One for the Vault

Day 11:  Yes, this one's a keeper:

View from the Otter

One hour flight to a wilderness lake.

Short boat ride to where the trout are surely waiting and hungry.

Sure enough.  Caught ten.  (And lost another ten, at least.)

  This one was the first, and the smallest.  Look hard, you can see him.

That's Urs, the pilot, cook and owner of the Northern Rockies Lodge.  Urs and his wife came to Canada from Switzerland 30 years ago to be a bush pilot.  Starting with nothing, he saved and bought an airplane.  He now has four of them.  The Otter in the background is one of the last ones ever manufactured (1965).  Urs had it totally rebuilt a couple of years ago for a cost of over $1 million (just for the rennovation).  Almost everybody staying and working at the lodge is Swiss.  There's a great exchange  program between British Columbia and Switzerland that allows folks from each country to travel to the other and work without a visa.  Urs was a heck of a nice guy, a great cook and a wonderful pilot.  Never felt the floats hit the water.

 

They say you see the most wildlife when driving late in the evening.  They're not wrong.  On the three hour trip from 7:30 pm until dusk, I saw four black bear, two bear cubs and had to stop six times to let herds of buffalo pass.

Answer to the question: "Do you think he's eating healthy?"

Bumbleberry pie ala mode.  Mmmmm.

Amazing how you get onto the internet while on the road.  The Yukon motel has wifi for its hotel and RV guests.  It is done entirely by satellite connection up here.  No DSL.  The motel has security enabled, but I'm piggy backing off of one of the guests that has a computer turned on and does not have their wifi connection protected.  Thanks, buddy, whomever you are.