Fishy Business & I Want Some Of It!!!

Jackie and I were driving up the California Coast on our way to Grants Pass and we stopped on the beach to take some pics. I was shooting pics of the scenery and I saw these two guys carrying something really heavy up the beach. My curiosity got the best of me and I thought those buckets were full of fish. I was right. The surf fish (smelt - a small fish) were laying their eggs in the shallow surf and these two guys were throwing out a net and capturing schools of them. Little did I now that the two of them, whose parents were from Laos by Vietnam, caught fish like this in their homeland. Their mom was at the picnic shelter getting ready to barbecue up a large mess of these fish. Yummmmmm! I just had to have a fish or two or 10!!! The whole family was here for the cook out. Here's the pics. These people were very friendly - they were Mong people from Vietnam. The grand mother ended up cooking me about 2 lbs. of these fish to take with me. She spiced them up with salt, jalepeno's and some chili pepers. It was delish!!!
Here's the whole family gathered around for the picnic and I'm right in the middle of it.

This is the grandma Mrs. Her (their last name) preparing the fish that just came out of the sea. See the spices next to the pan of fish? When I saw her preparing the fish - I was hooked!

This is Snoop, the pit bull, waiting for a taste - just like me. Yummmm!

Oh Ya! The fish are ready! And I'm hungry. These are small fish so you don't gut them. You just cook them whole and peel the meat off the tiny bones.

Here's the patriarh, Mr. Her who just gave me a cooked up batch of these surf fish seasoned w/salt, and hot peppers. I must have eaten about 20 of them. I told them I just wanted to taste a few - but - they insisted I take a batch of cooked fish. Well, since they had about 200 lbs. of surf fish, I didn't feel too bad. What they didn't eat they took home and froze. They had a whole bunch of other picnic food but I didn't hit on that - Only because Jackie was saying, "Mike, we need to go now". It was a real score at the beach.

Crater Lake Priceless

I don't really know how someone could stand and look at the crystal clear water in Crater Lake and not believe in God! The way that this lake was created in the caldera of a volcano and how it exists with no inlet or outlet for the water. More than amazing! I think my favorite part of the day was feeling the cold, cold, air from the snow when we were on our motorcycles but it wasn't cold when we stopped. I have often said in my heaven there would be skiing but you wouldn't have to be cold. Today was close to that! We rode our bikes 230 miles today. We left at 9:00 AM and got back at 7:00 PM. Lots of stopping to take pictures and of course talk to the locals! Our first stop was in Prospect!I was so excited to get to Crater Lake I didn't even want Mike to stop for a 5 minute cup of coffee on the way. Don't worry he got his coffee!

I couldn't wait to get in the snow. When the chin piece on my helmet is flipped up it reminds me of those huge bubble rings we wore in the 60's! Funny looking!

A snow angel of course!

We took so many pictures it was hard to decide what to put on the blog so I just put a ton of them on! Some may be close to the same but the beauty is...

We had to play around the snow for awhile!!!

The Rogue River is a huge river! Lots of people fishing. Mike got the scoop about fishing for salmon from the locals. One fisherman caught a 20 pound salmon in this river!

Beautiful scenery all along the way!

Praise the Lord! That sums it up for me!

Drive to Grants Pass

So today we had a short drive to Grant's Pass! We left at 10:30 and got to Grant's Pass at 7PM. 160 miles. HMMM. Before we left Eureka Mike noticed a tire problem with the trailer. We had to get a new tire. Of course Les Schwab in Eureka didn't have the tire. We had to go 15 miles up the road to a Les Schwab in McKinleyville to get the tire changed. No problem we weren't in a hurry. Off we went up 101 with a new tire. Things were going great. We stopped at a picnic area/information station along the coast to take pictures. Beautiful. Mike made some new friends that were net fishing. He is going to blog about it so I didn't add the pics on this post. 1 1/2 later we were off again. Then we stopped to throw something away. We got talking to the local bikers and left 2 hours later. It was fun!!! We are staying in the same hotel as a couple of bikers that have ridden from Louisiana! They are headed to Seattle. Mike had a Saints shirt on and they asked why he was wearing it. When he told them Steve played for the Saints they gave him their blessing to wear the shirt! :-)

And they say Paul Bunyan is a legend! Here he is!

Another safe day of travel! Tomorrow is a ride on the motorcycles to Crater Lake. It is about 100 miles each way! Fun day! Thank you for the answered prayers for a safe trip!