HAPPY 4th OF JULY!!!!!
I woke up this morning about 6:00 AM, feeling that I had slept in about as long as I was going to be able to do today. Of course, the sun was up, but it was cloudy, and not that bright outside.
I made some coffee and worked on the blog, and was able to catch up to today’s post.
Today, we are going to the 4th of July Breakfast at the fire station, they are serving pancakes, sausage, bacon and various morning beverages. When we were eating dinner yesterday, we had made a plan to meet Ashley and Bryan at about 8:30 AM this morning at their place since it is right across from the Fire Station, where the breakfast is being served.
I woke Stephanie up at about 7:35 AM so we could start getting ready. Stephanie sent a text to Ashley at about 8:20 AM, but they were moving slowly this morning after yesterday’s adventures, so they were not yet ready. We moved the meeting time for breakfast to around 9:00 AM. We had a little more time, so I finished yesterday’s bog post and then it was time to head their way.
When we got to their place, they were still getting ready, Bryan was still in the shower, so we just visited while they were finishing getting ready.
Fire Station Breakfast
We headed across the street to the breakfast, which was $15.00 per person. This was also a fundraiser for the fire station. The breakfast was really good, the pancakes were large, and the bacon and sausage were fantastic. They also had a whole blueberry topping for the pancakes. We sat outside and enjoyed eating our breakfast.
Afterward, we walked back to our place and saw that preparations for today’s 4th of July celebration were well underway. There will be a parade at 11:00 AM, and several other activities including the duck race in the river at 2:00 PM. We stopped in at the Asta Gallery and were able to pay Sandy the balance of our bill since her credit card machine was back in operation. That will be good for her since today will be a busy shopping day with all of the visitors coming to town for the holiday festivities.
We visited with her for a while and then went back to the room to get some more layers of clothing. It is only about 47 degrees and cloudy, with a slight wind, so it is chilly to us. We did see several locals in shorts and T-shirts while we were walking to the breakfast, but I doubt they will stay that way for long. We actually added some more layers to keep warm. Sandy told us that she heard this was the coldest 4th of July in 25 years, just our luck. At least it was not raining….. yet.
There was a schedule of activities for today, and a couple of the activities we really wanted to watch were the egg toss, and then the salmon toss. But first, there was the parade at 11:30 AM. We took some chairs from our deck and set them along side of the road in front of the Asta Gallery store.
There was a lot of hustle and bustle going on in the street as people started gathering to watch the parade, and the participants and floats were gathering at the other end of the main street.
4th Of July Parade Float
The owner of the Asta Suite, Phil, put some of their metal benches along the curb next to our seats. He then went to make some “reserved” signs to put on the benches so that no one would sit in them before they came out to watch the parade. In that short amount of time, two different couples came up to sit on the benches, and we had to tell them they were reserved for the store owners. Phil finally came out with his signs and taped them to the benches and that solved that problem. It was a little amazing that people would just assume open benches were for anyone to sit in, there were no other benches anywhere along the parade route other than here.
We saw several people come by with plates of pulled pork nachos, with jalapeno peppers and cheese sauce on top. Ashley decided she wanted some, so she headed down the street to where they were selling them at a tent/booth. The parade started at the other end of the main street running though Seldovia, and there were a lot more decorative parade floats that we ever though there might be for such a small town.
Parade Float
Most, if not all of the floats had boating and/or salmon fishing as their theme, go figure. Many of the people on the flats were throwing out candy as they passed by. Most of the candy was picked up, but some fell into muddy puddles along the roadway, oops.
There was also a sections of kids riding their bicycles, and they were all decked out with 4th of July decorations. There were some really well decorated floats in the parade
The parade was over before Ashley actually got back with the plate of nachos, but she had been able to watch it while waiting on the nachos. Apparently, it took them three different times before the got her order correct, she only wanted cheese topping on half of the plate because she can’t eat dairy products, and they could just not get the order right with the cheese. The nachos were tasty, but really messy to eat.
After the parade, we put the chairs back on our deck and Stephanie and I headed to get some seafood chowder from one of the street vendors, we wanted something warm. It was lunch time, and the chowder sounded good. Ashley and Bryan went back to their place to get more clothing while we went to get the chowder at the same booth as the nachos had come from. There was a bit of a wait, but we got our chowder and took it back to our place to split a ham and cheese sandwich we made from our supplies. It was nice to be able to warm up the chowder in our microwave, it was not that hot when we got it, and had cooled in the paper cup on the walk back to our place.
Ashley and Bryan came back and brought Bryan’s friend Lance here along with some of the folks here visiting him.
Egg Toss Finalists – Catching Eggs From Far Across
We all visited a while on the porch and then headed down the street wo watch the egg toss, and then the salmon toss. There were a lot of participants for each event. Each time they tossed the eggs, they stepped back a step on both sides. It did not take too long before eggs started to drop. The last few tossers were actually quite a distance apart, at least 25 feet, if not more. We finally had a winning pair, and it was fun to watch. No one really got messy with the egg toss.
However, the salmon toss was next, and everyone got messy with that event. There is no way to toss and catch a whole salmon without getting messy. Most everyone rubbed their salmon on the dirt in the road to get them less slippery.
Salmon Tossers
They split the salmon tossers into two groups of fifteen pairs. They were lined up shoulder to shoulder across the street and across from their partners. The drill was the same as the egg toss, one step back after each successful toss by each side of participants. People failed pretty quickly with the salmon toss, the salmon were about 3-4 pounds each, and were just hard to both toss and to catch. It was obvious that the successful way to stay on the game was to catch the salmon using your arms and body, yuck!
