Oregon's Bonneville Fish Hatchery and Dam

We took a side trip to the Bonneville Fish Hatchery and Dam on the fourth of July. We had packed up camp and were in fine explorer mode that morning. The chinook and coho salmon fish hatchery is just downstream from the dam and has beautiful buildings and landscaping. This is a huge operation.  

You can feed the rainbow trout. They are pretty. Dad will be real happy that my polarizer filter did such a good job on this picture!

Herman the Sturgeon, an 11-foot creature, lives at the hatchery along with some huge sturgeon friends of his. One of his friends is passing in front of Holls in this picture. And here comes Herman...

I think he's pretty cute with those hanging whiskers!

Wowzer! Aren't they huge beasties?!

Wow for the beautiful flowers and landscaping, too!

So this is the Bonneville Lock and Dam. It's sooooo powerful!

Water running through the dam powers generators, which power these turbines (above), which are basically huge propellers, to produce electricity. Pretty amazing.

Behind Rob are the fish ladders - they look like water steps. They let the fish get past the dam so they can get back to their spawning grounds.

And the fish continue swimming up these mazes. It was really fun to see. There's an underwater view room down below this and every now and then, you can see fish through a window underwater swimming upstream through the ladders. They have to work hard!

This is above the fish ladders, and is where the fish come out after they've made it through the ladders. It's really quiet and peaceful at this point! We had a great time and learned a lot at the dam and fish hatchery.

 

 

No flower picture, you say? Well, if you insist! I'll end with these pretty day lilies. The grounds around the dam were beautiful, too, and there were many kinds of flowers, to my delight. :)