In 1927 I was ready with cross-country cars and a seismograph to explore once more the volcanoes of Alaska. Organizing an expensive expedition which called for a special ship was obviously out, but in the years after the Technology Expedition of 1907 I had learned many economies which I wanted to try out. Also I had two experimental and mechanical tests to make. The first was to set up in Alaska a seismograph, the second was to test Alaskan beaches with a cross-country car, with a view to building an amphibian boat. I had read in several languages on the subject of motor vehicles with boat bodies, and my 1907 experience of finding no anchorage on Umnak Island had convinced me of the need for a vessel on wheels which could climb up an Alaskan beach and be converted into a camp. So I started from Seattle with a low gear Ford runabout. I unloaded it first in Kodiak village, where there were only one or two cars, and made tests of driving it along beaches. At Kodiak the Agricultural Experiment Station allowed me to set up the seismograph in a vacant basement, and I arranged with a local housewife to operate the instrument. Aided by a sheet of instructions, she made tests, changed the smoked papers, varnished them, mailing them to Hawaii, and kept notes on earthquakes which were felt. The roadster and I then traveled by the local mailboat steamer _Starr_, Captain Johanssen, and sailed along the south shore of the Alaskan Peninsula to King Cove, visiting Bradford on the way. Disembarking at King Cove, I made runs on the beach with the car. With the aid of the cannery mechanic, I tried attaching winch spools to drive wheels, in order to haul the car up to grassy land behind the beach. No car had ever landed at the cannery, there were no roads, and the problem of getting from the wharf to the tundra, and from the tundra to the beach and back again, posed practical mechanical problems, the solution of which was to be useful later. We ran along the beach as far as a rocky headland, until we needed an amphibian boat in which to round the point and rejoin the stony beach at some place beyond. How that boat body should be constructed was planned from this experience. The superintendent, the physician, and the boatbuilders of the large King Cove cannery planned an exploration for me, with John Gardner as boatman and Peter Yatchmeneff as his mate. These two were on their way to hunt bears for an eastern museum and were going to Pavlof Volcano, the Vesuvius of the Alaskan Peninsula. I transferred my baggage to their motor sloop, the _Plug Ugly_, and we headed for Pavlof Bay.