Made it into Bellevue Washington around 2:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon. It was only a couple of hours of driving from where I had spent the night before, and all in all it was very pleasurable driving at that. Up through Yakima and on to Wenatchee and Cle Elum. From high desert the highway ascended into the high Cascade mountains until it finally passed over the summit of Snoqualmie Pass.
   The RV campground I'm in is just east of Lake Washington alongside I-90. It isn't a very large place, but they have managed to pack more than 90 RV's of various sizes into it. My spot turned out to be just slightly longer than my trailer with all the bikes and stuff hanging off the back of it. In addition it was a back in site rather than a pull through. In addition there was a 6 foot tall fence directly on the other side of the access road you came in on and which was only slightly wider than my truck and trailer. What that means in real life is that I had to back the trailer in at a near 90 degree angle using only the width of the access road I drove in on. It took me a couple of tries to get it all set up, but in the end I slide the trailer in as slick as can be.
   Once I got everything set up and had a bite to eat, it was time to take off and go explore. My first stop was over in the town of Ballard, a suburb of Seattle just north of downtown, where the Hiram Chittenden Locks, (sp), were located. A long time ago, way back in the early 80's, when I was in the Coast Guard and stationed in Seattle at Pier 36, I use to take a 41 foot patrol boat through those locks and on into Lake Union and Lake Washington at least once a week. It was always fun 'locking' up and down while crowds of tourists would talk to us across the guard barriers. So it's still fun to watch other boaters enjoying all the attention as they go up and down with the water. There were several sailboats and small motor boats that locked through, as well as a large Alaskan Crabber that had to use the larger lock because of it's size. I could probably sit there all day and watch the water traffic, and the tourists as they went by.
    There is also a fish ladder there at the locks so that the native salmon have a way to bypass the dam and the lock system and return upstream to the streams and rivers where they had been born 3-5 years earlier. Along with the 23 separate dams and pools that make up the ladder itself, there is a viewing area they built into the design so that you can see several of the pools from under water. Yesterday they still had quite a few salmon using the ladder to move upstream, even though the majority of them had already passed by over the past several weeks.
    I took a chance and actually recorded a couple short videos of some of the fish with my telephone and posted them down below. Of course I first had to figure out how to download them off the telephone and onto the computer, and then I had to figure out how to rotate them 180 degrees, since I was holding the phone upside down apparently. It all got sorted out eventually though, and I think they are at least good enough that you can get an idea of what it looked like with the salmon swimming.
   Today was pretty slow to start, but it finally got up to speed by mid morning. I went over to Discovery Point Park just north of downtown
Seattle, and wandered around all the trees, bushes and flowers there. I really think this part of the country has to have some of the prettiest areas around, especially when the sun is shining and the weather is good. Of course it's those long weeks and months of grey, rainy weather that makes it so green and pretty here. I also walked over to West Point and took a few pictures of the lighthouse there. I plan to do a big loop of a road trip tomorrow just to see more of them, so I hope to have a few photo's to post of them all in the coming days.
    I had a quick bite to eat out this evening and then headed over to the Mountlake Terrace part of the city, where one of the local contra dances was happening. The dance was held in a local community center, and it had a great wooden floor to dance on. It also had a 4 person band that was really wonderful, as well as a little bit unique for a contra dance band. They had the usual fiddle and piano player, both of whom were outstanding, but they also had a trombone player and someone who played both the flute and the saxophone. All of them were excellent musicians so there were some really fun tunes to dance to this evening.
    There were a full 3 lines of dancers, with maybe 30-35 people in each line, and even though there was an over abundance of men to start with, it soon evened out as more women showed up after the start. It was fun to dance again, and I even got to see an old friend of mine, Jeff, from the Portland and Denver areas. With any luck I'll also get a chance to go to another dance tomorrow night somewhere else in the Seattle area. Like always I feel lucky to have happened into contra dancing so many years ago. It has made it easy for me to interact with local people wherever I go, and most of the time there is at least one person, and often times, many people, who I have met some place before. Plus it's fun!

Migrating Salmon at the Ballard Locks Fish Ladder in

Seattle, Washington. Oct 1, 2014





 




 

brk*