Well folks, welcome to #TheTravelingMac’s first #FourWheelingAdventure… I have been on a dirt bike before, when I was a kid… But I had never been four wheeling for a whole afternoon… Lets just say, I was very excited about it…

Tracey and I decided it was worth the price… The tour guide gave us a 50 percent discount, which was really nice considering it costs a lot to run these machines all day…

It was a quick ride into the mountains where #AlaskaOffRoadAdventures had their base… They kept a few four wheelers up here, parked in a tent…

The #TourGuide gave us a quick lesson on how to operate one of these monsters… If you know how to drive a vehicle with a clutch, then operating a four wheeler is a quick lesson… Your clutch is at your foot… All you do is press in a hand lever and change gears with your foot… The only difference is that in a car, you never pull the clutch up with your foot yet on a bike, the clutch is pushed and pulled… So you can navigate between gears effectively with your foot…

Now, it’s a little shocking that I haven’t ridden one of these four wheelers already considering I was up in the #ColoradoMountains for two summers… #TaylorPark, where I worked, was a huge four wheeling destination… Tracey and I talked about renting two for a day but never did…

We both like the more natural approach when it comes to exploring… Riding a loud machine is definitely not our style… lol…

But it was Tracey’s Birthday today and we wanted to do something special… Something we both had never done before…

Look at that huge #Bear footprint above… Wow!

And what better way to get a such a vast understanding of the outback of Alaska… I love hiking and all, but you do cover a lot more ground on one of these machines…

Our guide was quite the #AlaskanResident… If you look at his hip you will see he is carrying a large gun…

He warned us about all of the bears out here… And he told us stories of past customers running into some bears during their travels…

Well, this guy doesn’t take any chances… If we encounter an angry bear, he definitely had the piece that could save us from a vicious attack…

But we all know the chances of this are very slim… But it did make me feel more comfortable being with Dirty Harry out here… lol…

Wow, what a different experience this turned out to be…

The sights were amazing and driving this four wheeling vehicle was a lot more fun than I thought it would be…

We would stop at certain points to take pictures and admire our surroundings…

At one point, the guide pointed out a #BearFootprint… You can tell how large this beast is by how sunken the print is….  To make such a deep print, like this one, by just walking around shows us just how massive this creature is…

As much as I would love to see a bear up close… It petrifies me to encounter one out here… I would rather see one from inside #TheMillenniumFalcon and if a bear wants to try and attack her… So be it… “She did the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs,” for Christ’s sake!

The rules out here are a lot different than home… There are no courts… Nature is the justice system out here and if you perish, no one will be punished…

It’s the perfect blend of man and nature… Our technology levels the playing field considering our bodies are such feeble little vessels…

But our brains are superior… And where we lack strength, we make it up with knowledge… well, in some respects at least…

It’s great that it gives us the upper hand out here… Well actually, I think #MotherNature has the upper hand…

But when it comes to dealing with the wild life, our advanced technology does level the playing field a lot…

I prefer not to have a gun myself… The fact I am riding a machine that could out run any bear, is enough of an advantage for me…

But to a guy who does this for a living, like our guide, he has to up his chances a bit more considering his odds of an outmatched encounter are much higher considering how much time he spends out here… So, I don’t blame him for carrying a piece out here… Even with that massive gun, I still feel the Bear has the upper hand… Especially considering it would take a few shots to even slow the gigantic beast down…

There were a lot of Quail out here… As you puddled along the trail, random quail would leap out of the bushes… It startled you the first few times but you soon got used to it…

There were stretches, like these above, where we could really open the four wheeler up… I would stop and take pictures, letting Tracey and the guide get far ahead… Then I would open up and fly down these straight aways… What a feeling that was! I can understand why people love doing this so much… But honestly, I like hiking a lot more… You tend to miss things when four wheeling… It’s no longer about you and nature out here… Now there is a distraction from our world that takes away from the connection with Mother Nature… A connection I don’t mind missing once in awhile but would definitely choose over doing this any day…

After a few hours of exploring, we were soon heading home… It was definitely a fun and original birthday..

