Sunday we went to church with the local congregation and increased their attendance for that Sunday by 200%. Church was odd... to say the least. The congregation was so small that the the Branch was considered to no longer be self-sufficient so Sunday School was taught as normal but for Sacrament Meeting a phone call was received from a Ward in Juneau and we listened in through a conference call line. While at church we talked with a couple young ladies who grew up in Yakutat but attend BYU Idaho and they told us stories of catching nets full of silvers, kings, and sockeye for their subsistence fishing and teased us by telling us that they "don't play with their food." They shared stories of seal hunting and how the hunters shadow them in the boats, wait for the seal to come up for a breath, shoot it in the back of the head with a .204, then hustle the boat over to it because seals don't float. After Church we were invited to check out the small smoke shack behind the church building where one of the families was smoking a seal. I was offered a taste... and let's just say I'll check that one off my list of things I've tried but will gladly never try again! But I am convinced that every Church building should come equipped with a smoke shack!
We spent the rest of the afternoon on Sunday seeing the local sights. We visited Cannon Beach, an area where the US military stationed a relatively large contingent of troops and defenses fearing that the enemy would attempt to take over the Yakutat peninsula.
We then drove out to Harlequin Lake to see this beautiful glacier fed lake that are the headwaters of the Dangerous River. On our way out to the lake itself we inadvertently sprayed ourselves with bear spray, just the slightest little puff... not a full dose... but it caused all 12 of us to go into coughing fits and spasms, made our eyes burn, and caused one guy to vomit. We decided that from that point on we wouldn't mess around with that stuff! Harlequin Lake is beautiful and we stood on the shore we heard the loud cracks of several chunks of glacier calving off.
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