After dinner at the Salmon Bake (their logo is, “Good Beer, Lousy Food,” but we enjoyed our salmon burger and blackened halibut quesedilla), we ended our day with a canoe ride on Bear Lake. Our B&B sits on the lake and has canoes for the guests. We started at the dock, where our host keeps several of his friends’ floatplanes. We then paddled down to a salmon weir. This was incredible — there were hundreds of salmon under our boat, jumping around, and turning the water red.

I saw a salmon stuck in the very shallow water on the gravel between the lake and the weir, so I decided to try to save it. Poor decision. First, the water was icy cold, and I hopped in barefoot. Second, salmon are wiggly and strong, and every time I tried to grab the fish, it wriggled away. But the salmon did make it to the deeper water of the weir, so I felt that my efforts were not entirely in vain. (Now that particular salmon can live to be eaten by an eagle, a bear, or a person at a later date).