No I didn’t say I was crabby

 

Hanging out with Jim and Scooter we learned that there might be an opportunity to get some crabs around Port Hardy.

Having never done this before, we decided to give it a try. Steve started studying the tides to figure out when the best time would be. For me I just figured you need to go when you can wade out and the water won’t be over my head!

We hooked up with Jim and Scooter and set out for Storey’s Beach.  It isn’t your typical beach as compared to the ones along our coasts. They are mostly rock and then become sandy so it’s a challenge for me to walk when I have my waders and felt bottom boots on. I think you get the picture – Tory slip sliding away!

Getting ready. It's already a lot of work!

 

We started out and Jim showed us what the red rock crab looked like and explained the Dungeness coloring. We also had to pay attention to size and whether they were male or female.

We started looking intently at the water and spotted a few red rocks. Too bad they were only as big as a silver dollar!

Steve and Jim on the hunt for crabs

 

Since we weren’t having any luck at Storey’s beach we headed to the beach at Carrot Park. Maybe we will have better luck at catching some of those elusive crustrations!

We started working our way out a bit and found some of the red rock crabs that were actually large enough for us to scoop up an put in our bucket. I really shouldn’t say scoop since you actually have to snare them!

Proud hunter, eh

 

I was walking behind where Jim and Steve were hunting and didn’t have a snare so I had to use my brain a bit to figure out how to grab the ones I was coming across.

Since my brain wouldn’t catch them, I put my gloves on and reached down to simply pick it up. Good thing I have cat-like reflexes so they couldn’t grab onto my fingers!

We did find something other than a crab. No it wasn't a mermaid, but a starfish!

Not quite a crab but what a starfish

We also had our own crab herders to help us. Well at least Izzy and Scooter thought they were helping. We think they were more about swimming and chasing each other.

Steve on the search, not so much for Izzy and Scooter

 

When we got a bucket full of crabs, red rocks and one Dungeness, we headed toward the truck. It took me awhile to get my waders and boots on to begin with, but when you’re motivated to go eat fresh crab and have a beer, you can get undressed pretty fast. Not!

Our catch which made for a great feast

 

We were proud of how well we did and Jim cooked them just right. We ate as much as we could and lots of leftovers.  What a day! Oh yeah Izzy had a lot of fun too. She slept well that night!

Operation Halibut

 

August 5, 2013

We set out once again to bring some halibut home.  Steve called John of JZ’s fishing charters Sunday afternoon since we had completed our work at the RV park. We thought a nice reward would be to fish rather than dig in the ditch.

John answered the phone and said how about tomorrow? Well sure we can do that. You know what that means, yap we have to get up at 0400!  Aw we can do it for the chance of some halibut.

We arrived at JZ’s boat around 5:45 and hit the water at 0600.  We enjoyed the ride out and the beautiful day on the water. The water was like glass which made it even better.

Captain John and his first mate Myrna (his wife too) were great fun and enjoy what they do for a living.  We hit a couple of places for halibut and had success!  Steve was a happy guy as we actually both caught our limit which was great. Now our freezer has halibut to keep the salmon company.

We still had a few hours left to be on the water so went for some snapper and lingcod. We journeyed to a couple of snapper and lingcod spots and at the second one Steve landed a nice sized snapper. It was my turn to get one as he put the pressure on me. I had to take his challenge to catch a bigger snapper than he did. You see I caught the biggest halibut!

So I figured out if I held my mouth a certain way and spoke the right words the fish would come. Well I guess it worked as I got one on the line and reeled, reeled, reeled, kept reeling, and finally the fish was at the surface. We were all excited about what it might be and low and behold it was a snapper. Guess what? Yap you were right it was bigger than Steve’s! Now I didn’t really care about that as we really just wanted some fish!

 

Red Snapper success

Funny how the Captain didn't kiss Steve when he caught one

 

We fished a bit more so John and Myrna could get a snapper as well. We ended up with a third snapper so we brought the poles in, secured the seven fish we had managed to snag, and headed for the marina. A great day on the water but catching the fish made it all the better.

