He just had to try it....

What do you get when you take a man with his 4x4, add some soft (very soft) beach sand, a view of the Captain Cook Inlet, snow covered mountains in the background, a warning sign saying that the black beach sand is very soft, and what do you get? IAN IAN IAN! That's right, IAN! Yes, he just couldn't resist it. That view, the sand, his 4x4. After all, what was the 4x4 made for if not for driving in very soft sand at a beach in Alaska? (Maybe keeping it in tip-top condition so it can pull us out of Alaska in a few months??)

Today was very windy and very cold - too much so to work outside, so this afternoon we drove into town to get Ian's fishing license. Rather than coming straight back to the campground, we decided to take a different route that runs along the Cook Inlet. The water is still pretty gray, and fairly choppy, but the view of the mountains on the other side was spectacular. We were surprised that the few houses built along the coast were not very large, none were made of brick, there were no very large or fancy ones like you'd see along the coast of the lower 48, and there were just as many that looked like Mad Max had lived there. There was a lot of vacant land, too, which is where we found the dirt road to the beach with the warning sign. Ian had no qualms about taking the truck out onto it, even after I pointed out that the ruts already there were several inches deep, and that 4x4 usually means ATV, not a 3/4 ton truck like ours. SO, he put it into 4-wheel drive, hit the pedal, and had no problems going forward. OK, I thought, maybe it'll work after all. Nope, no such luck. The problem came when he turned the wheel. Suddenly, the tires were turning, but we were going no where but down.

I bit my tongue as slowly, but not as deeply (or, I'd have only half a tongue left), as our 4x4 sunk. Interesting, I thought, how the back end seemed quite a bit lower than the front end. Then, I thought how interesting it would be to phone Good Sam Emergency Road Service again. "What?" they'd shriek! "You used up your life time worth of privileges when we towed you 300 miles in Canada!" Plus, we weren't really on a road any more, so would they even talk to us, or just use us as fodder for office laughter?

I advised Ian that when this happened to Donna and me on the Biscayne Causeway in Miami, back when we were 18 and I was driving Mom's car, we used the rubber floor mats to get traction under the tires. It didn't work then, either, but did attack some cute guys who pulled the car out. Since there were no cute boys around today, or no one else for that matter, the floor mats would not work. "I have to let some air out of the tires," was Ian's conclusion as he jumped out into the wind. It took a while, but he finally got back in the truck, got it to go back a few feet, then gunned it forward. The truck shuddered on the sand, I was pushing the dashboard while telling Ol' Betsy she could do it, Ian kept saying it's no problem, and finally, slowly, very slowly we made our way to higher ground. As if nothing ever happened, we got to the main road once again, admired the water and mountains as we drove along, then Ian said the only thing that had concerned him was if the tide came in while we were stuck. Yeah, that would have been a problem. Well, one thing I've always said, and it's still true - life with Ian is never boring!

Just a few minutes back on the road, we saw two animals grazing along side the road. From the distance they looked like big shorn sheep. When we got close enough, we realized they were caribou! Sure wish we had our camera with us, as we were within 10 feet of them. As if that wasn't enough, a little further down the road was a moose! We had to back up to within 25 feet of him, he looked up at us and turned around, as if to say if we don't see his face, we won't see him (kind of like when Scot was little - he thought as long as he couldn't see us, we couldn't see him). Mr. Moose slowly brought his head around to check if we were still there, so we slowly rolled forward enough for him to turn around again. Lucky for us, traffic on these roads is still minimal - the tourist haven't really come in yet.

OK, the last thing I want to throw in today is some of the street's names. Today we passed Old Timer's Lane, Kalifornsky Rd, and - my favorite, Wazoo Rd. Yeah, to find my house, just go up the Wazoo!