We’ve been along the Columbia before on some sailing trips, although that was farther west than where we met up with it this time, and much more lush. Where we entered the gorge, it was desert, and we drove along the Washington shore with the river on the left. After about 2 hours of heading downstream, we got to Stevenson, WA where we crossed over to the Oregon side via “The Bridge of the Gods”, and continued a couple more miles to the Bonneville Dam where we checked out the spillway and fish passage systems. Alas, not too many fish going upstream through the fish ladder while we were there. There were however several seals dining on the fish going downstream through the spillway. For those of you not privy to the goings-on in the northwest salmon restoration scene, the government is spending big bucks to put in fish passage systems around all the big dams (on which Becca happens to be an expert!) only to have the seals hanging out at the base of the dam gobbling up all the fish. They’ve been trying the last few years to get rid of the seals by more and more extreme methods: they’ve caught them and trucked them down the coast, they’ve shot rubber bullets at them, they’ve even detonated underwater explosives near the dams so that the seals wouldn’t want to stick around but food is just too strong of a motivating factor – I can relate. Now they want permission to violate the marine mammal protection act and shoot up to 70 seals a year, this time with real bullets. What a mess. Seals up the Columbia are nothing new though – I guess when Lewis & Clark came to town on their cross-country adventure, they saw the seals a couple hundred miles upstream of the Bonneville Dam dining on fish then also. The only thing new is the dam.
We rolled into Portland at about 5pm on Monday night, had a mellow dinner and I sacked out early so that I could hopefully kick the cold. Meanwhile, Becca posted the first official installment of this wonderful Blog you’re reading.
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