Eureka!

Last weekend, we finally had a break from our cold wet weather spell, and the sun came out!!

Yay!

So we were invited to go on a 4-wheeler excursion with some people that Chuck works with.

Usually, when we go anywhere, we go north or south (you can't go west in this state cuz there ain't no highways that go in that direction - weird, I know).  So anyhoo, it was a nice change to go East to a place called Eureka, an area that lies between the Talkeetna Mountains and the Chugach Mountains.  I'm not sure if Eureka is actually a town or just the name of the area.  According to Wikipedia, it's only a "census-designated place" consisting of 29 people when they took the last census.  Anyhoo, when people say they're going to Eureka, they usually mean they're going to a big outdoors mountainous area to play.  Anyhoo, we very rarely go East, and I don't know why cuz it is such a beautiful drive.  

Here are just a few pictures I took along the way.

Here is the scenery across the road from our "potty stop" in Sutton, AK.

(Yes, there is a town called "Sutton" - no relation to us, but sometimes people do actually ask us.)

It took about 1-1/2 to 2 hours to get there.  We got into our 4-wheelers (side by sides) and followed the trails.

The guy that invited us, Mike, was our "guide".  He's been through there many times and knew where all the trails went, and how rough they got.  He was very good at advising which ones to avoid, and which ones to save for another day.

More pictures:

This picnic table invited us to sit down and eat, but it was still too early.  So we took some pictures and kept going.  I'm actually surprised at how well these pictures turned out cuz most of them were taken while we were on the move, and it was a bumpy ride!

More pictures...

After about 3 hours of riding and soaking in the scenery, we got hungry and stopped for a bite to eat.

...and then took more pictures...

Mike's dog "Daisy" was a hot dog, so we stopped and let her cool off in a stream.  She just plopped herself in there and cooled off her belly.

"Aaaah, this feels so nice!"

Beaver dam.

Anyhoo, I know this was a lot of pictures.  Sorry about that, but this is only a fraction of all of them that I took.  It's just too beautiful there to not take hundreds of pictures! And if you went up there with me, you would know that pictures don't do it justice!!  

This was probably about 6 hours on the Side by Side, and we only covered a fraction of the area, and we didn't even go all the way to the end of this trail (the Belanger Trail).  Mike said it loops around but would take pretty much the whole day, and he didn't plan for it, so he promised to take us out another day and go around the whole loop.

That would be really fun!!