One of my favorite local sites that we visited in Oregon was the Bonneville Hatchery and Dam. How interesting can it be to look at a bunch of fish?

Very.

The Bonneville Hatchery and Dam is located just an hour from Portland. As I mentioned in my last post, it's a great addition if you're visiting Multnomah Falls. Do both and make a day out of it.

As with Multnomah Falls and Mount Hood, we visited Bonneville multiple times during the summer of "Our Year of Living in Portland." The falls are majestic and Mount Hood is stunning, but Bonneville is just a bit quirky. I love quirky.

This "Historic Area" has cute cottages that remind me of Alice in Wonderland.

One of the best parts is the Sturgeon Viewing and Interpretive Center, where they have an enormous fish named Herman: Herman the Sturgeon. He's massive! There is an underwater viewing area for visitors.

The hatchery has dozens of breeding ponds for trout.

But the Salmon runs are the most impressive. The giant fish jump over locks, jumping several feet in the air, as they desperately try to swim upstream to spawn. They were really active in mid-August. The cute pug in the picture is Jewels. She belongs to our friends, Dave and Cath. They all visited us for the eclipse.

Here we are with Dan's mom, standing in front of a fish ladder. The fish climb up the ladder. I could watch fish climbing the ladder all day. It's mesmerizing. This isn't as weird as you think, I used to do animal observations at The Greater Los Angeles Zoo. The Bonneville Hatchery has employees who count fish to understand the current status of the fish population. They want to keep the salmon thriving.

We went on a free behind the scenes guided tour of the Dam. This is a great bonus for visitors. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers build the dam at the during the early 1900's and it was renovated in the 1950's.

It is here, that I learned about the most horrifying creature on the planet. Truly, this is stuff straight out of a horror film.

I'm talking about Lamphrey.

Lamphrey attach themselves to fish ( or in this case windows) and slowly eat them. They basically have a mouth that sucks on and these sharp, vampire like teeth. Additionally, they look a bit like eels and one of the few creatures that freak me out are eels. I think it's because they hide in crevices and dart out. I remember going snorkeling in Maui and being freaked out over the eels, sharks were no bother.

Lamphrey are infinitely worse than eels. And now I will definitely never go swimming in the Columbia River!

And the river...

The Dam spans both Oregon and Washington. It's easy to cross over and there are exhibits on both sides. Plan to spend a few hours at the Bonneville Hatchery and Dam.

I'm sneaking this in here, but when we took Dan's mom to these sites our day was epic. After the dam, we drove to the Hood River County Fruit Loop. This is a ride through the lush countryside, where there are many farms and opportunities to purchase local goods.

Cows hanging out by the side of the road. They say California cows are the happiest, but I think an Oregon cow enjoying the summer sun, takes the win. These cows earned the weather.

Dan's mom loves to knit and we found an llama farm with a store selling llama wool. Dan and I visited with the animals, while Jan picked out pretty yarn for her next project.

There are so many great places to visit in Oregon, make sure that the Bonneville Hatchery and Dam are on your list. Also, make time to enjoy a drive through the Fruit Loop.

In the first few months that we lived in Oregon, we were very excited about exploring the area, including making a day trip to Washington to see Mount St. Helens National Park. It was only a few hours drive from our apartment. Being from California, where everything is pretty much open year round, it didn't even occur to us that the park might be closed. We were able to see the visitors center, but the actual park was closed for the season, which is approximately October-April.

On a sunny day in May 2017, we put on shorts and drove back to see the volcano.

When the weather turns sunny, the Pacific Northwest is absolutely gorgeous. Here are a few pictures from our drive: sparkling blue rivers and lush green mountainsides.

We brake for Bigfoot!

Our Bigfoot spotting/photo op was at the Volcano Country souvenir shop, where we talked ourselves out of buying all manner of Mount St. Helen's tourist crap.

Tourist trap aside, this is a place you should stop because there is something else very cool to see. They have an A-Frame cabin that was partially covered during the 1980 eruption. No one was hurt in this cabin, as it was still under construction during the eruption, however it is still unnerving to see, especially since this is a fair distance from the volcano. It shows how far the reach of the devastation extended.

We had to stop and take more pictures at the official "Welcome sign." It's a great spot with a snow covered Mount St. Helen's clearly visible in the background.

I'm not sure what we thought we were going to do once we got there, but having already visited the visitor's center on our previous attempt, we just parked on got out. The parking lot was jammed with two types of people: people like us and hardcore hikers. If you want to hike, you'll need to purchase a trail pass. We did not come prepared for major physical activity, so we just took a quick, ten minute walk up the trail to take more pictures.

There was snow! You can see by the way I'm dressed, that I wasn't prepared for hiking or for chilly weather. Luckily, I had thought to throw my sneakers in the truck, otherwise I would have really been in trouble.

A few trail information signs. I love the one warning the animals.

A few pictures from our little walk.

On the way down, we stopped at the cutest cafe called The Fire Mountain Grill.

It was warm enough to sit on the back deck, where we had stunning views of the river. Did I mention how beautiful the PNW is when the weather is nice? It's gorgeous and everyone is in a good mood.

The food was amazing. We had BBQ Pulled-Pork sandwiches with homemade slaw and the most incredible locally sourced berry cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I'm happy to have seen Mount St. Helens and I'd definitely go back just to eat at The Fire Mountain Grill. We debated taking the kids when they visited us last summer and ultimately decided that the drive was too long for what we saw, that they wouldn't appreciate it enough. We might reconsider when they are a little older or if we could plan more activities around the adventure. I think there must be more to see if we had planned out our trip, rather than going on the spur of the moment.