Labor Day Weekend - Kings River

For Labor Day weekend Dori's sisters and brother were in town from Seattle. We did a camping trip up at Kings River, and Heather Yates came along and we all stayed in her sweet camper! It was so nice to have a warm place to sleep - even if it was a little crowded. We made John sleep on the floor...

Dori's mom came up for the day on Sunday and brought Guinness. It was perfect weather - sunny and beautiful!

Heather brought her 4-wheeler and we brought the dirt bikes. Everybody got a chance to get out there and ride!

Guinness was to scared to cross the water - so Chris carried him. He will only go up to his tummy - and since his legs are only 4 inches long, he doesn't get very far... But you can see the calmer water here by our campsite. The "rock" bar in the middle of the river slowed it down, and there were actually salmon pooling up in this area. They were well past their prime, but you could actually see them swimming around!

The only bad part about our camping trip was the "neighbors". There was a large party not really close to us, but they had several kids in the 10-12 age range that they apparently kept sending over to our campsite area to get our of their hair. The kids decided that they wanted to fish in the waters right in front of our camp (yes, it was calmer and that's where the fish were). So they crossed over to the rock bar you can see in the pic above, and were fishing, literally right towards us. They were casting their hooks right towards us! Now in Alaska, there are times when fishermen are shoulder to shoulder, and you know and expect that. However, Kings River is not one of those places. And, these kids were not fishing, they were snagging. Which is illegal. They also didn't know how to get their hooks out, so after mutilating the fish and killing about 50% they would throw the bodies back in the river.
At one point one of the kids decided he wanted to come fish on the other side of the bank - and he came over and stood in the middle of our campsite!! It was beyond ridiculous - and because Heather had her dog there, a golden retreiver, I went over and told him he could absolutely not fish in there, because I was pretty sure he was going to end up hooking the dog, who was very curious about this stranger in our midst. Some people camping across the river from us were watching them and started video taping them (people get pretty pissed about illegal fishing in this state) so Heather went over to inform the parents that their kids were snagging and that people were video taping them - and the dads just waved her away and said they didn't care!!

After the kids tired of fishing, they decided to ride 4-wheelers around - and again, our campsite looked like the ideal place apparently. So they kept riding around our camp. Very annoying, because the wheelers are loud and they stir up a lot of dust. The final straw came when one of them went up a little hill - again, in the middle of our campsite- and sprayed rocks all over Heather's truck. She kinda lost it at that point. Chris yelled at the kid to stop, and come back (he had ridden away) and the kid stopped, looked back, heard us yelling at him to come back, and rode away. At this point, there was one adult over at their campsite who heard the commotion and came over. Luckily there wasn't any damage to the truck and he told us he would not let the kids ride near us anymore.

Moral of the story - parents, don't let your kids ruin camping trips for others, just because you don't feel like supervising them.