Hello Everyone - hope you all had a good 4th! I had to work but it was a good day - good group of people and I got back to camp early enough in the day to enjoy the cook-out they had for all of the staff. I guess when it gets dark they will have the fireworks! Ended up having to work one of my days off this week on Thursday, but on my Friday off I did something different for the first time - I went "hiking"!! Had my first encounter solo with a grizzly while I was up there - talk about the hair standing up on the back of your neck. He was across a creek from where I emerged from some woods. He was digging along the edge of the water - stopped and looked up at me and then went on about his business. I back stepped into the woods and went further towards the road before coming out of the woods again. He had gone the opposite way. Got some pictures of him, though.

It is REALLY good to read your blogs - keep 'em coming!

. . . . it continues


It is June 26th at 1:50 in the afternoon and I must head out soon - the trail calls. A new day in the wilderness and I think I shall go back to my old bait. Yesterday's didn't work as well. The good thing about the bait and the catch is that it is never the same. I had been using the same bait for two weeks - and it has worked well - but I changed strategies yesterday and it did not work as well. No one wanted to get their picture taken with me when we were back safely off the road and their gratuities were not up to par. So it is back to the old red wigglers and barbless hooks. I find great joy in just being able to make tracks toward the high one every day. It is like falling from the heights of the eagle at Six Flags with arms stretched high and a scream of terror coming from a face that will soon be all smiles. But to set the hook on 20 to 30 people and have them all eating out of your hand is quite exhilarating. Just like the wide, wide world of sports - you know the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. I have had both. Twice I have been asked if I am Amish and yesterday I was asked if my wife was Amish, which was a first. I guess I should stop telling people that I am from Cooks Mills, a small Amish community in central Illinois!! The trick is to chum with lots of facts and figures to start with but you need to keep a close eye on them in the review mirror. If they start to nod, I throw in a quick story about some Paul Bunyan type local that was the first to climb Mt. McKinley with a pack full of jelly donuts, Pepsi cola and carrying a 14 foot long flag pole to raise his gangs colors on. They all love these stories but you have to be very careful not to give them too much homespun all at once. There might just be a brave soul sitting in the back of the bus that you didn't recognise as such when they got on. That is the first thing you do each trip out as they give me their ticket - I always look them over very closely and make sure that I have only vacationers getting on the bus. For the most part, they are easy to spot - most have that "where's your mother" look about them or the dreaded fly-catcher face with mouth open, humped shoulders, pants pulled up way past their waist giving them the nine inch high water look. I've learned to spot most of them before I ever get off the bus to greet them. I sit up much higher than the group standing there awaiting their journey and can look down on them when I pull up. If I see that with every other person standing there I can only the top of heads then I know I have all fly-catchers and their wives. Now, a fly-catchers wife wouldn't dare ask a question of me without first elbowing her pet fly-catcher at least four times and asking him the question loud enough for the bus behind us to hear, so this gives me lots of time to drift back to the facts and figures - not one of my stories here - too many back-woods stories all at once and they will get brave and start to think they know me (or more than me). Then the first thing you know they will ask, rather skeptically, "Are you from Alaska"? That is when I have to show them some of what I am using for bait. I've only had this happen four or five times and it is always when we stop for a break and one who has become brave will attempt to trip me up and ask me what the Latin pronunciation of grissley
is. Without hesitation I will tell them Urssus Arctos. This is a trick question because they have all been told this earlier by a park ranger - this brave traveler if just seeing if I know. They figure that when I don't, THEY can tell ME - right after they rip off their shirt and expose their blue chest with "super vacationer" written in capital letters. This in turn, they think, will give them some sort of super powers, just like when they are mowing the lawn at home and they cannot hear their wife yelling at them to not throw grass into her flower garden. I've had a few of these super vacation heroes before. They are the easiest to spot for when they first get on the bus they find a need to tell everyone else that they are on vacation and have been for five weeks already - like this will give a higher pecking order among the other passengers. Invariably, at the first stop, they will get off the bus and wait for all the rest to get off and then, with a smile that would rival the Joker from Batman and one hand tightly gripping their collar ask, "so, can you tell me the Latin name for grizzley?" At first I give him that 'deer in the headlights' look - like I've just been asked the 64 million dollar question and I don't have a clue to the answer - and then, just as he starts to rip the front of his shirt open I'll say Urssus Arctos - but it is too late for him to stop - he's already ripped the first three buttons and half the sleeve off and then he realizes that my Latin pronunciation rivals even that of Vinnie (the Pope) and he stops in mid-rip and returns to his fly-catcher posture. Now he must go back to the back of the bus and tell his wife that I must have studied for the priesthood because my Latin is impeccable and all she wants to know, with her elbow penetrating his ribcage like a locomotive wheel crank, is how did you tear your shirt!

It doesn't matter in which order I cast out bait or if I just chum big or little pieces a bit, the trick is not to set the hook until I am on the way back - to keep them steadily feeding and presently I have gotten really good at it. Tell them something unbelievable when we first start out, which I do, like "Today is my first day" They all know in their hearts that this cannot be true. There is no way the National Park Service would let them be taken out into the wilderness by someone who had never been there before. So it's lots of "Sure, we know, sure" The chum is in the water and they are all swimming around the bait. So for the next seven hours I chum and cast with facts and figures and stories of gold and back woods adventures and the names of plants and trees, animals' habits - if they migrate or change color in the winter - do the wolves eat them or can a grizzley outrun a dall sheep and that we have 37 mammals, 167 birds, 670 plants and one amphibian. And on and on and on I go until I think they can hold no more. We are on the way back, just before we go back over Polychrome, which is a mountain sitting about 6,000 feet high with no guard rails on the road and just enough room for one bus to get down in most places. The way is straight down and around and down. This is a great time to set the hook because all are very quiet and scared - some hide their head under their coat and won't look. This is a great time to act like I am not paying attention and that is when I tell them I am from Illinois - a little town called Cooks Mills and that today really is my first day and I make them all believe it too. I know I've done a good job of feeding them info and that they believe me by the way then applaud and cheer. When we get back, even the super vacationer's wife wants to get her picture taken with me and her shirt-torn fly-catcher husband. Life is good.