One of my favorite local sites that we visited in Oregon was the Bonneville Hatchery and Dam. How interesting can it be to look at a bunch of fish?

Very.

The Bonneville Hatchery and Dam is located just an hour from Portland. As I mentioned in my last post, it's a great addition if you're visiting Multnomah Falls. Do both and make a day out of it.

As with Multnomah Falls and Mount Hood, we visited Bonneville multiple times during the summer of "Our Year of Living in Portland." The falls are majestic and Mount Hood is stunning, but Bonneville is just a bit quirky. I love quirky.

This "Historic Area" has cute cottages that remind me of Alice in Wonderland.

One of the best parts is the Sturgeon Viewing and Interpretive Center, where they have an enormous fish named Herman: Herman the Sturgeon. He's massive! There is an underwater viewing area for visitors.

The hatchery has dozens of breeding ponds for trout.

But the Salmon runs are the most impressive. The giant fish jump over locks, jumping several feet in the air, as they desperately try to swim upstream to spawn. They were really active in mid-August. The cute pug in the picture is Jewels. She belongs to our friends, Dave and Cath. They all visited us for the eclipse.

Here we are with Dan's mom, standing in front of a fish ladder. The fish climb up the ladder. I could watch fish climbing the ladder all day. It's mesmerizing. This isn't as weird as you think, I used to do animal observations at The Greater Los Angeles Zoo. The Bonneville Hatchery has employees who count fish to understand the current status of the fish population. They want to keep the salmon thriving.

We went on a free behind the scenes guided tour of the Dam. This is a great bonus for visitors. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers build the dam at the during the early 1900's and it was renovated in the 1950's.

It is here, that I learned about the most horrifying creature on the planet. Truly, this is stuff straight out of a horror film.

I'm talking about Lamphrey.

Lamphrey attach themselves to fish ( or in this case windows) and slowly eat them. They basically have a mouth that sucks on and these sharp, vampire like teeth. Additionally, they look a bit like eels and one of the few creatures that freak me out are eels. I think it's because they hide in crevices and dart out. I remember going snorkeling in Maui and being freaked out over the eels, sharks were no bother.

Lamphrey are infinitely worse than eels. And now I will definitely never go swimming in the Columbia River!

And the river...

The Dam spans both Oregon and Washington. It's easy to cross over and there are exhibits on both sides. Plan to spend a few hours at the Bonneville Hatchery and Dam.

I'm sneaking this in here, but when we took Dan's mom to these sites our day was epic. After the dam, we drove to the Hood River County Fruit Loop. This is a ride through the lush countryside, where there are many farms and opportunities to purchase local goods.

Cows hanging out by the side of the road. They say California cows are the happiest, but I think an Oregon cow enjoying the summer sun, takes the win. These cows earned the weather.

Dan's mom loves to knit and we found an llama farm with a store selling llama wool. Dan and I visited with the animals, while Jan picked out pretty yarn for her next project.

There are so many great places to visit in Oregon, make sure that the Bonneville Hatchery and Dam are on your list. Also, make time to enjoy a drive through the Fruit Loop.

We rang in 2017 with Dan's family in England! This was my first time spending the holidays in England, so it was wonderful to both be with family and to experience British traditions. Dan's sister's family treated us to a pantomime show, my first ever! We did a family trip to the Cadbury Factory and went to Warwick Castle. The weather was cold, but after spending a few months living in Portland, I handled it like a pro, meaning I finally own cold- weather appropriate clothes.

The weather was bleak for most of our time in Portland. We bought a S.A.D. Lamp (which totally works) and popped vitamin D pills. I was not prepared for the affect that the seemingly endless days of grey skies would have on both my mood and energy levels. Coming from Los Angeles, I'm used to blue skies, sunshine, and things being open.

The weather shuts things down in Oregon. We had to wait until the late spring to experience many of the local national parks and theme parks. I love going to movies, but we really struggled to find winter activities that got us out of apartment that didn't include movie theaters, malls, and coffee. Again, all things I love, but growing up in Los Angeles, I definitely took for granted that living in a city with so many things to do. Portland is small. It doesn't have good sushi. It does have superior coffee.

All of the locals told us to wait until summer. I was a little worried, because more than one local (I took an informal poll from whomever we came in contact with) told us that the summer weather starts after July 4th. Yikes! We started having nice days in May and by June, it was beautiful out. We went to Mount St. Helen's National Park ( closed sept-may) and Mount Hood. We visited Multnomah Falls, The Bridge of the Gods, and the Bonneville Dam Fishery. The Bonneville Dam is actually a really cool spot, you can see salmon jumping over locks and view Lamphrey, a fish that is made of nightmares. Look it up. We visited Astoria and Cannon Beach to see filming sites from The Goonies. The summer weather was beautiful and everyone in town seemed happier.

