River and Fish Hatchery

After going to Ocean-View, we headed farther up into the foothills of the Rockies to visit a fish hatchery, which I believe was on the Russian River. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but the postcards they were selling in the gift shop were all of the Russian, so that was my guess as to what the river and associated lakes were called. Here are some of the photos I took of both the hatchery itself, and the view we got from the top of the mountain, looking down onto the lake and river.


This is a view of part of the lake/river/ whatever it was. You can't see them in this photo because I had a really crappy disposable camera, but there were a pair of golden eagles below us, circling the water. It was so incredible. They flew right up past us when we were getting ready to leave, naturally I was out of shots on the camera I had with me. While we were at the fish hatchery, the tour guide told us that three pairs had been released within the mountains and all of them seemed to be getting ready to nest. It was really cool.

This is the other half of the water that was below us. The mountains themselves were just as lovely as the water. The water was merkier up close, but from a distance it really looks clean and pure.

Those ripples are from a HUGE fish that leaped completely out of the water after a butterfly, which it got as a lovely afternoon snack. I can't remember what type of fish were coming into the hatchery to spawn, but I do know that we were a week late to see the Salmon. The fish that were in were enourmous. And some were really torn up from their journey, and I mean that literally.


Those big blobs in the water aren't oversized rocks, they are the mammoth fish that were heading up to the spawning pools. They were so incredible. There were several hundred of them along the little creek that we walked along, and there were more that were farther down that we couldn't see.

This was a pretty cool stop on our tour of Califonia. Unfortunately, they weren't really all that friendly towards visitors. Oh well, it was still fun. I just wish I had been able to get a shot of the cool little lizard that was checking our group out. Sadly, it decided we were probably dangerous and took off. It was a cute little thing though.