Advertisement
Published: July 17th 2015
Edit Blog Post
We took it easy today. A nice change, let me tell you! We packed ourselves up after two pleasant nights at the Best Western hotel in Edmonds and set out on our way. Our first stop was just 20 minutes later, at Carkeek park. Yeah, funny name, I know, but a lovely little park. We followed a creek down towards the beach, crossed a bridge over the railroad tracks and spent the better part of two hours wandering along the beach of Puget Sound. We found all sorts of treasures on the dark, almost black sand. Shells, seaweed, hermit crabs, lots of sea anemones and barnacles, even a starfish! All living and well in the tide pools. Lots of crows and seagulls searched for pickings between the rocks. We even saw a blue heron fishing in the shallows. There were of course lots of people there too, what with the summer vacation and perfect weather. Several groups of young explorer-type summer schools and camps and a few families.
We walked through the forest, along the creek back to the car and continues to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, also known as the Ballard Locks. This is a set of locks
built by the US Army Engineer Corps in 1916, and run by them ever since. When they built it, the architect, Mr. Chittenden, added a fish ladder so that the salmon's way upstream wouldn't be blocked. And that's way before anyone gave a thought to depleting fish in the oceans! He even added a viewing room with windows looking at the fish from underwater. And it's all free. There's a very nice park all around the locks, where we had a snack and watched the birds and boats.
Then we walked around the locks, over the gates, and watched them working, letting large and small boats pass through. We had a stroll in the gardens there, very nice. We even saw the big train bridge lift open for some boats to pass under it. All very impressive engineering.
Then we went to watch the salmon. We saw the fish ladder from above, catching the odd glimpse of the fish, but it's when we got to the viewing room that we really saw them. It's a large room with several viewing windows looking into the pools from the side. We sat and watched the salmon swimming around, getting ready
for the next leap up the ladder. There are posters there with pictures of the different species of salmon, and we decided that what we saw were sockeye salmon. Either way, Ethan had fun taking too many pictures (filtering them is going to be a job!)
Have a look right here:
We wandered back to the car and headed towards the airport. No hurry but we still wanted to get a bite to eat and fill up the car with gas before returning it. We stopped at a little taco stand and Gilat and I got burritos. Chicken and beef. Yummy!
There was a lot of traffic going through Seattle to the airport, but we had plenty of time. We got gas and ice cream on the way.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.094s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 6; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0581s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb