Day 3

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By this stage in my trip my dreams were getting vivid and weird. People who know me will know that I like to relate my dreams. I told Kristi about how Roland and Cindy had left the expedition in a sports car, and she had gone off off in a taxi with her cat in a basket. I also told her that in my dream I had lost a lot of weight. To this she replied quickly and emphatically, 'That WAS a dream.' Thanks Kristi- you can talk after all those smores you ate...
That day all the volunteers would go on an 11 hour trip to River's Inlet with Will and Jackie. Crystal would also be coming, but we would leave her at River's Inlet, as this is where she lives with her family. Her parents own the general store and post office as well as some cabins which fishermen could rent out. The biggest lure for us was the fact that we would have a warm shower, oh and that we could see whales on the way. There had been no sightings of Boomerang- apparently he was around the bay but he is a bit shy.

Now the 11 hour journey would not have been so long in most boats; Stardust does 8 miles an hour max. We also had to stop regularly to check for mysids. The news on this was good, most beds had some mysids, and some had very healthy populations. This was a stark contrast to the previous year.
The start of the journey was very, very misty, so we weren't allowed on top as they had to use the radar. This meant we had to sit in the more sick-making places, and Miki managed a stupendous spewing of her breakfast. And she still smiled afterwards.

Shortly after we came out of the mist we had our first and only sighting of a grey whale. It was Jo Jo, who had been sighted close to this spot on an earlier trip this year. It is very hard to get good pictures of grey whales feeding, as you can see.

After many more hours of travelling, we eventually got another opportunity to say 'Dar she blows' This time it was a humpback, having a fabulous time in the evening sun breaching, fin flapping( it really looked like it was clapping) and waving. This sighting made the long journey all worthwhile.

After this we kept asking Crystal whether we were 'nearly there'. It seemed really weird that we were only a few miles from the place where she had grown up and she didn't recognise anything. She seemed to have rarely left the log house which was her home, and when she did it was to go in the opposite direction which was closer to a road, an airport, and civilisation. After aout 12 hours of travelling it waas beginning to get cold. Miki produced some japanese sweets from nowhere just at the right moment to raise our spirits. We managed to talk to Miki a little more, she is a manager in a department store, we think, and she lives at home with her parents and brother. As she was able to open up, she commented that it was going to be cold out on deck at night. She thought we were going to sleep on th boat! At least the rest of us had had the image of that hot shower and warm bed at the end; she was still smiling and believed we were sleeping on the boat!

Will had to ring ahead and order the beer. Even in this very remote outpost Crystal's mum feared being caught selling alcohol after 9pm. We eventually arrived, and Crystal's mum opened up to sell us sweets and tourist tack. It was like we had not seen sweets for months, even years; we practically bought the store. I don't even eat that many sweets at home.

Jackie had already made the chilli on board so will only had to warm it up. I can honestly say I have never tasted such good chilli, and such nice wine-nothing to do with the long journey. And we all had showers! We looked so different. Some of us, or perhaps it was mainly me, also began to laugh hysterically at nothing at all. Well, I had had ice cream. And we had running water and a proper loo!

Time for bed...

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