Ruby and Moxy on the river headed to the mountains. The weather was beautiful all last week, as soon as we left for our camping trip it started to rain. The kids were really tough though.
Here is our first camping site. We are not far from the first mountain called "Three step". It rained and rained. Greg was singing the "Rain, Rain go away" song at one point. The rain definitely added another twist on things. Changing diapers in the rain was an experience.
Ruby is opening her mouth like a little bird, saying "Feed me."
Moxy staring at the dinner getting heated. Their appetites increased while camping.
Three step mountain. This is the next day. Still raining, but we are getting used to the rain at this point, and have decided we better enjoy the rain and beauty because things could still be worse, like thunder, or the boat stops working. (This did not happen).
Our boat set up. We brought the chariot along because it gave the kids a nice comfortable dry seat. You can see oars because we needed the oars when we could not start the engine. Our starter cord was not working correctly, and we lost our anchor when it got snagged on something deep in the water. The boat would drift in to the current and we would get swepped into trees and gravel bars, so the oars came in handy "kind of".
Enjoying a camp fire and eating a chocolate snack. The rain started to slow down, and surprisingly the mosquitos were not too bad.
Safe in the tent, the kids would have wrestling matches inside the tent, and Greg looks tired of being the referee.
This is the morning. Greg was trying to distract the kids while cooking and told them to check the fire to see if it was hot (Don't worry we knew it was out and cold.) Moxy really got into playing with the coals. It kept him very distracted.
Moxy really looks like my dad in this picture to me.
Bear track. We did not see a lot of bear tracks, but I know they were there. We frightened them with lots of loud noises coming from the kids.
Our second camp site. We are not sure what mountains we have a view of. We lost track of the river at one point, and were not sure where we were on it, but it doesn't matter because all rivers flow back to Bethel. :)
Moxy was throwing rocks into the river and fell into a foot of pooled river water. He got pretty clean, but wet. He is dry in this picture and much happier.
This chum salmon jumped up on shore. Greg told the kids that it was saying "Hi" to us. The kids were so excited. Ruby kept saying "silly fish."
Beautiful morning. We decided to go farther up river and test our luck. The mountains in the distance were very inviting on this day. Because our boat starter was not working really well, Greg started using the emergency starter, this made the engine start a lot more easily.
Ha ha. This is Greg using the oars because the emergency starter is not starting correctly and we are drifting big time. On the island behind us, there is a few Fish and Wildlife workers doing something. Probaly laughing big time at us as we turn into spectacles. There goes the Simmons Family.
Greg navigating the waters at top speed so we don't get stuck on gravel bars. It was like we were in a video game, zooming around, ducking from trees, manuevering around logs and floating tundra.
Bald eagle, near it's nest. Let us stare at it while we watched it from the bottom of the tree. Huge and Beautiful. We saw a golden eagle up close also. Much bigger than this eagle. It was eating salmon on the river.
We came across this "fish counter" also called a "Wier" near Three step mountain. We saw a sign that said. "Caution stay left Fish Wier, no fishing 30 feet of Wier". Luckily there were two Fish and Wildlife people standing on the wier. They told us to jet quickly across that small opening with the orange floats. Crazy. It worked though.
