Day 12- Marys Basin, Still.
We woke up fully rested to a gorgeous
morning with bright sun and not even a breath of wind. There wasn’t even a ripple against the boat
hull all night and I didn’t even wake to check the anchor, a rarity for me. After our showers, we all loaded in the
dinghy and crept our way over the low tide delta until we found the main creek
channel and slowly made our way up to the waterfalls. It was a beautiful scene. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
Connor and Tanner climbed and explored while
Val, Lucky, and I just soaked it all in and documented our excursion with video
and still cameras.
After many smiles, we floated back down the
creek until we grounded ourselves on a shell beach and dug for clams for a
while. Success. Now, we have mussels and clams for a recipe
Val has been planning. It also calls for
crab but they have been elusive and we ate the last of our stocks in leftover
Crab Carbonara for lunch today, along with FBLTs (rock fish, bacon, lettuce,
and tomato sandwiches).
As we were digging for clams, Val, our
professional wildlife spotter, saw a bear across the creek. Learning from our wolf encounter, we made
sure the dogs were nearby. The bear was
too far away to get any great pictures and we decided not to bother him in our
dinghy hoping he would stay foraging on the beach while I ate my lunch and
donned the kayak. As we puttered back to
the boat, we saw another bear on another beach and watched him while we ate our
FBLTs.
Destined for great bear pictures, I launched
the kayak and set out with cameras in hand.
Unfortunately, the tide was rising fast and the beach had disappeared
along with the bears. I still had a
beautiful paddle. While I was at my
furtherest point away from the boat, about a mile, I’d say, I heard Tanner
barking and realized he was out in the middle of the bay playing cat and mouse
with two seals. He was a long, long way
from the boat. It’s not uncommon for him
to go for an hour swim and even swim out of sight and we’ll have to go get him
in the dinghy. This time, I rowed over
to him and we worked our way back to the boat together. Val said he had been swimming for about a
half an hour to 45 minutes. He seems as
comfortable in the water as he does snoozing on his rug.
Back on the boat, Connor was doing his
schoolwork and Val was playing Scrabble with her imaginary friend. I still don’t know if her friend is a male or
female but she tends to spend a lot of time playing Scrabble with him/her. I poured over charts and guidebooks while baking some bread from scratch. We liked this spot and had a very nice,
relaxing day in the sun and decided not to move on today. Hopefully, I can get everybody’s butt out of
bed early in the morning and go do some serious salmon fishing.
The sunset tonight was AMAZING! The picture doesn’t do it justice. “Red sky at night…sailor’s delight!
