Strait of Juan de Fuca

A couple of weeks ago I had left a question on another blog about who Juan de Fuca was.  Today, RICK posted the answer to my query on his post.  I won’t reiterate the tale here as you can check out his blog if you haven’t already read it.  Anyway, the Strait of Juan de Fuca is between Washington State and British Columbia.  It brought back memories of the beginning of my fulltime journey.
In November, 2006, after four months on the road, I volunteered at Fort Flagler State Park on Admiralty Inlet.  The Inlet connects the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the Puget Sound.  Before taking this assignment, I had been assured that November was very mild with no snow.  Ha!
I must say that it started out very pleasant, and you couldn’t beat this view out my front window.  That’s the North Cascades Mountains in the far distance.  Being on a hill on a peninsula, I listened to the marine forecast for the Strait of Juan de Fuca every night.
  Quite a few storms blew through that November, but most ended with a nice rainbow.
Fort Flagler was established to help defend the entrance to the Puget Sound in the days before airplanes.  There are many historic buildings and bunkers being preserved in the park.  I learned two important life lessons at this park.  The first was to never again take a volunteer office job.  Yuck!  It just wasn’t my cup of tea.  The second thing I learned was to never believe what people say about the weather.  :)Just after Thanksgiving, one heck of an ice and snow storm hit.  There were three foot drifts of snow, and a three inch layer of ice underneath!  I was literally stuck there for five days, and unable to leave.  I guess they just don’t have the equipment to handle such a storm.  I also vividly remember the electric being out for many many hours, and my generator wouldn’t work.  :(
I was surprised to see kite snow boarders out and about the next day!  They must have had chains on their tires in order to get out to the park.  I guess I also learned another thing.  Get out of Washington and Oregon around the beginning of October if you’re heading South for the winter.  I intend to follow that advice this year.  :)  I know Rick doesn’t head South until after Christmas, but I’m not taking any more chances.

Thanks for stopping by….talk to you later,  Judy

Sunday's Blast from the Past...

Once I finally got to leave Ft. Flagler State Park in Washington at the end of November, 2006, I headed south for my next assignment at the Bandon State Fish Hatchery in Bandon, Oregon.

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The hatchery was located at the bottom of a hill. The building on the left is where the salmon eggs were processed. The fish pools all contained trout.

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My duties at Bandon were varied. See all those nets?

All of them were ripped, so it was my job to repair all the rips and sew them back together. The hardest part of that job was having to stand to do the sewing in a cold workshop. I did position myself under the one heat blower. :)

These are all of the trays of Chinook Salmon eggs. They are being incubated until they hatch. I always thought of an incubator as a warm place, but not so with salmon eggs. They must be kept at the same temperature as the river outside.

Each of the trays contains hundreds of eggs, and river water is continually circulated through the trays. Notice the scattered lighter colored eggs in the tray.

One of the steps in the culturing of these eggs is to sort through them and remove any defective eggs. They are first placed in an automated sorter that kicks out the totally rotten lighter colored eggs.


The sorter doesn't catch all the bad eggs, so they all have to be gone through by a human sorter (me). How do you do that? Well, you take a scoop of maybe fifty at a time and carefully look at each one and pick out defective eggs with a tweezers! Besides looking for eggs with white spots, you also have to be sure each egg has two eyes. Some eggs only have one eye, or three, or four eyes. Those eggs would be deformed and not live anyway, so they must be removed.

After the eggs have been sorted through and counted (yes, counted!), they are returned to the tray and put back in the incubator. An interesting fact about these salmon eggs is learned if some of them accidentally fall off of the sorting screen. When they hit the floor, they bounce like one of those little super balls. I'm sure you can just picture me chasing those bouncing eggs around the room when a few would get away from me. :) In my month at Bandon, I sorted through and counted close to 1,000,000 eggs! I was seeing eggs in my sleep at night.

Quite a few storms rolled through that part of Oregon while I was there, and one particular storm resulted in the river, that the hatchery was located next to, rising enough for the Coho Salmon to make it through the fish ladder into the holding pen. Since Bandon doesn't process Coho eggs, the spawning salmon had to be sorted by sex into separate pens to be sent to other hatcheries.

The salmon are netted by hand and then males and females are separated to different pens. Thanks goodness, my part of this job was to keep track of the numbers. One of the staff did the actual netting. We sorted 65 Cohos that day.

On my days off, I was able to do a little touring of the area, but December in Oregon isn't the best time to be traveling around on a mo-ped. This is the light house at Bullard's Beach State Park. My time in Oregon convinced me that towing a car behind the motorhome was in my future.

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Bandon State Fish Hatchery was one of the most interesting places that I have volunteered and I'm really glad I did it in December. That's when the salmon are spawning, so I was able to really get some hands on learning about fish culture.

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Thanks for stopping by....talk to you later, Judy

Sunday's Blast from the Past...

On Halloween Day in 2006, I arrived at Fort Flaggler State Park on the Puget Sound, in the state of Washington, for a four week volunteer stint.

Fort Flagler was established, in the days before airplanes, along with two other forts, to protect the entrance to the Puget Sound. There were huge bunkers with large guns to provide crossfire in the protection of the sound.

This was the view out the front windows of the rig. The deer were plentiful and quite tame. They are grazing on the parade grounds of the fort, with the Puget sound in the back.

Just to the left of the parade grounds were the barracks. They are now used to house groups that can rent them for a retreat.

The Quartermaster's house and storage area have been turned into a museum and visitor's center. I spent weekends working there. Notice the officer's quarters in the background. These residences are also available for rent.

Fort Flagler was used by the army through WWII, mostly as a training facility. I thought the pay scales were interesting.

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When I signed up for this assignment, I was told that the weather in November would be mild. Of course that's not the way it turned out. It was cold, wet, and the winds were unbelievable. There was one day that the winds were so strong that I couldn't push my door open to get out of the rig!

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As Thanksgiving passed, I packed up and planned to head to my next commitment. So much for plans...

A winter storm hit which resulted in two inches of ice topped with blowing snow. Some of the drifts were four feet deep. I was stuck for three days with a frozen water pipe before the roads were drivable once again. You can see that the snow didn't stop the locals from enjoying the parade grounds. They just moved their surf boards up on ground and snow kited!

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Thanks for stopping by....talk to you later, Judy