July 11 - Exploring Fords Arm

July 11 – Exploring Fords Arm

I woke up feeling better but with that ‘what did I do last night’ feeling.  A party the night before would have been a lot more fun.

I bet you can’t guess what the fisher people did; yep they went fishing.  Seven others went on an exploring adventure lead by Glen.   The plan was to go investigate an area where we’d read there used to be a cannery and then maybe a hike across to another bay …. a one-hour tour…. I said ‘don’t believe him, take a coat’, and snack.  He led us in the other direction …. go figure.  After going to the end of several bays, and seeing rock, water, and trees, oh one waterfall, which he knew about and thought we could walk to (not, it looked to be a couple miles inland), we stopped in Island Cove & Knoll Bay.  We saw an old broken down house on shore.  Finally, something to explore, so we went ashore.  The house was falling down but we could tell that it was a 2 bedroom 2 bath from many years ago.  The fireplace was still partly intact; it was concrete in base and once had tile covering it.  2 ½ tiles remain.  There was wallpaper on the walls (likely from the 20-30’s).  Also in the area were the remains (in much worse condition --- basically piles of wood) of several other buildings, at least one had been a house.   We tromped along the shoreline and thru the trees following old rusty metal pieces and found an old building mostly intact which contained an old Caterpillar engine.  Glen thinks that with a little work it would run again.  There was also an old compressor of some sort and what looked to be an old ‘saw mill’ with which to cut one’s own lumber.  Lots of old rusty metal parts and pieces.  We found a patent date on one from 1920.  There were three old and very large tanks (fuel presumably), and rail tracks going along just inside the tree line and passing all of the buildings.  The tracks also headed up into the hills behind and there was evidence of some old tracks along the beach.   This was very likely a mining operation.  There was also evidence of recent bear activity in the area… scat and dug up/roots missing skunk cabbage.  Some treasures (yard art) were gathered by a few of us.  Magic has a new ‘old’ rusty wrench.   Oh I forgot, it rained on us during part of this ‘exploratory’ cruise.  Back to the big boats …. 3 ½ hours later.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a Sea Otter fishing and eating not far from the boats so several of us watched him/her for a while.   A Sea Cucumber lunch.

 

Some of the fishers/catchers were back.  Gary was the fish killer king today.  He caught a 60 inch (about 60 lb.) Halibut.  The smallest boat with the smallest freezer now has the largest fish.  Lenore and Gary spent a long time cleaning and cutting up that fish.  Most of the work was done before the explores got back.   Lenore had zip lock bags of fish to each boat to share.  They are the sweetest couple!   Yikes their ‘food saver’ (vacuum sealer), got tired and quite working mid fish.  So Lenore came to Magic and we used ours to process the fish for freezing.  They will be eating Halibut for months this winter.

 

After dinner some of the group went to the end of the bay to see if they could find a bear by the river entrance where they had been fishing for Sockeye earlier in the evening.    Michelle reported that they saw a Griz.