Smoke On The Mountains...

Not the song. We woke up this morning to what looked like a heavy overcast... nope, smoke. The fire southeast of us is still burning; no breeze this morning, combined with a high pressure system, and the smoke filled the Jackson Hole Valley...


The smoke got heavier as we drove south, towards the fire. The traffic in the park and south into Jackson was light. We walked around town, visited the dentist, lunch at Mountain High Pizza Pie, a stop at the hardware store to try to find stuff to make a furler for the kayak sail (no luck), and grocery shopping.

By late afternoon, when we were ready to head north to the coach, the wind had become light, out of the west southwest... just enough to clear a lot of the smoke out of the valley. Back home, I took little Izzy for a walk. She came across a finch and ran for it... almost caught it, with a flailing leap in the air. The bird flew into a nearby tree, chirping at Izzy. Little Iz crouched near the tree, chattering back at the bird. Shortly, another bird came to the tree... then another... and another... and a bunch of 'em.

"Um, Izzy, this is starting to look like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, "I said. Time to move on. Izzy was ready to take them all on, but I coaxed her away. She strutted back to the coach... quite the jungle cat.

The last meal cruise...

It was another beautiful morning as I prepped the cruise boat...


Not my last meal cruise, but the last breakfast cruise for my favorite young first mate, Jill. She is a delight to have on the boat - hard working, energetic, and a great sense of humor (a quality necessary for our boat crew). Here is a photo of her with Chef Mark...


And a photo of Jill with her favorite Captain...


She is heading back to college in Texas. I will miss her youthful exuberance, and trying to make her laugh on the boat.

And a shot of the Elk Island view from the tables...


The fire that is southeast of us is growing - up to 2,900 acres now...


Another look at the sailing catamaran from the other day...


And a fun surprise: a Corsair F-28 on the lake. It launched at our ramp, we saw it out on the water, and they are spending one night at our transient dock. Sure made me nostalgic for Wide Open, our former Corsair...


That is a lot of work to set up that boat for only one night here. I heard that they are traveling with the boat, doing one night at a time on different lakes.

TGIF... today was our "Friday", the last day of our work week. We had a nice series of cruises today, finishing the day with the marina manager and guests on our boat; enough passengers to make it a two boat sunset cruise. It was another beautiful day on the water... two sunsets on the last cruise, and delightful guests. Nice way to finish off our work week.

More observations...

Yesterday started out cloudy, with potential precip showing to the southwest on radar. Looking at the track, I could see that it would likely slide to the south of us, and made the decision to go ahead with the breakfast cruise. Early, the sky was lovely...


The clouds built up after that, but breakfast went off fine. The guests were treated to a rainbow over Mt. Moran (and my camera was on the boat).

By the time we arrived back at the marina, the sky was partly cloudy, with plenty of sunshine and blue sky. It stayed warm and precip-free the rest of the day, even though the weather weasels called for a 30% chance for afternoon thunderstorms.

On the afternoon cruise, I came across an interesting sailing catamaran...


I later looked it up on the internet (Cat2Fold) - a 36' sailing cat that is trailerable. Takes a couple hours to "unfold" and set up. Double wishbone type rig, one on each hull. Open bridgedeck area, kinda like the old Mac 36 cat, but this one-of-a-kind boat has a canvas enclosure on that deck. It reminds me a bit of a MaineCat 30, without the hardtop. Interesting.

Also during that trip, we saw a plume of smoke on the horizon (may be a bit tough to see with all the clouds)...


Not that close to us, I'm guessing about 25 miles southeast in the Gros Ventre mountains. It's the first forest fire we've seen from the lake this season.

More stupid boater tricks, mostly the rentals... including one boat where there was a kid standing on the bow of the small skiff, an armada of kayaks and canoes turning/stopping in front of the cruise boat, and one group on a powerboat who got lost, returned late, AND their toddler fell overboard! The results could have been disastrous, but they were indifferent about it... we only found out about the kid falling overboard when I picked up the toddler life jacket that they had and it was soaking wet!

"Was this kid in the water?" I asked. "Intentional or did he fall over?" No one else in the boat was wet. The mother's response, "Yeah, I guess he kinda fell over." I had stayed after my late afternoon cruise to assist with this late/lost boat... it makes my heart hurt when people are so indifferent about the potential dangers on the water, especially with their kids.

When I got home (Joan had to work an hour later than I did), we had a visitor...


Little Izzy was checking it out through the window. When I took her for a walk afterwards, she was pretty leary...


"Didja see the size of that thing???" I assured her that it was just a youngster AND they don't eat cats. ;-)

A short day...

Really. I worked from 8:30 to 6:00... a 9 hour day. My shortest day so far this season. Only one boat for breakfast, and this wasn't my day as lead captain. A thunderstorm came up while I was out on the rescue boat this afternoon, and they canceled the dinner cruise. By the time I got all the kayaks, canoes, and powerboats headed in, I could see that my day was going to be cut short.

The storm didn't last long, but the call was already made. Joan was able to re-book almost all the people on tomorrow's breakfast or dinner cruises.

This was the first day that we could see a noticeable decrease in visitors. To be expected, as we get later in the season - school has started in many places, kids are back in sports... time to be home. We will see another increase around the Labor Day Weekend, and then it will taper off. Marina operations will close on September 18th, then it will take a few days to get boats out of the water and winterized. Less than 5 weeks to go.

It's official - I'm a sailor again!

No, we didn't get rid of the C-Dory. I ordered a sail kit for our Hobie kayak last week. It was apparently received by our company on Tuesday, then went through our "shipping and receiving system", where it sat for a couple days... apparently to allow it to "age" properly. So, this evening, the evening of my second of two days off, Joan had to go to the marina and discovered that it was delivered there... instead of to the employee housing manager's office, where our personal packages are supposed to go... and where I checked each morning of my two days off.

So, I will have to wait another week to try out my new sail... unless I can come up with some sort of insubordinate behavior that would get me sent home. And, I'm OK with that. ;) :D

The sail is red/white/clear; kinda reminds me of a windsurfing sail. Crisp. Pretty. According to the photo-copied instructions, optimum wind speed for use is 4 to 10 mph. Can't wait to try it out... our winds here are either calm or 15G30... should be fun!

A taste of home...

We made a trip into Jackson today; weekly grocery shopping foremost on our minds. We also stopped at a watch boutique to get a watch band fitted... Steph and Dan gave me a nice watch for Father's Day that needed the band taken in. I just found the watch place last week and asked the owner if he could make the adjustment when we would be in town next. He did it in just a few minutes and complimented our daugher on her good taste in watches.

Town was just as packed as usual. Still no sign that the season is slowing down. We had lunch at an authentic Mexican restaurant... not the spicy Tex-Mex stuff we occasionally get in the Employee Dining Room. It reminded me of home - a very nice change of pace.

Back to the coach, and a motorcycle ride for me... once again, Joan has to go into work on her day off to close the store. It seems like I was the only one on the road who was aware of the speed limit while riding today - people came up fast behind me, tail-gated, then passed on a double yellow line... one after another.

"Slow down, dumas, you're on vacation!"

And speaking of dumas(es) - the location of our coach gives us a good view for some stupid RV driver tricks. This morning, we watched a guy in a nice diesel coach jump the curb... then slam on the brakes, back up and jump the curb again in reverse, then jam on the brakes again, and slam the transmission into drive and jump the curb yet again! Joan said, "I wonder how many of their dishes are still in the cabinets?" All those moves looked pretty abrupt from the outside.

When I returned from the motorcycle ride, there was a truck blocking the road to our coach. I got around it by riding on the dirt... no one in the driver's seat, a small kid in the passenger seat. In front of the truck was another nice diesel coach who had somehow managed to get the coach into a site facing the wrong direction and was doing some "tree trimming" with the sides of the coach. I might add that there is a sign just before that turn that says, "No vehicles longer than 24 feet." I'm guessing this was about a 36' coach.

I went over to the driver to see if I could be of any help. "No, we are obviously somewhere we shouldn't be. I don't know how this happened."

I'm guessing he didn't pay any attention to the directions the campground folks gave him, made THREE wrong turns, and somehow got a 36' coach turned the wrong direction on a single lane road! Pretty impressive.

His wife came running up about that time... she was the MIA in the truck... apparently, she abandoned it on the road and walked back to the campground gate to see what they should do.

The easy thing would have been to back onto the road and drive out the short distance the wrong way (it's a one way loop). But, nooooooooooo... he proceeded to slam that coach around, doing more tree modifications and then backed the wrong way out!

Bet they're having a fun vacation.

Swat at a butterfly, stung by a bee...

OK, that's not quite the old Mohammad Alli quote. With a day off today, we made a choice to not do a darn thing. That's right, we didn't go to Jackson, didn't go kayaking, didn't ride the motorcycle, didn't do laundry... didn't do all those things we normally do. We did, however, spend some time outside under the awning; Joan in her hammock, little Izzy beside her.

I took Iz for several walks, including a trek down her favorite route, through the nearby empty campsites. At one point, she poked around a bush... made a flying leap at a butterfly... no contact. Then swatted at something else... the bee didn't much appreciate that and stung her in the paw. That's the first time something fought back, and she wasn't too happy about it.