Salmon Toss
When there were three participants left from the first group, they stopped that round and then started the same process with the next group of 15 pairs. When there were two pairs left from the second group, they combined them with the three pairs from round 1 and they all tossed in the “finals” , starting from the same distance that last group was at when they completed round 2, at least 20-25 feet apart.
It only took a couple of more tosses at that distance to have a winning team. But everyone who tossed the salmon, especially at any distance, were covered with slime and guts. We hoped they had somewhere to clean up, and possibly change shirts.
Duck Race – These Were All Losers Caught Behind The Land
We headed back to our place after the toss events were over. Ashley and Bryan had brought some leftover food from yesterday’s lunch back earlier and now they heated it up in our microwave and ate it while we were waiting to go to the duck race in the river at 2:00 PM. We lingered a bit before we left for the walk over to the race, and by the time we walked there, it was already over, but we could not immediately tell that because most of the ducks had not yet reached the bridge, and the finish line was on the other side of the bridge. Apparently there was some issue releasing the ducks, and most of them got stuck in an eddy along one of the shorelines, but a few had not gotten stuck and those were the ones that “won”. They were actually starting to pick up the rest of the stuck ducks, all of the losers, with large nets right after we arrived.
We walked back to Asta Suites to warm up inside and had a couple of cold Alaska Ales while we got warm.
Ashley and Bryan left to go back to their place to make some phone calls home and Stephanie and I listened to some music on Spotify while we sat inside, not motivated to go out into the cold, and now rainy weather to sit on our deck. Later, we did go to the Asta Gallery and Stephanie purchased something we will use as a Christmas Ornament for remembering our visit here, as well as a small glass octopus, which are seen a lot on the muddy beach bottoms at low tide.
Ashley and Bryan came back and after a bit we all headed to the Linwood Bar & Grill again for dinner tonight, hoping to arrive early enough to get our pizza we had missed out on last night. It was packed when we arrived, and we could not find a table. They had some live music, there was a signer playing guitar, and he was really good. Lance and his friends were there so we visited with them for a bit before we were able to finally get a table inside. It was right next to the speaker for the entertainer, so it was a bit loud. We were able to get another table shortly afterward, so we moved and it was much more quiet.
Dinner At The Linwood Bar & Grill
The only problem was that they were only serving from a very short and specific menu for today since it was the 4th of July, and crowded in town. They were only serving pizza by the slice, and it was not the pizza variety we had wanted to order yesterday, and purchased by the slice, it was quite expensive.
We had to order all of the food at the bar, they were not taking orders at the tables today for some reason. Ashley went and ordered their food first, and then Stephanie headed to to the bar to order our cheeseburgers, one with fries and the other with onion rings. Everything was pre-paid after ordering at the bar.
They brought out Ashley and Bryan’s food in fairly quick order, and they were finished with their meals and we still had no food. A waitress came by and asked if everything was OK, and Stephanie told her we were still waiting for our food, so the waitress went to check on it. She came back and asked what name the food was under, and then went to ask about it again. There was obviously some issue with finding our order. The waitress came back and told us our food “would be right out”, but it still took a while, long enough to actually start cooking our burgers.
Apparently, either because the bar was now about empty, or because he is sort of s “local”, Bryan’s friend Lance told us he was able to order a whole pizza. Of course, we had already ordered our food, and it was about ready, so it was too late for us to order pizza. Oh well, small town bar rules…..
The meals were good, Ashley had ordered a halibut ceviche with tortilla chips to try, and it was pretty good. They also had an order of wings and Bryan had a cheeseburger,
After finishing our meal, we were all pretty tired, so we decided to call it a day. Lance had told Ashley that the bar was a good place to by bagged ice, so I went to the bar and asked about buying some ice tonight to take with us tomorrow to Between Beaches. We could keep it in Ashley and Bryan’s freezer overnight. The waitress at the bar said they could not sell any ice today, they needed it for the bar service, which was a little funny, by this time, the bar was just about empty. Maybe they were expecting a big crowd later on, it was only 7:00 PM. I asked what time they opened tomorrow, and after some hesitation, she said noon. I guess I should have asked if we would be able to buy ice tomorrow, we will just have to wait and see what happens.
We all left, and walked to our separate places. There was no one on the street, and it was now raining fairly hard compared to most of the lighter rain we have had so far on the trip.
We watched a little football in TV back at our place, an old Notre Dame at Clemson game form the 1000 year flood weekend of 2015. The game was on the ACC channel on the ROKU TV system, which we had to figure out. We had one Seagram’s VO drink, using some ice we had brought over yesterday from Ashley and Bryan’s freezer. We had kept it in the small refrigerator, but as expected, a lot of it had melted. Luckily, we had enough for one drink.
We did some packing to try and get our suitcases back in order since we are checking out tomorrow and heading to the Between Beaches cabins, several miles form here.
Ashley arranged a 12:30 PM pick-up time with The Between Beaches Owner, which will be nice since we have to check out here at 10:00 AM, apparently more guests are arriving on the 11;00 AM ferry tomorrow. We had asked if we could check out later, but with the new guests arriving tomorrow, that was not possible. We won’t have to deal with our luggage too long after we check out before we get our ride.
We headed to bed about 10:00 PM, it had been a fun but cool day celebrating the 4th of July in Seldovia.