We finished the evening walking along the river, which runs through our backyard…

It was a special evening down here… the #DenaliMountain was visible and had a nice mixture of clouds around her…

You definitely notice the weather difference when you view #Denali… All of those clouds are a result of the volatile weather up there…

We look at the mountain from afar and we feel peace and solitude… When in reality, that mountain is probably whipping with winds as the cold and warm fight for dominance…. Creating these beautiful views from afar…

For all of this is for us folks! For us and nature… For without us, these mountains mean nothing…

For what is the purpose of anything existing in this Universe?

It’s to be viewed…

For our perception of these mighty, massive phenomenons is truly what makes them exist… If the living were not here to view then this wouldn’t truly exist…

I know I sound like a looney but think about it… If you study #Physics you realize that everything in this Universe is really #deterministic…. For example, we can record simple information like velocity, speed and mass and with that info we can determine exactly what that particular object will do and will be at any point in time…

This makes our Universe completely deterministic… Until you start to look into our world and the sub atomic world that creates us, #QuantumPhysics, where everything starts to get crazy…

Yet the reason the sub atomic world is not deterministic is because life is observing it… Where it would be completely deterministic otherwise…

But without life, determinism is useless because who is there to measure or observe that determined event if life does’t exist?

Yet if this Universe wants to be admired or observed, it has to give up it’s perfect set up… For life has a choice unlike the Universe…

So when a creature chooses to go in one direction instead of the other, the Universe is no longer deterministic… For that free choice does not exist in this Universe… So life is the element that changes everything…

We are that little, small element that changes everything in this vast, ever mysterious Universe… Our ability to observe affects the quantum level ever so slightly… So when atoms, light and energy combine to form the larger objects in this world, chance has been added to the equation by us viewing and affecting them….

Therefore making what was once a deterministic world, now full of all kinds of possibilities… This may sound small and insignificant yet if you think of all of the living things that observe the world around us…

That’s a lot of choices affecting a once determined Universe… that’s a lot of light being absorbed by billions of life forms every second, which changes the once determined path of that light…

Creating a lot of chance and possibility in our ever small world… That’s why we can determine everything in the Universe around us yet can’t determine the outcome of what happens on our planet…

The Universe can’t be affected because we are so small and insignificant, where the micro Universe is completely affected by our observation because we are so big and affect it… So planet earth no longer is deterministic while the Universe around us is…  But if for some reason we decided to annihilate a planet like #The Empire does in #ANewHope, then we have now affected that macroscopic Universe which we believe is deterministic…. And I guarantee that single action would affect the whole Universe around us because that single planet effects so much around it…

Life has changed this planet so much because we have so much choice which destroys a lot of its determined outcomes…. and now that same life is expanding into the Universe around us… And if we harness the power to affect it, we will affect everything around it and anything that has the slightest reliance on that single Universal thing…

And every planet we visit, where life doesn’t exist, now will become observed and will lose it’s deterministic qualities because now choice and chance has arrived…

I wonder what effect our observation of the light coming from all of the stars affects the Universe itself… Yet we are viewing that light from a lens, so are we really affecting the light since we are not directly absorbing? It’s all so confusing yet here we are… and we can’t deny that we have an affect on everything around us because we witness it everyday…

Look, I’m no scientist by any means, but when you start to study basic physics and think creatively about our Universe, weird things become possible… And weird ideas form in your head about your surroundings… These weird ideas and thought experiments were exactly the same tools #AlbertEinstein used to figure out what we know today… He rarley stepped into a lab to test out his many crazy ideas about our Universe yet most of the things he determined prove to be true…

That makes me feel more confident when it comes to studying the world and Universe around me… For as insignificant we are in this ever infinite, massive Universe, our little tiny ability to observe has proven to effect everything immedialtely around us, no matter how mighty and massive it is… That’s a huge power folks! Too bad we can’t learn how to use it effectively instead of fighting and killing each other…

Who knows, maybe someday….