Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery

We had a lazy Sunday afternoon so we decided to check out some local attractions. About a 40 minute drive east of Portland is the Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery in the picturesque Columbia Gorge. It had been raining hard all morning so the waterfalls were gushing. Em rolled down the window and caught a few waterfall shots on our drive to the dam.

....and an old favorite: Multnomah Falls
(mentioned in an earlier post, where we hiked to the top)...

OK, on to the fishery. This location literally raises millions of salmon each year which are later released into the Columbia River. The fish make their way out to the ocean where they live for 2-3 years before returning up the same river to their former birthplace to spawn and die. Here, they catch the spawning fish and collect the eggs for incubation to ensure a successful population of salmon.

This room contains stacks of incubators totaling approx 15 million salmon eggs!!

After the eggs hatch, the small fish are called sac-fry. They resemble an embryo and live off of a yolk sac attached to their ventral side. After they get a little bigger, they start to resemble salmon and are transferred to a series of graduated tanks where they are hand fed hourly.

They also have some rainbow trout transferred from another hatchery. See the end of this blog entry for a video of the feeding frenzy when you throw in a handfull of food pellets.

Here's Em with her new friend, "Herman" the sturgeon.
He is about 11 ft long, 500lbs, and 70 years old.

Another pic of Herman.

The Bonneville Dam

The dam has several impressive features. First is two sets of locks that allow boats to pass through the dam. The locks are large enough to allow barges to pass, yet free and accessible to recreational boaters.

The gates of the locks.

The second impressive feature of this dam is that not only can boats pass, but salmon also have a passage through the dam. The dam was constructed as to not disturb the pilgrimage of the salmon up the river during their spawning. How very Portland. (BTW, they don't salt the icy winter roads in Portland because the salt runoff can harm the salmon.) The "fish ladders" consist of 60 one foot high steps that the salmon can swim up safely. I gotta remember to come back in the fall to witness such a spectacle.

Fish Ladders

The third impressive feature of the dam is the hydroelectric power plant. In an age of green this and green that, we often forget that many of us have been using hydroelectric power since the New Deal.

Hydroelectric Power Plant

A retired turbine

Inside the Hydroelectric Power Plant they had several massive turbines running.

Overhead is the massive 300 ton crane that they use to move the parts of the turbines.

Video of the trout feeding frenzy:

Montana

Last week, I went on a work trip to Montana to visit two of our members' offices. We had an amazing time because the owners of the two offices were some of the most friendly people I've ever met. Plus the scenery was amazing! We started out by flying into Kalispell on a little puddle jumper plane and spent a few days there. After Kalispell, we drove to Bozeman. The next 4 pics are actually pics of Montana as we were driving the 6 hours between the two cities. We drove by this lake for probably an hour.









Downtown Missoula. Just in case you were ever wondering what it looked like. We actually stopped at a pub here where they served the local microbrew from Big Sky Brew.

The view of the mountains at the Bozeman airport. What I loved about Montana was that our views all around us were of the mountains like this. It was pretty much 360 degree views of the mountains. What a gorgeous state. And I thought it was just going to be full of cattle...

Colorado Snowboarding

During the first week of March, Em was in Denver for work so we convinced her employer to let her stay for the weekend to do some snowboarding. I jumped a flight Friday night to join in the Colorado fun. Coincidently, it was Emily's birthday, so what better way to spend it than snowboarding! Besides, I got Em a new Burton snowboarding coat (the blue one) for her birthday so it is only appropriate that she gets to use it on her b-day.
*Those of you with a close attention to detail will notice that she was actually wearing it in some earlier posts on this blog...neither one of us is too patient when it comes to gifts :)

We met up with one of my friends from high school, Chad Staker and his wife Brie, who are currently living just outside Denver. Emily was also able to meet with our cousin Dave White and his family (Heidi, Taylor, Jackson) and our Aunt Rochelle and Uncle Lee. As some of you may remember, we are especially close to Dave as he stepped up to the plate to perform our wedding ceremony about a year and a half ago.

LtR: Chad Staker, Brie Staker, me (with helmet hair), Em

The park at Breckenridge...more than a little intimidating.

