Jaci Dawn

There are a few fun things to do at Cape Kiwanda but none of them more entertaining than watching people get stuck in the sand on the beach. Just google or search youtube for videos of cars stuck by Haystack Rock, Cape Kiwanda, or Pacific City.

A little background: some of my family has been four-wheeling since Jeep was invented. My brother still has the same 1953 Willys Jeep he bought when he was 16. Some of the family are serious off-road junkies. Some are serious mechanics.

Did you ever see “My Cousin Vinny”? That movie never fails to crack me up. Not because I can recite auto parts like Marisa Tomei’s character can but because I know my dad and brother always wanted that stuff to rub off on me. A conversation between the two of them was always something technical about spark plugs, O-rings, calipers, rotors, distributer caps and, well, mechanical stuff. Stuff that goes right over my head.

But I have a couple cousins who caught that gene or married into that gene pool and raised children who also caught that gene.

That I am missing it is beside the point: I have been yelled at enough (before I was 18 years old and on my own) to know how to unstuck a car. I know better than to drive where my car cannot go even though it says it has 4-wheel drive (it has clearance of about 6 inches).

There was the Firebird that drove down into the sand. Seriously: Firebird? That has a clearance of about 2 inches, doesn’t it? And you want to drop it into soft sand? BWAHAHAHAHA: tow bill.

One of my first-cousins-once-removed races 4×4’s in her spare time. She was the greatest critic of the different “stuck” situations (“A mini-van? seriously?” “Oh, hey, should I walk down there and show the guys in the pickup how to get out without damaging their drive train? HAHAHA!”) She knew which rigs torqued their 4-wheel drive and which drivers knew what they were doing (even if they were in street cars).

I only picked up on bits and pieces of this because I didn’t spend a lot of time at the beach. The one day I did wander around was when Don came down to join us.

Cheryl, Danielle, Tad, Patti, Jan, Pegi, Lloyd, Aaron

It was low tide and we even got to see some things in the few tidal pools at Cape Kiwanda.

It was a rather fun stroll on the beach with everyone, exploring things not seen at high tide.

Don, Pegi, Cheryl & I wandered back up the beach before anyone else. On the way, we watched someone pull a minivan out of the sand. As Pegi said, “They’re walking around the tow rope? I’ve seen those things snap…”

And me as the minivan came lose from the clutches of the sand: “Turn the wheel! Straighten it out! Turn, Turn, Turn!” (They didn’t) But you can bet your bottom dollar those words have been yelled at ME and *I* turned the wheel.

We crested the sand-covered concrete ramp to the beach. It’s there mostly for the dory boats and their rides: big V-8 trucks with trailers or diesels with trailers. But cars mistake the ramp for an easy stroll on the beach, too. As we walked up the ramp, we saw a parade of “professionals” some down it.

These guys were so good, they turned off the ramp into the deep sand before they got to the bottom of the ramp and the nice hard damp sand. These guys were not getting stuck. They were laughing in the face of being stuck.

I missed the first one.

But I got the other four. These are for my brother. And for Danielle, if she reads my blog.

Here come the pros (warning: these are not Jeeps. They’re International Scouts):

I’m a Jeep girl all the way, but there is something so nostalgic and real about the old International Scout that you can’t help but give these folks a “thumbs up”. Just drop the air pressure in the tires a little and put her in four-wheel drive, easy on the gas.

Terry & Danielle were not there to see the Scout Parade, so I took photos.

Sorry I missed the first one.

But here you go: not everyone who drives on the beach at Cape Kiwanda is behind the wheel of a 2-wheel front-wheel drive. 😉