Fuzzy Bus

After a great nights sleep in our hotel room, we went for breakfast in the hotels restaurant. We decided to check out the Bonneville Dam, which would take us most of the day to get there from Seattle. But, it was a part of our educational section of our trip. By the time we arrived, via rental car, we were just in time for a tour to begin. Our ranger was really nice and she gave us a wonderful tour and took us to see the Dam turbine room. She explained to us how all the fish get through the Dam via a series of ladders with which the fish can easily traverse when they need to go upstream for spawning purposes. But, going downstream, it’s a little treacherous, because they have to swim through the turbines, which the fish do get a little shredded by the actions of the turbines, but our ranger assured us that is was a very small percentage. Apparently, the downstream fish flow wasn’t considered or factored by the original Dam design. They have since built special tubes that the fish can use to bypass the turbines, which does increase their survival rate.

Our visit to the Dam was very beautiful, it’s set in the Columbia River, so we had a little bit of time before heading back to the best luxury hotels Seattle, where we are booked, and we took a small hike to Beacon Rock. It only took us 45 minutes to reach the top, and only 20 minutes to come back down! At the top, we had a brilliant view of the Columbia River and the Gorge itself. Washington State is on one side and Oregon State is on the other.

The drive back was slow going, apparently, it being a Sunday evening, everyone seemed to be heading back to Seattle. We did get back and we were famished. We found a nice place that actually served an excellent Gumbo, even better that the Gumbo we had in New Orleans! The drive wiped us out, so we just headed back to our hotel and stayed in for the night.