A found day

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By cancelling our night at Crater, we had a found day (and saved a good chunk of change). Ruth tried to see how to make our way to Cave Junction for our stay a the treehouses. I remembered a friend talking about a place called the "Oregon Vortex." It was located in Gold Hill. There was a B&B in Gold Hill, called them and they had a room available.

Again, we found the Oregon Parks really nice. Lost Creek visitors center had a lot of information on wildlife and plants. A stroll along the creek was great for bird watching. We went to a fish hatchery and tried to get a straight answer. We are familiar with the Rainbow Trout here in GA. I know they were introduced here after the logging operations killed all the local Brook Trout. Well, Steelhead Salmon is a popular dish to get at OR restaurants. At the hatcheries, they label the picture of a fish as Steelhead Salmon (Rainbow)...what's up with that? The guys at the hatcheries don't sound real clear, and the waitresses at the restaurants just chuckle at my questioning...they have no idea. Turns out it is the same fish. If the fingerlings say in the streams, they're trout. If they travel to the ocean and spend a couple years eating crustaceans, they come back with pink flesh and called salmon. (side bar - when in Peru, trout was served everywhere. When I asked what kind of fish, the answer was rainbow trout...? Introduced by Americans in the early part of 20th century. It has been renamed Oncorhynchus mykiss.

Now it's not a place that you should go way out of your way, but the place is pretty funky and they have some demonstrations that make you scratch your head...how did that happen?

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