A Change of Plans

Well, yesterday we did not go to the cabin as we had talked about.  Our friend Bob changed his day to make another trip to Knik Glacier.  We figured the cabin can wait, and decided to go to Knik Glacier instead.   By the looks of things, it looked like it would be a very nice day of it, despite what the forecast said about rain.

We had a good sized group, but more than half of the people that were with us, we didn't know.  They were relatives and friends of Bob's.  But they were all nice people.  We also had another family that we invited to tag along with us because this was their first time out to Knik Glacier and they were afraid of getting lost.  So we had a pretty good-sized group, however, the more people you got, the more stops you can expect to have.  First of all,

Lei Loni's rig started making this horrible awful squealing noise.   They guessed (and hoped) that it was the brakes rather than the bearings.  It turned out to be just some plastic piece that was rubbing on something.  Okay, got that problem taken care of.

THEN:

This big fallen-over tree was blocking our path.  No one had a chain saw, but Jason and Bob both had a small hatchet.  After some time hacking away at that, they were able to move it out of our way.

What else could go wrong, I wonder?  

How about Larry's wheel going up in flames?

Yes, his wheel actually caught on fire!  Luckily we were close enough to water for him to kick some water on it and put it out.  But it required another medical exam of another 4-wheeler, which involved cooling off the tire, taking the tire off, cleaning it out, and reassembling it.  (They figured maybe some dirt somehow got in there and caused some heated friction, but I silently wonder if Larry was "riding the brakes" without realizing it cuz later Chuck had to tell him that his brake light was on while we were riding - yes, he had his foot on the brake.)

Yes, riding with a larger group might mean more stops, but somehow the setbacks don't seem so bad when you're with the right people.  All of these stops gave us opportunities to chat, laugh, make jokes, and fellowship.  Here the kids are enjoying splashing around in the water while they wait for Larry's tire to get fixed.

Here is another setback, but this kind is normal and expected:

It was a body of water that we had to cross and no one knew how deep it was.

So we sat there and contemplated.

Finally, someone went out and walked into it:

Then Bob tested it out:

And then we were cautiously on our way:

We ran into those questionable bodies of water quite often, and every time we go there it's different because the depth of the water depends on how much snow has melted off the mountains, and also the tide.  

Then of course there's the other kinds of stops that you would expect when you got kids with ya:  "I gotta go potty!"

I didn't get any pictures of that, but you get the idea.  Even I had to go have some private time with some bushes at one point.  Sorry, no picture.  That would be "TMI".

At last we finally made our destination.  And it was worth it.

This time we didn't stay there very long cuz it too so long to get there.  And we still had to get all the way back.  It was a long day, but really fun.  And boy, we were DIRTY!  It was a really really really dusty dusty ride, and we were all COATED with dust by the time we got back.  A lot of the times we couldn't even see anything.  But I'd rather have it dry and dusty than cold and wet.  

And the nice thing was that there wasn't a single mosquito!!