Awesome Wednesday!!!

Normally Wednesday's aren't that great.  It's the middle of the week and usually the end of the week is so far away.  But, today was different.  Today was so awesome.

We woke up at 5:30am.  And today that didn't matter.  We had big plans for the day and it was well worth the pain of getting up that early.  We ate some breakfast, packed a backpack with 2 sandwiches and some other snack food.  Then we put on our puddle boots and walked over to our friends place.  They were taking is out on the boat.  It's something they keep talking about, but it hasn't happened until today.

We show up and bring everything down to the beach.  Carl brought the boat around and we hauled everything onto the boat.  Unfortunately the weather really sucked.  It could have been worse but it was cold, wet, and early.  Luckily that boat is equipped with a home made cabin with a heater and lots of blankets.  I hunkered down in there for the trip out to the middle of nowhere.  It was pretty warm, but I was still getting chilled.  My hands never warmed up either.

Once we got to our first destination, people started to off load.  This is where we were seaweed picking.  In all, there was 6 adults and 2 kids.  People started to pick their seaweed and put it into sacks.  I wasn't wearing any type of rain gear or anything suitable for going off the boat, but Tyler got onto a rock and started picking away.  I'm not sure if he knew what he was doing, but he got a full totes worth.

After a while, Carl went by all the rocks and picked everyone up.  I was told that different families have rights to different areas for seaweed and those rights were established hundreds of years ago.  And people don't go into others territories.  Carl is just a wealth of information about the area.  It was a good day just because I learned so much about this town.

And then we boated around and fished.  Tyler caught so many cod.  I was impressed.  He caught about 11 fish.  Some of them super tiny and some of them really big.  There were 3 people fishing and it seemed like there was always 2 lines in the water and the 3rd always had a fish on it.  The natives have a strange way of fishing.  This one guy kept bashing the heads in of small fish and throwing them back into the ocean, while not bashing the heads in of the fish we kept.  So the big ones sat there, trying to survive while he killed the small ones.  It didn't make much sense to me and being a person who is sympathetic to all animals, it made me a little sad.  I made Tyler bash in their heads so they would just die already.  Tyler just told me that he was actually just feeding the eagles but still, it was sad.

Carl took us past some native art work on the side of a rock.  He didn't know who painted it but he said it's been there for thousands of years.  He also took us to a pilot project he is in charge of.  I didn't understand all the details but we got to see a raft that was held 90 thousand scallop seeds.  Then he took us to see another raft that housed scallops that were bigger.  It was neat to see it.  I'm starting to think he knows everything.

We headed back to town.  It was pretty uneventful and soon we were home again.  I took a shower to warm up and since that didn't work, my magic bag is in the microwave right now.  We did get to see some pretty cute animals today.  We saw a mom and a dad sea otter with their sea otter baby, we saw a few seals, some eagles.  And now I'm looking at Kitten who is sleeping on the couch right above me.  I love this kitty.

We ate some dinner when we got home and now we are relaxing.  It's likely early to bed tonight as this morning was an early wake up.

I think I might eat a kiwi.

Sonja