Shrimping

Well we were back out to pull the shrimp pots today. Dad and I went out in the boat this afternoon. On the way out we discovered that the pot puller (and electric machine designed to pull pots up off the bottom) was missing. That meant we would be pulling in the pot by hand.

250 feet of rope later we had the pots on the boat. From the 2 pots we ended up with 21 ginormous shrimp.

They were both tasty…

And decorative…

Some of them were quite large…

Then we had to clean them before we headed back into the harbor. Here is a video of the procedure.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/shrimp_cleaning.mov 320 258]

Out for a hike…

With Katie off at work my parrents and I took off for a hike on the Gold Creek trail.  It goes out along the ocean making for a very beautiful hike.

Here are my mom and dad on the trail.

Here is a little fireweed with the ocean and mountains in the background.

The mountains around Valdez are quite impressive.

One of the problems with hiking this trail is the abundence of stinging netles on the trail.  This is a terrible plant that when brushed up agains stings you like a bee.  The sting continues to throughout the day.  Here is a picture of one of those nasty plants.

We hiked out a ways until the trail became unkept and the stinging netles out numbered the other plants on the trial.  We headed back towards town and stopped off on the beach along the way to have a little snack of apples and cheese.  The dog was with, and was pretty thirsty.  We didn’t want him to drink the ocean water, so I constructed a makshift bowl out of some big leaves.  My mom posted some pictures of the bowl on her blog.