Nettie and Piggle ride off this morning; they have to head back home to get back to work and won't be able to hang out with us longer. We're sad :( but then we go for a ride and we feel better :)
Three of us - Dawg Katie and I - head south to Klamath to take a ride on a boat. The Klamath River Jet Boat Tour company runs a fun little show. It's about two hours long, they take you forty-some miles upriver in a shallow-draft boat, for some pretty spectacular sightseeing. They throw in some spins and boat tricks for the entertainment value, so it's eight parts naturalist and one part rollercoaster. Turned out to be a great afternoon! The bad news is, we all forgot to put sunscreen on. I was wearing my cowboy hat, of course (and so thought I was covered up) but once we got on the river the stiff wind made wearing the thing impossible and it spent the duration of the boat ride in my lap. I got a WICKED burn on the part of my hair, which would bother me for days afterward.
The boat captain-slash-tour guide was a jovial fellow, pointing out animals along the way. We mostly see mostly birds. We spotted lots of osprey and osprey nests, plus a really magnificent bald eagle close to the river, who aloofly watched our progress as we slowly motored past him. However, at the beginning of the boatride we got an upclose look at the seals we'd seen from the overlook yesterday. As the boat cruised to the sandbar at the mouth of the river, all the local seals popped up to give us a once-over. Jean later said they "looked like rocks with eyes and whiskers"; I thought their noggins looked like little wet cat heads bobbing in the waves. They were as curious of us as we were of them. The passenger's cameras clicked merrily away as they would eye us for a while, maybe let out a small bark, and then ~flip~ disappear beneath the waves once more.
Anyway, Capt. Tour Guide gave good tour but he was not the most scientifically educated guy in the world. At one point he is talking about the redwood trees, sequoia sempervirens, and some of their features, and he says that "they are like a life form of their own, almost" which sets Katie and I to the muffled snickered laughter of Oh I Cannot Believe You Just Said Something So Stupid. Hey, dude, they really ARE a life form of their own! No 'almost' about it! I think he was trying to say something else, maybe the microclimates thing (and again, no 'almost' there either, they really do create their own climate) but he got mixed up mid-thought and the mouth kept moving after the brain had stopped. Still. It immediately qualifies as the Doofus Moment Of The Week and after that, we took to stating something perfectly obvious followed by an "... almost" and then bust up laughing. Good times.
Happy and windburnt from the river ride, our mission is to pick up some smoked salmon before heading back home. This part of California is the Hoopa Indian reservation; we stop at a little tribal store to make our purchase. The proprietor has some samples for us to try, which we gladly accept, since we're completely unsure of what exactly we want to get. There's one-day-smoked versus five-day-smoked fish, there's sweet (kind of teriyaki-ish) and spicy (jalapeno) and barbeque to choose from. We select a variety of salmon, and carefully pack it away in the Nomad's ginormous saddlebags.
Back in Crescent City, we stop at the regular grocery store as well. Having decided it make it a salmon feast for the evening, we pick up fresh fish and a cedar plank for grilling, then decide to have the smoked fish with cheese as an appetizer. We proceed to have a very serious discussion about what cheese would pair best with native smoked salmon. It was kinda funny if you think about it. :)
With Katie in charge of the cooking, dinner is fabulous. (I later find out she is very much the gourmet.) After food and cleanup, we spend the evening pretty much looking at maps and figuring what we want to do the following day. By now I have fallen entirely into vacation mode & have lost track of time. Planning now becomes less of a process of "get to location x by date y" but more of a "where are we on this map? and ooh what is this over here?"
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