Success on the water - Yippee

 

Captain John and Myrna were great teachers and hosts and we would recommend them to anybody that wants to come to this area and go fishing. You can’t go wrong.

Captain John and Myrna

JZ's mascot

Steve, Myrna, John and the big cat

What a successful fishing boat looks like!

 

 

Once the fish were cleaned, we headed to a restaurant at Telegraph Cove so the chef could cook a piece of the halibut for our lunch. Talk about fresh from the boat fish and chips! Awesome!

We arrived back at the trailer around 5:00 and finished processing the fish. We were happy, Izzy was happy and the freezer full! What a day!

There was one more place folks told us we should see on the north island before we leave the area. This place is called Cole Harbor and was a mainstay back in the 30’s and 40’s for whaling. There is a bit of Canadian air force history there too. We had a chance to tour a small museum and walk on the dock. There was quite a bit of activity for a town that has only a small general store.

A picturesque spot at Cole Harbor

 

We decided to hit the road once again on Monday August 12^th. Our freezer is as full as it can be and there are many other great places to see!

FILOMI Days You Say, eh

July 20-August 5

In our last update I mentioned we were partaking in the Port Hardy Filomi Days.  Since this is such an interesting name (by the way it stands for Fishing, Logging, and Mining) we headed to Carrot Park Saturday morning.  However our first stop was actually to watch the parade.

Remember this is a small town but they sure do have a lot of cool classic cars.  These are just a few that drove by us.  I think we were drooling just as much as Izzy does when these went by!

 

Nice Truck

 

A Cool Ride

 

Not as old as me, well maybe it is

 

A Cool Cadi

They also had several tractors which included a young passenger. Their task was to throw candy to all the kids along the route. Guess who ended up with some salt water taffy?

 

The parade included many fire trucks which came from neighboring towns. It is nice to see such great fire engines for volunteer fire departments. They should be proud.

From the parade we ventured to the park. The day was to be filled with entertainment, food booths, and volleyball contests. We found a great spot to take in all the activities.

 

These girls were part of the entertainment and their ages ranged from 3 to 20.  Pretty darn cute and one was a champion dancer from the province.  By the way this is Highland Dancing.

The Highland Champion is on the left

 

Dancing Wonders

Later in the afternoon several bands or individual singers performed.  This little cutie decided to give the audience some additional entertainment.

Movin' to the music

Such a cutie

 

On Sunday the festivities continued with more of the same however the hardware store boat building contest was taking place. The contest rules are simple. You take materials, build a boat, and then paddle the boat out to a buoy and back. By the way anybody who helps build the boat has to be on it during the floating. The contestants have two hours to build it starting at 10:30 and then they launch at 1:30.

Steve, Izzy and I wandered through the area watching as miscellaneous items were thrown together and end up as a “boat”. A couple of the groups were working hard but it was challenging for us to visualize that what they were working on would end up as a floatation device! Amazingly they all did, well sort of!

A homemade cataraft

The Styrofoam boat

They look like they know what they're doing

This will float?

Guess you could carry lunch with you

Cross Country skis for water, eh

 

The winner was the one that looked most like a boat when being built and the one that just couldn’t get very far was due to the fact that they would work on snow and not water!  Everybody had a great time and the spectators did too!

Heading for the launching point

This looks like a boat, well sort of

Wow we actually got done on time

They hope the Styrofoam holds

 

And they are off

Fun on the water

 

The skis just aren't working out

 

Maybe we should make one of these

The Winners, by a long shot actually

 

 

We headed back to our little oasis after the boaters all got back safely to shore. The view from our window is wonderful!

A couple of days later we went fishing again which of course we can never get tired of salmon or fishing for that matter! Scooter decided to hang out with me again while we were cruising to get to the fishing spot. Along the way we saw several boats that wouldn’t be bad to own!  This one was just a bit bigger than needed!

A little bigger boat than ours, actually it's a cruise ship

Scooter hanging out with me for the ride

 

We have been enjoying the golf course or I should probably say the torture we have been inflicting on ourselves on the golf course!  It is a beautiful setting however if your game is a bit off to the left or the right, you will be carrying less golf balls in your bag. I guess the good thing about that is the bag won’t weigh as much!

