A whale of a tale

After encountering a moose, we sailed on to Juneau and our fly fishing guide. We hopped onto a very small float plane and I got to sit in the cockpit with our awesome pilot. We were flown to a remote location and the plane flew off leaving use with our guide. Our guide treks us across a field of mussels to a rocky shore where the ocean met a small river. He then proceeds to give us the "bear talk" as he loads his shotgun with 12 rounds. 12! We were to let him know if we saw a bear so he could shoot it if it charged. I think I grew a little pale. We have have snakes in the Ozarks, but we don't have bears. He also points out the 10 gallon bucket and calmly tells us that if anything happens to him, we were to open the bucket. The bucket contained enough food for 24 hours, a blanket, emergency flairs, and a radio. Fortunately, the fishing was amazing and helped us forget about the bears.


We caught a fish with almost every cast! We were fishing for pink salmon which is considered small and inedible by Alaskans. They averaged about 9 pounds per fish and in order to land them, we had to play the fish for almost 15 minutes to tire them out. Once they were tired, we could reel them in without too much of a fight. All the fishing was catch and release so no fish were harmed in the making of this blog. Even Little Clover got into it, posing with a few fish from his rod. I think we also impressed our guide by fishing in the rain. The rain did not bother us in the slightest. We were in the rainforest after all.

Being wet in 55 F weather did provide the guide and I chance to talk about wool. He brought it up and talked at length about how great it is. I think there is a knitter in him deep down.

After making it back to the boat from an awesome fly fishing trip, we set sail to Icy Strait Point to go whale watching.

That's one of the many humpback whales saying "hello." We were surrounded by a few pods of humpbacks and they were just as curious about us as we were about them. They played by the boat, breaching and spy peaking in addition to waving their tails and fins. They are amazing mammals.

The next day, we landed in Ketchikan and I decided that when I move to Alaska, I will live in Ketchikan. It is a beautiful town. We saw the Lincoln and Seward totem poles. We went crabbing and Little Clover held a sunflower star.

It was attached to the crab pot and he asked to hold it. When the guide put it in his hands, he just beamed. He is a naturalist at heart.

We ate wonderful food, we saw amazing things, and we had an incredible time. We finally landed in Vancouver where we stayed at a beautiful hotel. The city was quite lovely and the beer was very, very good. Plus, the hotel had the cutest house phone ever.