Combat Fishing Washington State Style

On our RV trek to Alaska, we got a kick out of watching "combat fishing" on the Kenai River where many fishermen meet in too little space. 

 

Like this from Google Images: 

 

Never would have imagined this in our home waters what with the publicized overfishing here.  But for 2013 that is not the case.  Over 6 million "humpies" (pink salmon) are passing thru Puget Sound right now and up the rivers.  The Puyallup River, where we are now, expects 1.2 million fish running upstream.   

This week's fishing report:
_________________________________________________________________

 

_________________________________________________________________________

That report is so good even I almost got out a pole.

But then I looked at these folks and decided I might have an even chance to fall on my butt, be swept away by the current,  

 

(All these "poles" in the distance inthe water are fisherfolk)

- or - 

 

get in a fight! 

 

 

We talked to a couple of fishermen carrying 3 fish apiece and they were smiling. 



Catching one - see a couple others in the top right corner



 

BTW, the Puyallup River IS often muddy; but late in the summer it is milky from the runoff from the glaciers on Mt Rainier.

Puyallup: Count on the river being packed this weekend, so get out there early to get in on some of the hottest fishing in the area. Pinks and kings are biting. Using corkies and a small pierce of yarn with a half-ounce weight and long leader is working for most anglers.

 

 

Hot Air Ballooning!

What a wonderful treat to get to float over our beautiful green Northwest (thank you, friend Caroline). 

 

It did take a wee bit of effort to get up at 4 AM(!) to meet the balloon van but this early we got to enjoy the sunshine coming up over the Cascade Mountains.  Terrific!

Dean helped with the balloon inflation - 20 minutes from trailer to fully inflated. 

 

 

Nice quiet ride except when the air in the balloon cooled and we needed to ascend.

Phoosh as the gas turned on and up we went. We heard the dogs barking at us and saw a horse shy when the pilot turned on the gas.  

Thought about dropping pennies along the way but Dean never calculated the velocity and I didn't want to harm anybody below!

The haze and the clouds kept the mountains from being clear shots.
 

Wonderful views of McMansions and their pools and tennis courts AND pickleball courts.

We traveled up to 2000' high and managed 15 mph. 

As an aficionado of Google Earth, I realized very soon that the shots I'm taking from the balloon were similar to what you can see on Google Earth – check it out.

Colorful nursery



This maze is made of sunflowers - nice!

The pilot stated that hot air balloons typically last about 500 hours for him to use commercially and amateurs may use them up to 650 hours but seams and lines may be causing problems after that time.  

 

Toward the end of the ride the pilot was really earning his money making sure the recovery crew got to where we were landing before we did (and they did). And making sure the surface winds weren't going to move him toward the trees.

We landed on a massive soccer fields complex. Plenty of room.

 

And the pilot did a good job avoiding the sprinkler – we all thought we were going to get wet!

 

He put the recovery crew to work as workhorses pulling the balloon and the basket hovering just off the ground to the corner of the field out of the way of the soccer grounds crews.

 

While the recovery crew folded up the balloon, the pilot and all us riders enjoyed mimosas and toasted to this Irish Prayer.

 

The winds have welcomed you with softness
The sun has blessed you with it's warm rays
You have flown so high and so well
That God has joined you in laughter
And set you gently back again
Into the loving arms of Mother Earth

Happy fliers!

 

Fantastic!

Boeing Family Day

Every other year, Boeing in Everett has a family open house.  Our grandson Jeff invited us to check out the factory in Everett where he now is employed.  Jeff's friend Bri, granddaughter Ashleigh and husband Josh, joined us.  We trekked and we trekked and we trekked.   

Wow, is this ever a big place!  Jeff says he tromps 14,000 steps a workday. 

 

We saw so much and understand the processes, the tools, and the techniques, so much more than ever.  Dean and Jeff spent most the day sharing Boeing lingo (yes, it is a separate set of slang).  I think it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I get to check one more item off my bucket list! 

We saw 12 wide-body jets in production inside and I'm pretty sure we didn't see them all.  These jets have dimensions like 250' long, 224' wingspan, and 68' tall tails!  Big guys!

 

My favorite statistic was that this factory which is known worldwide for being the largest building in the world could stuff ALL of Disneyland inside with parking for an additional 10,000 cars!  Almost beyond comprehension!


 

 

And how we spent the first night of our vacation

 

6 of the 8 Rental RV's in the lot - all doing the same thing
 

We got a kick seeing all these RV rentals pull into the WalMart lot.  We did fully expect them to spend their first night there, but not so.  This is how it's done: the renters fly into Missoula and pick up the RV and THEN they go to WalMart and buy linens and food.  Long day for momma.  By the time everything is purchased, the beds made, and clothes and food stowed, it's getting pretty close to 6pm.  For us, it would be a no-brainer: we'd stay right where we were.  But these people have a time constraint so they need to make every minute count.   Wonder how far they traveled after they left here. 

 

BTW this was our 63rd night out and our first WalMart night. 

 

This WalMart has "No Overnight Parking" signs posted several places through their lot but, as Dean says, it doesn't hurt to ask.  Customer Service said "No Problem – we had to put these signs up because the KOA complained.  We have no problem if you stay a week."  Of course, we spent more than we would have at the KOA - $120 restocking our food stuffs.

What the hay?

These days most hay bales are not the "one-man lift" size (50-75 lbs) of yore. 

Sometimes we see rectangular bales that are 40 times that size and weigh-in at a ton. 

More often today we see round bales which weigh near a 1000 lbs. 

These bales are most often tied with a plastic net wrap.   

 

As we approached Jackson, MT, we started seeing house-sized hay stacks. 

Pretty unusual. 