Hope it goes where I want it to

Golf course beauty, but also takes your golf balls

 

Actually our stay at the Seven Hills Golf Course has been great especially since Steve was able to trade work for our golf and rent. Well we volunteered to upgrade their electrical set-up for their RV spots. Since we were doing that we also moved the water so both electrical and water would be in the same spot.  I learned how to pull wire the old fashioned way as well as operate the shovel. The shovel became my friend for 4 days. Oh well it was my exercise!!

The Beginning

Izzy is cheering Steve on

The Junior Helper

The Professional at work, Izzy that is

Steve wishes he could bend like this

 

The finished task

The inspector approved

 

Izzy has been having fun as well watching the people come and go, wandering around sniffing as she pleases, and hanging out with her buddy Harley.  Harley is nine years old but still showed a bit of youth with Izzy around. She is also a ball thief as Izzy discovered when we put her ball out for her to play with. It’s a good thing Kevin (her owner and Golf Pro here) knows where she likes to take them, to her bed!

Harley and Izzy

Resting after a round of ball chasing

 

I think they will both miss each other when we leave.

We finished the task and decided to reward ourselves with another chance at catching some halibut and other critters with gills. So stay tuned for more from the fishing fanatics!! 

 

Grocery Store Follies

A Little Different Posting.........

How many of you love to go grocery shopping? Well if you’re anything like Steve and I it’s not at the top of your favorite things to do list.

Now imagine you get to have this wonderful task in a different grocery store every time you need to go get food?  The challenge before you is like tackling a crossword puzzle in a foreign language that you have no clue what it is to begin with. You start at One Down and think heck I should know that right? Well not true. You have to find the clues first.

So you start with grabbing a cart if you can figure out where they have the carts to begin with. When you figure that out you put your list in front of you and go for it. In the meantime your spouse is waiting patiently sitting in the parking lot listening to the local radio, chuckling out loud at the comedy program they are attempting to broadcast. Meanwhile all the customers arriving in the parking lot are wondering why is this guy from Idaho is sitting in this truck laughing?

Back in the store you are trying to figure out the store’s system of where things are and why they put the baking stuff with the paper products. Unfortunately you don’t have time to stand there and ponder this mystery.

Your next task is to try and read the hanging signs that might give you an idea of what is in the aisles so you can become more efficient in the process. Oh yeah, if you have midget legs like I do you can’t really see the signs unless you are at the end of the aisle to begin with so you just end up going down each aisle.

Now one would think if you are shopping in a national or regional chain grocery store the layout would be the same. Well not true. I think each manager has an evil side to them and they go visit other stores in their chain and configure their store differently simply to watch customers wander around aimlessly.

By the time you have half your list completed, you are either really hungry, thirsty or have to go to the bathroom since at least an hour has gone by. If this happens you have to decide can you wait or do you succumb to taking care of whichever it is. In the meantime your spouse is wondering if you were kidnapped and will be asked to pay a ransom.

You finally end up completing the list except you discover you forgot the second thing on the list. Now you have to start all over as you don’t remember seeing it when you were wandering aimlessly through the aisles.  Oh just forget it and put it back on the list for next time.

Let’s talk about prices for a bit shall we. We are pretty much normal people that enjoy having milk on our cereal, cheese on our tacos, and yogurt. I almost had to be resuscitated when I went to grab the gallon of milk, which is three times the cost of what I would pay for it in the states. You don’t even want to know the cost of cheese or yogurt. Let’s just say you might learn to go without dairy products or hope you become lactose intolerant!  Alcohol is something you might learn to go without too since the cost is at a minimum double of what you would expect to pay for it in Idaho or other states. It’s a good thing we don’t drink much!

You head to the checkout stand and of course you pick the line you think will be the quickest which of course it isn’t. Oh yeah by now your spouse has entered the store, found you and asked why it is taking you so long. You of course give him the sad eyes and tell him there is no logic in grocery store shopping which is how you think. 

You get the grocery bags unloaded and into your vehicle, put the cart back, get in and say “I need a drink”.

Welcome to the world of grocery shopping!