Here's a few pics of Em hitting the slopes:

My favorite run at Breck, called "The Burn", is an amazing tree run on Peak 10 and usually is a great place to find powder stashes.

Here's Em riding through the trees on The Burn.
(See video below of Em carving through some trees.)

Keystone remains my favorite place to snowboard of all time....here's a pic from the parking lot.

Em flew back Sunday night, but I can't get enough of this stuff, so I decided to take Monday off work and stayed to ride with some friends at Keystone (again). I got there right when they opened in the morning and enjoyed about 3 runs with the mountain all to myself!! This is a pic of the fresh corduroy. FYI, for those that don't ride/ski, corduroy = the fresh grooves left behind by the grooming machines. It results in perfectly smooth snow that is extremely fast, fun, and predictable to ride on. Good stuff.

On the drive back to the Denver airport, I caught some cool shots of waterfalls. Unlike the countless waterfalls I have photographed in Hawaii and Oregon, these are a little different because they are FROZEN. If you look closely at the last one, it has a big waterwheel. Enjoy.

And last but not least, here is a video of Em carving through the trees:

Newport, Oregon

The second half of our trip to the Central Oregon Coast included a stay in Newport. We just happened to be in Newport during their annual Wine and Seafood Festival. Sometimes the good things in life just fall in your lap.

We took a walk along the harbor to see the fishing and crabbing boats. Some of them were quite weathered and you could tell they had been through more than one Perfect Storm. They each have so much character; this one proved perfect for a title pic.

Crab pots piled on a fishing boat. After watching "Deadliest Catch" on TV, I have a lot of respect for how hard crab fishermen work for their living. They risk life and limb all so that we can have some tasty crab legs and fresh fish for dinner.

We arrived at our oceanfront hotel in the early afternoon. We had a first floor room so the balcony was essentially an extension of the yard leading to the beach.

Here's the view from our room...looking out onto the Pacific.

This is the view north from our hotel.

We went out on the beach at night to get Zoe some more exercise (see video below at end of this post). The lights of the hotels glistened off the wet sand, giving the illusion of a wet asphalt parking lot at night. As mentioned in earlier posts, I can't get over how large these beaches are. At low tide, it seems you could walk half a mile before you hit the water.

OK, on to the main event....the annual Newport Wine and Seafood Festival. We sampled our fair share of clam chowder, oysters, crab, smoked salmon, shrimp, and any other seafood you can imagine. We also, ahem, imbibed in some of the local wines.
Here are a couple original seafood concoctions I have seen nowhere else:

Shrimp Burrito.

Fried oyster sliders
(sliders are mini sandwiches, for those of you unaware of the amazing phenom called White Castle...which does not exist out here in Oregon....boo)
Em and I powered down quite a few of these little gems. They were my favorite of the festival.

Just in case anyone tried too many of the wine samples, they already had a posse rounded up and ready to lay down the law. Sometimes I feel like I am not really that far from Ohio. :)

Having ate more than our fill at the festival, we went for a walk along the pier. There was quite a crowd gathered to check out these sea lions (who seemed to follow us up from Florence).

This one was posing for the camera like a champ.

Later we stopped by a little hole in the wall seafood joint for yes, more food. They cooked their crab in these large vats outside. Genuine.

Their oysters were only $1 each and had to be by far the largest oysters I have ever had. Here Kristina displays one such colossal oyster.

Before heading back to Portland, we stopped by Cape Foulweather.

The weather, however, was not all that bad.

More of the coast.

Devil's Punchbowl - a huge hole formed naturally by water erosion of soft rock.
(*Note the guy in the red shirt on the right....OK, I guess I am not too mad at him for being in my shot b/c it gives size perspective.)
This is not to be confused with Devil's Churn in the previous post (another area of rock erosion by the sea). Apparently they associate water erosion with the Devil a lot around here?? Someone please explain.

Another enormous beach.....sigh.

View of the coast from a high vantage point.

The black spots in the water (minus the rock in the lower left) are kelp forests.

The end of another great trip to the coast.

Zoe running on the beach (video).