We did get out of Portland a few times before summer. In February, we went to our home in Big Bear and had friends stay with us. In April, we spent a week in Las Vegas for Dan's annual work trade show. He worked hard and I sunbathed. At the end of our Vegas week, we hosted friends from Portland at our Big Bear home. During spring break, our friends from Big bear visited Portland and we went on a short trip to Salem with them to do wine tasting!

Zoe and Felix stayed with us for six weeks during the summer. We had two mini-vacations during their stay. The first was one a Princess Cruise to Alaska. We wanted them to experience Alaska and glaciers, plus being in Portland, this was an easy trip for us. I thought the highlight was a rafting excursion near the Mendenhall Glacier. I've always wanted to go white water rafting and although this was a fairly mild excursion, we did get on class 3 rapids. So much fun! Skagway was a favorite town, that Dan I didn't experience during our previous Alaska cruise. In Skagway we ate lunch in a former brothel and saw one of the longest running stage plays in America. We also went to an Iditarod training camp and held husky puppies. In Ketchikan, we watched "The Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show,"= think medieval times, but with lumberjacks. The cruise also did a scenic journey through Glacier Bay National Park.

The other mini-vacation was a week in Las Vegas for pool time and extreme heat. It's just not summer with out the desert heat. We visited the Hoover Dam and saw Criss Angel's latest magic show at Luxor. In Portland, we took the kids to The Oaks Amusement Park for rollerskating and rides. They really loved the Portland Children's Museum too. A highlight was Dan's company picnic, which was held at Providence Park, home of the Portland Timbers. We were allowed to run around on the soccer pitch, where Zoe did endless rounds of cartwheels.

The same day that Zoe and Felix left, my mother-in-law arrived for a three week visit. This was her first time in Portland, so we made the rounds of the tourist sites. My favorite was having tea with her at the Japanese gardens. It was my 40th birthday during her visit, so we made a quick trip to Big Bear, so that she could see the house that was remodeled and I could be in California.

A few days after my mother-in-law left, we had our friends (Dave, Cath, and pug, Jewels) visit for the eclipse. We decided against driving twenty minutes to be in the "Path of Totality" and only experienced 99% of the eclipse. That 1% makes a difference. There was so much light. It was still neat, but not life-altering, as people were mentioning on the news.

In late August, we moved back to Big Bear. I miss our friends made in Portland, but I'm really happy to be back home. In September, I got a job in social media and marketing for one of the local vacation rental companies. Dan splits his time working from home and traveling to Portland to be in his office. I'm still working on my novel, in the revision stage after meetings with my mentor. Life is busy!

In September, I had an amazing opportunity. My friend Ryan and his wife Shawna, brought me to Oklahoma City to take part in their Ricochet: a Storyteller's Show podcast. The whole experience was incredible. It was also my first time visiting Oklahoma. I spent a day sightseeing, including the very emotional Oklahoma City Memorial. Everyone should make an effort to visit the memorial. Also visit Oklahoma City, it's pretty and the people are very friendly!

We spent our 4th anniversary at the La Quinta Resort and Spa in Palm desert. The entire weekend was spent in the sunshine, poolside in the "Ginger Rogers" pool. It's a beautiful resort with old-Hollywood glamour.

Thanksgiving was spent with a mix of old and new friends staying at our house. It was a super fun weekend and the turkey turned out. The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we went to Portland for a week. Dan had bought me tickets to see Bill Murray for my birthday and he was fantastic. We didn't see many live shows in 2017. We saw John Cleese, which was a major let-down and The Game of Thrones in concert, which was very cool. I went to a book signing for one of my favorite authors, Fredrik Backman. I also got to see a free mini-concert when the Old 97's came to the Skype Studio, just two blocks from our apartment.

This Christmas and New Years, we will have Felix with us, for his first solo-trip without Zoe. It was a last minute trip, so we don't have any plans, but I know it will be fun to have him here. He loves snow, so hopefully we will have a white Christmas. (I'm writing this early to post in the future, as I know we will be super busy when he arrives.) 2017 was an all-around good year and I'm looking forward to discovering what 2018 brings!

Bonneville Hatchery and Dam...and Llamas

2017 Wrap-Up