Family Trip to Inlet, NY

In years past we have had the wonderful opportunity to get up to visit my parents at their camp on Fourth Lake in Inlet, NY. This year however was a little different. Instead of our regular mid- summer visit, we had to settle for this past Thursday (September 3rd.) And when I say settle, I don't mean it in a bad way at all. I Just mean that we were not able to be there when many of our other family members were there. So we had to settle for the next best thing! Plus it was great to visit with my Dad for the weekend.

Anyway - the ride up was great! We saw plenty of wildlife that included deer, turkey, a pair of bald eagles and a coyote. In fact I was beginning to believe that we would see a bear at any moment. But that didn't happen till the end of our stay.

The fishing was good and everyone that wanted to catch fish, caught fish. I played the role of guide for most of our stay. I put worms on hooks, took fish off of hooks, released fish back into the water, and gave some great advice, like "Make sure you look behind you before you cast." We all caught our share of perch, rock bass, smallmouth and largemouth bass, and sunfish.

We did other things too of course. We took walks into the town of Inlet to get donuts and bread one morning. Ice cream the next evening. We swam at the beach almost every day. We took a hike into Ferd's Bog. And we took the "barge" down to Old forge and back. I even got to explore a small stream for small wild brook trout and landlocked salmon. But that turned out to be more of a bush whacking adventure than a fishing adventure. But I did get to fish my new 2 weight Beaver Meadow fly rod. And it performed great!! I can't wait to get a nice Oatka brown on it.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened on our trip, happened on Saturday evening. We had put Katie and Ethan in bed and were making our way out to the dock to fish. On our way out, I heard some noise in the tree that is maybe 10 feet or so from the front doors of the camp that look out to the lake. In fact we pretty much walked right under the tree when we made our way out to the dock. After we got out to the dock and began to fish I heard some more noise and saw lots of shaking branches. My dad, who was still inside the camp with Jake, opened the doors that looked out to where we were fishing and loudly stated that there was a bear in the tree! A bear? What a relief....I thought it was an extremely large squirrel ready to lunge in a desperate attempt to kill us with his large nut cracking teeth. At that point the bear made some more noise and shook more branches. Apparently the bear did not like the idea of being caught between us and my dad and Jake. My dad then asked what we were going to do. I said we were going to stay right where we were. I'm not one for making a run for it and giving the bear the idea that I might be it's prey trying to flee. Besides, the bear was the one in the tree. He was more afraid of us, than we were of him. At least that is all I could come up with at that point. Meanwhile my dad was now outside standing almost direclty under the tree with Jake in hand looking up at the bear. At this point I was thinking that I might end up on the evening news having the dreaded task of telling the viewing audience what went wrong in a seemingly harmless situation. But the bear just made a low menacing hissing noise. The very kind of noise you would think a wild animal would make when it's trapped or really really mad. At this point I had my dad go get a flash light for us. Hey, we needed light and my dad was obviously feeling brave. After the flash light delivery my dad and Jake made it safely back into camp. They stayed there for a little while(possibly thinking up more stunts to pull) and it was at this point that I heard a scrapping sound on the tree. It was the sound of the bear coming down out of the tree. Colleen was near by and saw the bear start to move on it's way. My dad, who obviously wanted to let the bear know who was boss, yelled "hey bear!" It's my guess that that's what you say to a bear if he isn't going fast enough. Again, for brief second, I saw my self sitting in a chair talking to Diane sawyer or Charles gibbson or whoever does those morning TV spots. It was a good thing that the bear had better things to do! I really didn't want to have to come up with an explanation for this. I mean what would I say?

That's pretty much it. We left the next morning having had a good time and our limbs still intact.
Now it's time for school and those sorts of things. And hopefully soon a run of salmon and trout!