Pardon me, honey, but isn't he nekkid?

So this was our first trip to Alaska - 1997 or something like that. I had booked the entire trip online - B&Bs, the car, flights, everything. I was especially excited that we were staying in B&Bs the whole trip, I found that appealing (before the fact).

We were driving around outside of Homer, completely drop-jaw awe struck by every beautiful, different thing we saw. Moose were abundant that year and I was cataloging every moose sighting on video.

So we were on this long relatively deserted road, looking for moose and heading, roughly, in the direction of our B&B to call it an evening. Scanning the horizon I saw what I at first, and occasionally since, believed to be a grizzly bear. Not very tall, actually, which surprised me, but very hairy. Then I noticed it was wearing a hat. And boots. And a backpack. And nothing else.

Being the consummate vacation-sight cataloger, up came the video camera. "Slow down, slow down" I begged, "They'll never believed this!"Angela is imploring me to please please put the camera down. What if he doesn't want to be on video. What if he is crazy and has a gun. I figured crazy was a foregone conclusion, but, hey, it's not like he has a pocket for a gun. Besides, if you're outside buck nekkid, your image is up for grabs. Some things are worth the risk.

So we drove by, I chronicled the sight, we talked about it all the way back to the B&B and that's where the fun began.

Booking B&Bs online can be tricky. You typically get a good feel for the establishment, but not always for the proprietors. These proprietors were extremely religious. Which is fine, usually, unless you're a couple of gay chicks excited about a nekkid guy/local crazy. When we first got to the place, earlier that day, it was obvious the male of the couple was uncomfortable with us. I know for a fact he had a discussion with his wife, presumably about refunding us our charge and asking us to move on. But the wife must have said something to the effect of "get over it" because he reluctantly welcomed us to their home. We put it behind us relatively quickly - we're on vacation, after all, and if someone is uncomfortable with us, that's their problem.

But now we're back from our trek and Angela, being a demonstrative Cuban big on hand gestures, launches into the description of our nekkid guy the very second Mr. Religious asks how our drive was."We saw a nekkid guy hiking! He was about this tall (gesture) and he had on a hat and hiking boots and a backpack and otherwise he was totally nekkid. His (gesture, gesture) were hanging out but his butt crack (gesture, point) was the first thing we saw. We thought maybe for some strange reason he had on a g-string (gesture) but nope, he was nekkid - everything (gesture, point) was hanging out."

Mr. Religious is trying mightily to contain himself but he is beet read and desperate for a phone to ring or something to get him politely away from Ang.

I couldn't help it - I was hysterical. I knew from the second Angela started talking that she was thinking only about our Grisley Adams, not the fact that she was speaking to Mr. Holy Roller. Every gesture and point compounded his discomfort and it was so funny!

Anyway - we get home and I show everyone the video of our vacation. The comments from the peanut gallery were something like, "ohhh moose, ohhh mountains, ohhh dahl sheep, ohhh moose, DIOS MIO!, ohhh moose... "