Hello, snow bunnies and those needing to just get through, and welcome today to Skagway, Alaska! Located at the northern end of the Inside Passage, Skagway is a popular stop for Alaskan cruise ship traffic, and makes the most of its gold rush days heritage. Although Skagway today only has a year-round population of about 858 people, it once sported around 20,000 literal golddiggers back in the "there's gold in them thar hills" days in the late 1890's. But today the beans aren't here to display untold wealth and enough treasures to make both King Tut and Mr. T blush - nope, today we're showing off this unique contraction - yes, it's rotary snow plow #1, the biggest snow plow you're going to find this side of the North Pole. This 129-ton bad boy was originally built back in 1899, and served the local railroad for 65 years before retirement. Pretty wild, ain't it? As you may very well expect, the beans were thrilled to check out such a large snow plow, and are immensely jealous that they don't have one of these keeping their streets back home clean. Maybe we'll need to petition the city...

Here the beans get up close and personal with the blades of the plow, where they're mighty glad to tell you that these photos were taken in the middle of summer, where there wasn't a single snowflake anywhere in sight. And that's a good thing, too - you'd hate to see what the beans look like when they've been plowed...although if you had a little onion, some Tobasco, and maybe a big bag of Doritos, you could invite a couple of friends over and...oh, wait! What am I saying? Forgive me, dear frijoles - forgive me... Anyway, the beans had a swell time in Skagway, and even though I dared to make a wisecrack about their possible demise into a bowl of bean dip, they still managed to keep a positive attitude and their usual pleasant demeanor. Just don't expect them to pick up a snow shovel any time soon...