Kokanee Salmon?

Someone told us that if we went back to Rock Cliff Recreation Area a couple weeks after we went to see the kokanee salmon in September, there would be a lot more salmon to see. So we went back and there were not more. We may have seen three? Maybe, if that. 

The trip was not a waste, though. There were birds of course- cedar waxwings, lesser goldfinches, yellow-rumped warblers, dark-eyed juncos, white-crowned sparrows, flickers.

We also saw two or three black phoebes which are not as common as those others. 

There was also beautiful scenery- the river and reservoir and of course the Fall colors. 

We saw deer several times. It was fun to watch them bound away. 

We saw some spiders spinning webs.

We had fun family time. The kids enjoyed making Jet smile and laugh (and the rest of us).

At one point on a bridge, the boys were throwing plants in the water and I called out, "Pooh sticks!"
They got excited about that and went to gather more things to toss. Jr. grabbed a big rock and said, "Pooh sticks. Eeyore style!" and threw it into the water. That started more rock throwing into the water.

It was great and we didn't have any fighting while we were there or in the van.

I loved that time with my family. 

Definitely click on this last picture to see it larger. Lucky's pose, man.

Kokanee Salmon

The National Days Calendar our friends gave us earlier in the year has a whole bunch listed for September 26, 2020. There's National Pancake Day, National Singles Day, Public Lands Day, Hunting and Fishing Day, Family Health and Fitness Day USA to name a few.

So for celebrating Jr. made us chocolate chip pancakes before we all set out for a drive with our water bottles and little packets of singles flavoring. Originally we thought about heading to a public land but we thought that it might be too crowded since it was free entrance that day. Like his brother before him, Jr. Jr. recently got a national parks pass so we can go to public lands as a family anytime for free for a year. We decided instead to go to Jordanelle Reservoir to the Rock Cliff Recreation area where we hoped it would be less crowded. We didn't go to the fish trap at Strawberry Reservoir to see kokanee salmon this year (and they're not doing salmon viewing events this year) so we thought we'd try this place which I recently read was a good place to see them.

 

There were boardwalks to walk around on to get our exercise in (health and fitness) and there were indeed some salmon in the river where we could see them from the bridge we stopped at (hunting and fishing). There were also trout swimming along to snatch up the eggs deposited by the spawning salmon for a nice meal. We learned about this because while we were there on that uncrowded bridge, along came a couple of volunteers from DNR to check on things in the recreation area since there had been flooding in the Spring and because it was kokanee spawning time. They were very friendly and very happy to tell us things about the salmon and about the area. It was very informative and they were great to answer our questions. 

Nichole was great to get pictures of the salmon.

At one point, Jr. fell down so I offered to give him a piggy back ride. He's not as small as he used to be. I thought it would be funny to give him a piggy back ride since he's taller than me now. I can still lift him.

"Will you marry me?"

If you look really closely in the background of these pictures, there is a great blue heron sitting in a tree. Nichole took pictures of the heron while I took pictures of Lucky.

We had a good time. Love that family bonding.

Camping in the Sun and Rain

It looks like I never blogged about camping as a family last year.  Well, we did, and the time before that was when I was pregnant with Jr. Jr. so you see, it had been a while.
This year, we made sure to go camping again, especially since one of Jr.'s requirements for cub scouts is to go on an overnight campout... and because we wanted to.  It was fun.

We went to Jordanelle State Park- Jordanelle Reservoir.  The kids were all helpful throughout (except for the times they weren't). 

We had a beautiful campsite with lots of trees (read: lots of birds).  There were various other critters who visited us from time to time as well.

It was somewhat warm when we got there, then cooled off a bit during the evening. 
We had fun playing games in the tent (the kids loved Uno) and Jeremy told us half a Jackerina story, "Jackerina and the Chickadees of Terror."

It rained most of the night and next morning (good thing we put the rain fly up when we set up the tent- ask me about last year's adventure).  We were flexible however and changed some meals around since we wouldn't light a fire in the rain.  Even though we did have the rain fly up, some things in our tent still got wet.  Oh well.  All part of the adventure, right?

We went for a drive while the weather was as it was and found some marmots, a cute weasel, and many birds, including bobolinks.  We got a much better view of them this year than the one we saw from quite a distance last year.

The bobolinks were also being quite vocal.  They make some interesting sounds to go along with their interesting look.   

Click on the picture to see it larger.

When we got back to the campground, it had dried out a bit, so after lunch we went down to the reservoir because the kids wanted to learn how to skip rocks.  There was some skipping and some rock (and log/stick) throwing and it was fun.

 
We had another good evening.  The day before, the kids explored around our campsite and found some secret passages through the trees and a sandpit where they enjoyed much drawing with sticks.
Jr. was tired enough that by the time we finished that day, we didn't play any card games and he was asleep while Jeremy finished the Jackerina story.

The next morning we packed up and left the campground. 

We drove around the reservoir to another section of the state park.  Another of Jr.'s cub scout requirements is to go on a 1-mile hike or walk and note animal signs.  That was very easy for him since as soon as we got out of the van he heard a cicada buzzing, saw leaves that had been chewed by some bug, heard and saw several birds, and we all got bitten by mosquitoes.  It was still a nice hike/walk, but there were some areas that we couldn't go to because the river was so high.

 Then we headed home.

Now to talk about food.  Several people on facebook gave us good suggestions.  We did some experimenting and kept with some traditional camping food.  I already mentioned that we moved some meals around, so here's what we ended up with.
For dinner the first night, we had hot dogs and watermelon and grilled corn on the cob (yumm) and s'mores.

For breakfast the next morning, we ate donuts in the van.
For lunch we had quesadillas and grilled cheese sandwiches (thanks, Jr., for making the quesadillas) with carrots.

For dinner we tried out pizza (with and without foil on top) in pie tins.  I baked crust before we left so we just had to put toppings on.  Everyone got their own personal pizza.  We had salad and whatever watermelon and carrots people wanted to eat.  We also made wafflecone s'mores again.  We tried jiffy pop, but it didn't work very well for us.

For breakfast before we packed up and left we had breakfast sandwiches and hot chocolate.  We also tried pudding-filled biscuits like we did last year.  I don't think I want to try those again.  You wrap a biscuit on a stick and cook it over the campfire then fill it with pudding.  The inside of the biscuit doesn't get cooked very well, though.

Now to talk about celebrating holidays on our trip.  The day we got there was Magic Day.  We kept telling Lucky that everything we did from lighting the fire to setting up the tent was magic.
The next day was Kitchen Klutzes of America Day.  And lookee what I did.  Dropped the eggs (not intentionally).

Sigh.  Jeremy was going to cook them for breakfast the next morning, but nicely fried them up that night instead.  Sigh.  It actually made it faster the last morning when assembling and warming up breakfast sandwiches.

Speaking of the last day.  That was Pop Goes the Weasel Day.  Since we had seen that weasel the day before, Jeremy suggested we go look for it again since it was so cute.  So... Pop goes, "The weasel.  Let's go look for it."  Unfortunately we didn't see it again.  But we did see more bobolinks and marmots.

And that's about all I am going to say about our camping trip.