How are these made, we wondered. 

They are so tall - almost 30; high - and why?

We also saw some strange wooden contraptions in the fields near these hay stacks. 

Now we really want to know what is going on . 

Perhaps this is an Amish community that chooses not to use mechanized farm machinery? 

We stopped at a visitor center and found out the skinny. 

This wooden contraption was invented by farmers in Jackson in 1910 and named for Beaverhead County: the Beaverslide stacker.  This stacker has 3 components: wooden inclined slide, poles twice as long as the slide with pulleys and cables, and a wooden hay fork.  The hay is gathered and piled on the fork, a horse or (tractor PTO) ties to the pulleys and pulls, lifting the hay fork to the top of the poles and the hay tips onto the stack.  Farmhands stay on top the stack as it's being built, leveling out and tramping down the hay.  This stack of hay will be able to stay usable even after not being covered through a Montana winter.  The Beaverslide stacker was never made commercially. 

  

If you want to see how these are used,
click the YouTube Link : www.youtube.com/watch?v=63yIf8wgKI0

Enjoying Yellowstone

It's been a while since we've toured Yellowstone, so we took our time to see our favorite spots. 

We especially wanted to see how the park had recovered from the fires of 1988 - 25 years ago.  (see post:1988 Yellowstone Fire Revisited).  In 2001, when we last explored the park, it was still pretty barren but not now.   Trees were then about 3' tall and now they are 10 to 12' and it seems like a forest when walking a path.  There is so much downed wood as many of those trees that remained standing after the fires are rotting or being blown down.  We wonder how the forest creatures make it thru the mess. 

We really enjoy checking out all the "hydrothermal features", like geysers, hot springs, mudpots, and fumaroles.   We hiked each and every one. 

 

An old favorite, Morning Glory Pool now pales to others like Sapphire Pool.


Morning Glory Pool

Sapphire Pool

 And, of course, Old Faithful, isn't any more...faithful, that is. 

But there are other geysers that put on a predictable show.



Clepsydra Geyser

Sawmill Geyser

The large terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs are 80% dry.  Only on the north and south ends do new springs flow over the limestone terraces.  What is there is very beautiful.

Canary Spring

We found the most fun hydrothermals in the geyser basins between Old Faithful (Upper) and the Lower Geyser Basin.  Lots of strange activity and different colors!

 

Heart Hot Spring

And then there's Anemone Geyser which quietly steams for 15 minutes then becomes very active: fills with water, spits and sputters, then shuts down and all the water disappears. 

All in about 3 minutes.

.  (See Old Faithful steaming in the background.)

Even Norris Geyser Basin with it's over 100 active "hydrothermal features" (aka geysers, hot springs, mudpots, and fumaroles) wasn't too exciting.  If we had caught Steamboat Geyser erupting (last eruption May 2005), that would be exciting....BUT WAIT! Steamboat Geyser erupted 2 days after we were there.  Who'da thought!  Many many (many!) years ago my sibs and cousins slept in sleeping bags at the overlook for this geyser hoping to see it erupt – it didn't then (and we didn't get eaten by a grizzly either!)

 

Porcelain Basin had some vivid colorings and it was a pretty outstanding view atop the hill beside it. 

 

Mudpots.  Glurp glurp.  We both remember from times ago that the mud was thick and just pooped up.  Most of the mud pots were too liquid-y to blurp blurp.  Maybe later in the year.

Fountain Paint Pots

Mudpot in the Mud Volcano area

Dean got a kick out of using his handheld pyrometer to measure the heat of the hydrothermal areas.  Others on the trail with us were as impressed when he got readings regularly above 150 degrees and even hit 192 degrees a couple times.  Up here above 8000', boiling temperature is 198.  

No wonder the hot springs were bubbling.  If Dean had been able to get closer to the edge of the spring, his readings would have been higher but I (and Mr Ranger) would not let him off the boardwalk.  After reading that one boardwalk needed to be moved because the ground got so hot that it burned the soles of visitor's shoes, he started checking ground temperatures and regularly got above 120 degrees.  Now we know why the bison come spend time amongst the geysers in the cold winters. 

 

Ah, yes, the falls of the Yellowstone River are still there.  It was a quick view for us though as a fast-moving wet and windy storm was blowing by and even broke a tree which fell in the main viewing area.   

 

Aren't these fantastic pictures?  And NOT bought postcards. 

 

Not sure I can even screw up a picture of the falls.  It's breathtaking. 

With the overcast sky, the color on the canyon walls was even more striking. 
Almost like a painting.

  

Rumor has it that the current chief ranger at Yellowstone believes that any bear seen is a bear that needs to be taken deep into the woods. Therefore, the bear jams of yore are no longer. They've been replaced by elk traffic jams. Elk? You mean the deer-type animal? Yep. I really can't get excited over a small herd of elk. We are jaded as we have a number of places in Washington and Oregon where we can see elk. Like downtown Sequim.  The road west out of the park is known as a good place to spy elk.  So every evening on our way home we would stop for elk jams; usually more than once and one trip we were stopped 4 times. 


On the east side of the park, the Hayden Valley area is a good place to see buffalo and we did. Understand it is bison rutting season so supposedly ALL the park's buffalo are meeting in the valley to partake. 

 

And we were in luck.  We were able to watch a great number swim across the river. 

We felt sorry for this little guy who had to work a lot harder getting across the river with the big guys.

On our last day, we finally saw a bear.  As we went by in the car, I thought I saw a momma with maybe 3 babes.  By the time we got turned around and found a place to park, all we had was bear butts: momma and kid.   

There you are: center of picture: bear butts

Bye, Yellowstone, try to keep it all together until we come see you again!