July 2
Today we rented UTV's from Hatcher's Pass Castle UTV Tour's.
We opted to do a full day rental with a tour add-on. We started out with the first tour group of the day at 9am. Everyone got acclimated to the machines and then we hit some mud holes, creeks and rocky trails.
It was all a bit tame for us but it was still a good time. We stopped a few times for photo's and once to pan for gold. We found a few flakes but not anything to get excited about.
We decided to follow the tour group back to the main office since we forgot our moosescot. We drove in a stream we traveled in with the group but instead of exiting we took a trail that lead back into the woods a bit. I decided to turn around as it was fairly muddy across another portion of the stream. Even though the UTV's came with a winch, there was nothing to hook to on that side and being alone I didn't feel like getting stuck so we turned back.
We quickly found another path leading off road. This one was a little more technical. There was one portion that required me to put the right side wheel on a log, gun it and let the belly slide across it to get over. It shortly led to a dead end. Coming back to the main road the power steering died. I was a bit worried that I damaged something. It was lunch time anyways so we stopped for me to inspect and to eat.
While there the next tour group came by. The leader slowed down just to make sure we were fine and I flagged him to stop. After a quick once over, he found that the fuse blew. A quick change and we were back in business.
Our next turn off was the best of the day. It was a steep, rocky, muddy ride. It eventually cleared out and we realized we were riding to the top of a mountain. At one point there was a strong running stream we drove along. I'm not sure if you could call it a waterfall, but it was very much a steep vertical decent of water.
We eventually reached the summit of the mountain we were on and decided to take a break. The entire area was covered with a thick, spongy, pillowy moss. It was all rock underneath with jutting rock everywhere. We took pictures and just explored around us.
I flew my drone around. I thought I hit the record button, but apparently I did not. Before to long the girls were wanting to head out as they had to go to the bathroom and were not willing to use nature's bathroom. The UTV's have GPS maps and we could have stayed up there all day following different trails over other peaks.
I figured out how to make the drone follow us. I got it all set-up to go back down the mountain. I had it set just right to capture a beautiful snow capped mountain in view. Yet again, I thought I hit record but did not. Really kicking myself on that.
Of course what took us an hour or more to climb only took about 20 minutes to descend. Girls went to the bathroom while I topped off on fuel and asked if there was any other area's as great as the one we were just on.
We headed back out to a recommended spot, the farthest most point we were allowed to go. It was a beautiful valley, but didn't compare to what we saw earlier in the day.
Davan had been asking to drive so when we got back to the main road I let her take over. She did really well. She then took us to a trail that the tour took us on earlier as she wanted to do some real off-roading.
We met up with the last group of the day so stopped to chat for a minute before heading back. Near the beginning was some mud puddles and I let Davan blast though them. I even let Libby take a turn.
It was another great day. We all got back to the camper with smiles. I do have a lot of drone and GoPro video. Like I said a few days ago, the files are way too large to upload on a cell connection. Probably when I get home I'll upload them all and just point to my YouTube Channel and anyone can check them out as they want.
The rest of the night we got packed up for our flight to Utqiagvik tomorrow. We also pick up Heidi who flew in this morning to join us for a few weeks. We are all super excited to see her!
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