Who Gave that White Girl Wheels

One of the dentists here went out of town last weekend and offered me the keys to her four-wheeler.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but there are a lot more people up here that have cars than I expected.  But, most of them also have a four-wheeler for the summer and what they call a snow machine for the winter.  I’ve always called them snowmobiles.  The dentist didn’t ask me if I knew how to work a four-wheeler or if I’ve ever even ridden one.  She just handed over the keys and told me where it was parked.  Lucky for her, and me I guess, I grew-up riding four-wheelers and was even the target of a neighborhood ordinance against them, woops.

So, after my underwhelming attempt at fishing, I took off into the tundra. 

My first stop was cemetery hill. 

You can see down the side of the hill where some kids that were playing around Friday afternoon started a fire that went from the end of the runway halfway up the hill.  See the big black spot.  They had to get the planes to drop retardant on it.

There are a couple of small cemeteries in town, but this one has a view.

I spotted a really pretty looking pond off in the distance, so I turned off of one dirt road onto a smaller one that informed me to be ware of oncoming traffic.

I have heard that there can be caribou, elk, bears, lots of mosquitos, and all sorts of critters at in the tundra; but I figured they wouldn’t really bother me.  (Big, innocent, squinty-eyed grin here.)

Come to find out, this pond is the main source of drinking water for the city of Kotzebue.

They call it Devil’s Lake, and apparently it is a big place for “snow machining” in the wintertime when everything is frozen over.

I do not know if I have yet mentioned how cold it was on Saturday. Cold.  I had dressed for standing on the banking and fishing which was a little chilly.  I had not prepared for the frigidness of four-wheeler riding.  I had on a turtleneck, a half-zip, a windbreaker, and gloves.

I know it's upside-down.  I took it myself and forgot to turn it right side up before I uploaded it and the internet here is too slow to do it over again.

But it was like 30-something degrees with a west wind of the freezing ocean on top of the wind from going 25mph on the four-wheeler.  I was cold.  Then I started to get hungry.  I had a granola bar in my pocket, but then I would have to stop and take my gloves on, and I was too cold.  So, I just kept on riding.  The loop road that I was riding is about 7.5miles long which takes a while at 25 mph.  I got to a point where I was like enough is enough, and I looked to the horizon to see how far I had left to go.  This  is what I saw.

When the airport finally came into view, I was so excited.  To get back into town you have to cross over both the plane and the jet runways being extremely cautious to look both ways of course. 

I don’t know if anyone has ever been so excited to see Friends Way!  I ran immediately inside and heated up a big bowl of soup!

Later that afternoon, I was walking to the store and saw this.  It was far too cold to be washing anything outdoors.  But you know Baptists, they'll do anything to raise money for youth camp!