Day #2 1/2

So after driving all night Tuesday, arriving about noon Wednesday, spending the night, walking across the famous Bridge of the Gods, it was time for us to say goodbye to Cascade Locks. Interestingly though we noticed this sign on our way out in one of the major stores about Jesse James, the infamous cowboy. It basically talks about how a Jesse James from Bonneville, Oregon, claimed to be the great nephew of the outlaw Jesse James. Then the photo of the old man is supposed to be Jesse James in Cascade Locks. I thought that was kind of cool.

Goodbye Cascade Locks...10 minutes later...hello Bonneville Dam! I tried to catch a pic of the dam itself (on the left) and on the right is the sign listing all the parts on it. But it's way too small to be able to read it. :( Sorry.

The Bonneville Lock and Dam was so neat! You can go to the bottom floor of the building and see the older, mature fish migrating up the river/dam to go lay their eggs...and then essentially die. They go through all this work just for their babies to be born upstream. It was so cool watching the fish struggle against the current, yet somehow keep going. The littler fish were not so lucky...we couldn't help but laugh as we watched all these swarms of tiny, tiny fish facing upstream but definitely going downstream!

On our way back we stopped by the Fish Hatchery, which main feature was meeting Herman, a 450lb sturgoen! Yeah, I didn't mistype that...450 pounds!!!!

But honestly I found the Egg Incubation Building to be the most fascinating. We watched a 15 minute video about the extensive process they go through to save all the fish. When the full grown salmon make it back to the place of their birth to lay their eggs, the factory workers get their eggs and fertilize them and do ALL THIS STUFF and watch them grow into little fingerlings. (They're called fingerlings because they're about the size of a finger)

Then they are kept until grown enough to put them into Tanner Creek which leads to the Bonneville River and then on to the ocean for them to live until full grown which will then many will migrate back home (to the place of their birth) in order to lay their own eggs. So cool, huh?

Above you can see the full length salmon under the ducks. These ones are kept purely for public viewing, but they go to such extensive measures to keep and protect all these fish. It's a miraculous process.

Yay for the bonneville Fish Hatchery! :)