Here is Dakota picking blueberries. He is a very decisive picker, picking only the biggest, ripest ones. So his bucket was full of big juicy sweet berries. Wren was also an amazing picker being decisive on quality as well. Stuart and I were a bit more for quantity but ended up with a few more less-ripe berries in our buckets.
After blueberries, we headed up river to Harris Park. This park is a linear park along the Walla Walla River. We parked, grabbed lunch and swimsuits and hiked up river at a nice pace. We did manage to cross the very cold river twice before realizing that a side trail avoided the crossings. Though I have to say Wren did a fabulous job crossing the swift stream. The hardest part to deal with was the temperature. By the time we were across our feet were definitely cold enough to be a bit painful. Though all was well after a few moments in the hot sun.
We found a lovely picnic spot by the river. After sitting a while, Wren shouts with pure excitement, "Look at that fish." We all look out at the river where he is pointing and see a golden fish about a foot long. Big, but not huge. We look and say that is a big fish. "No, that's not the one I am talking about. The one I saw was WAY bigger." We nod and watch the fish that we can see. But then all of a sudden a REALLY BIG fish comes into view. It was 2 1/2 -3 feet long. The two fish were surfing a wave right in front of us, maybe 5 feet out into the river. And they surfed that wave for at least 10 minutes while we sat and watched. They finally left after we had taken a ton of photos and we tried to get Stuart out there for scale. We wanted the scale because of course fish grow in stories. We are pretty sure it was a salmon but will have that verified by a local at some point soon. See below....
In this first photo you can just see the golden fish behind the salmon.
In this photo you can see the whole salmon, head to tail. AMAZING.
This photo is here to offer some perspective on the size of fish. The wave that the fish is surfing is just above my head in this picture. Should have had Stuart walk out and just put his hands in where the fish was at least. Oh well, y'all will just have to believe us on the size.
This is the photo that shows the beauty of the setting we were sitting in. So lovely.
Dakota and Stuart looking upstream. (Confession: I told them to look upstream at the bear because Dakota was hiding from the camera...now we had been playing make believe about seeing bears in the woods during our hike, a game initiated by Dakota so I was just playing along but it was definitely to get a good photo)
Wren the perpetual naturalist/investigator found this interesting vegetation, so I asked him to show it to me. He happily obliged.
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