Day 48- Seward

After a late night of fishing, we slept in today til 8 am, and I made bacon + pancakes for breakfast (again).

We fished for a little while on the beach behind the camper, but didn’t get bit.  Then we went to town and drove Nash Road to see what there was to see. We pulled off the road on a “scenic vista” spot to see the bay, and seconds later, Deanna said “bear”.  Sure enough, a young bear was working his way along the guard rail, towards us. I eased the truck forward and stopped at about 10 yards. He kept working our way up to about 8 yards and looked like he might actually cross the roadside barricade (bearicade???). We took tons of pictures and named him “Wishbone” for two reasons:  the thin white “Y” between his shoulders on his chest and the fact that he was clearly wishing for us to toss him a bone or a doughnut.  We didn’t feed him, but I suspect someone has.  This will be a problem bear someday.  He wasn’t concerned at all with our presence and saw us as a provider of freebies. He’s only about 3 miles outside of town and living on a “major” road in the area.  Not good….

We went grocery shopping at the Safeway in town before returning to camp for lunch.

From Travis:  We started fishing in front of our camper, but it was way too shallow for us not to get hung up, so we moved down the beach to a better spot.  There Dad and I got a double on pink salmon.  We thought this day would be great because of this start.  Mom sat on the beach, read her Bible, and watched us fish.  Amanda hooked into one.  She started pulling it closer to me because I had the net.  She didn’t slow down for me.  She kept walking toward the beach until her fish was 10 yards inland where she yelled, “I’m not losing this one!”.  We put it on the stringer with the other two and headed out for more.  I hooked into one but walking it back to the beach, it got off.  I got another one.  This time I had clipped the stringer and the net to my belt loop so I didn’t have to keep going back to the beach.  Amanda was having trouble with the net, so I gave her my pole, and I netted it.  That was pretty cool that I caught and netted my own fish!    

Amanda went back to the camper after having no luck for a while.  Dad found a school of about 15 fish, but he ran several lures through the school, and he couldn’t get them to bite.  I was watching the water when I saw a seal’s head pop up.  A few minutes later I saw the same seal’s head pop up 20 yards closer.  I decided to head in to shore because having four salmon chained to me and having a seal chase me was not the future I had in mind.  I left the salmon with Mom.  I went back and caught one more salmon.  It was the biggest one yet!  We headed back to camp because we didn’t catch anything after that. 

We grilled up the pinks and then deboned them, and Mom made salmon patties for dinner.  They were delicious!  Mom’s awesome cooking combined with fish that were swimming 3 hours ago is a pretty good combo! 

After dinner I continued fishing.  I hooked one again that was extremely close to me.  I pulled it on to the beach, filleted it, cleaned it, and bagged it all right there.  After that my dad told me to go to bed even though Paw Paw and Brek would show up half an hour later, and I’d still be amped.  Dad caught another salmon while I was unhappily in bed.  Paw Paw and Brek showed up, so I got up, and then was rushed back to bed again.