers’ dedication to this problem.

Supplies:

BasicGrey Curio Collection:

Base pp –Heirloom
Yellow – Textile
Print – Upholstery
Letters, diecut green print trim strip
Arrow – Paper Studio
Distress black soot ink
Bazzill – Orange CS mats
Ribbon – Cosmo Cricket “the Boyfriend”
Buttons,- unknown
Martha Stewart punch around the page punch

And another exciting thing today is the debut of the Words and Perspective series at the Just Perspective blogspot.  Check out my post below for more information.