Dont cross a frozen creek when its not frozen!

This last weekend Ryan got the truck all put back together, he rebuilt the transmission and has been wanting to go wheel'in so bad.  So we headed out to Jim Creek after a little fiasco of dropping the trailer off in the ditch from a slick hill...  but we made it to Jim Creek w/o breaking or hurting anything.  We'd heard about the previous weekends when everyone who went out ended up sliding into trees or falling through the ice.  Well, this is OUR STORY!

 The first crossing was great, all ice!

 The 2nd crossing however was lots of running water so we tried scouting different routes, this is how well it went for Jordan.

 Get a good look at this spot, cuz this is where we stayed till WAY after dark!

 Because of this!

And of coarse our air pump broke this last summer.
Bummer!
So one truck headed out to get it fixed while most of us just hung out around a HUGE campfire (thanks to Ryan's pyro mother) Thanks Cindy!  And we got to see a few other people fall through the ice while waiting as well.

EUREKA!!! EUREKA!!!

I dont feel much like typing right now so I'm gonna have these awesome pics tell the story for me.

So we went to Eureka Mon & Tues with R's parents. Thought we were gonna get rained out but we had sun most of the time, and didnt get any rain till we were almost out on Tues.

LOADED blueberry bushes!

We're dragging what use to be our bogger. We lost it up there a few years back and it has taken a couple trips back there to get it out.

A fresh spring we found

MMM, SMORES!!! And check out my bulging muscles. hehe

Can you tell what color we just painted it? And no I'm not talking about the mudd Papa

The latest @ Jim Creek

I took more video this time instead of pics so the photo coverage is a little sparse. We left the parking lot at about 1030 and it only took about 2 hours to the Glacier. At the Glacier the other two rigs dropped tires into a moraine pond. The small Ford blew a front axle. So we called the trip and hiked out across the lake to the face of the glacier and tolled around. The headed back out. The little Ford stuck it in a drift for about an hour. The big Ford stuck it trying to pull the little one out. I broke a few straps attempting to yank him out. Ripped off the little ones front bumper with a chain, Hee Hee Hee!!! We then got out a little after dark. Good trip all in all. I found that I need to rework my shock mounts and fix my door. It was an enjoyable trip and I will be going back this next Friday or Saturday.

YOU CAN KEEP YOUR PRIVATE BRIDGE!

Posted By: R
"PRIVATE BRIDGE, NO ACCESS, VANDALS WILL BE PROSECUTED." By golly there will be access! I love to Explore, and when I hear, "No exploration here, its been discovered, go home now." It fires up a little angst deep inside me that brings back memories of grade school and a teacher saying, " look, we don't need explorers any more, we have our maps." I'm not really a fan of angry posting but a private bridge on public land, just smacks of everything that is wrong in the world today.

The NEW Body!

R bought a new body for his truck. We decided that we needed more room for ourselves, our children, our stuff, and maybe friends!

He's been searching all summer for the right thing for the right price.

Instead of throwing the tires in the dump we decided to go green and recycle!

See...

What's that saying?

"Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without."

Something like that!

More Eureka Videos

Some trails were never meant to be driven

(Posted by: R) When I was young I chose to be an explorer. I would often check out books about men and women who devoted their lives to wandering the globe and telling others of what they had seen. By my 10 year old calculations I had about six more years to learn how to be an explorer and then I'd begin my earth roaming. Soon after I had a geography teacher who erroneously informed me; while spinning a globe with no blank spots; that the world had already been discovered by all my over zealous childhood heroes.

This is an in your face, spit in the eye, headbutt and kick you while your down to that well meaning educator. I'm sure they had high hopes of me giving up the dream and doing something really productive and boring with my life. Well I'm here to say that Explore I must and will for that matter, and this because of times like this last weekend. Because even if a maps page is not blank, just because someone else has already been there I'm going to go there myself just to confirm what they had experienced.

Like any good explorers we left unprepared and unaware. All we had was the Alaska Atlas indicating on page 85 that there may be a passable trail from the highway to Squaw Creek. On scene we confirmed the existance of some sort of trail littered with bogs.

Soon after setting off, the trail got steep plunging towards Squaw Creek at an alarming rate. It became apparent that this would only be a one way trail now that the rain was pouring down with a ferocity that we haven't seen this summer. We set camp in the rain, cooked a hot dinner with lots and lots of apple cider and crashed for the night.

The following day we battled bog after bog for nearly 8 full hours. At one point we strapped both trucks together and plowed through the mud. By the end of the day we managed to make it to the Tahetna town site. It was a chore but we had a lot of fun and some not very fun times and some fishing.

We slept at the trail head to the pass and the next day went over the pass to explore the drainages.

MUD MUD MUD MUD MUD AND MUDDY BOYS

I'm going to say right off that I'm not creative. Laci is, I am not. Some are creators by nature, I am not a creator, I am a copier. Show me a picture of anything and I can make it for you. So if my typing is boring you to death, divert your eyes to the pictures, forget the words and cheat death to live another day.

The story of Joel and Lisa:

Joel and Lisa live in a house, its a good house. But they have a neighbor that talks Joel into doing things that aren't sane.

Normally Lisa is there to balance everything out and tell the two boy's, "Wait and think about this for a moment."

These are the pictures that result from not, "waiting for a moment" and thinking about what we should do. This is the result of just doing stuff without thinking.

The evil neighbor convinced Joel he should buy a jeep. Then when that plan worked, he told Joel to drive the Jeep where Jeeps were not meant to go.


Luckily Joel was smarter than the evil neighbor and bought a Jeep with a winch.......and a fire extinguisher.

Blah,blah,blah.......

And they lived happily ever after.

THE END