Sunday, August 26, 2012

Day 12- Mary Basin, Still.


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!