It's been a fun fall. High on our list of adventures is a trip to Kamloops BC to inspect the Sockeye salmon run. This is a "dominant" year, which happens every fourth year. Fisheries Canada estimates that 3.4 million Sockeye returned to the Adams River to spawn.
Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) spawning on the Adams River
The water in the Adams here is very shallow, and there are pairs of salmon everywhere along the river separated by only a few inches.
News & Notes
The salmon are awe inspiring. The eggs, which are laid in the gravel, will "hatch" in February or March - they look like two eyes connected to an egg sac. When they are guppy-size, free swimming fish, they head down stream to Adams lake, where they spend a year getting a little bigger. Next they swim down stream to the Thompson River and on to the Fraser River, and finally to the salt water. They spend two years in the Pacific becoming mature. They then swim back up the Fraser River to the Thompson River to the Adams River, roughly 500 Km, change from gray-green to bright red, and after having used up every last drop of energy, they spawn immediately before dying. Chinook (O. tshawytscha) spawn in the Adams before the Sockeye, and Coho (O. kisutch) afterwards. It's truly surprising that ANY salmon completes the cycle!
Add another trip to Montana for us this year. We visited Jim and Julie in mid-November. The visit included a trip to Kalispell, near Glacier National Park. It was a glorious sunny day, and Mt. Cannon could be seen on the horizon - it's way better than most stuff one sees from the car window.
We celebrated the US Thanksgiving holiday with Dan and Tomoko in Dublin GA. Dave and Megan came over, too, so it was quite a party.
Tomoko and Dan
The highlights were Tomo's recipe for turkey roll - think jelly roll with cranberries - and the gorgeous organic veggies Megan and Dave grew in Chicago.
Great nephew Brian Paradee proposed that he give L a tour of his school - Raisbeck Aviation High School - and L countered with an offer to give Brian a tour of UW's Computer Science & Engineering. The result for both was a fascinating look at serious engineering education in progress. Yes. Of COURSE you're sorry you missed it!
Aviation High & CSE
- Old link -- http://www.snydersR.us
- New link -- https://www.snydersR.us
Coordinates Is Now Encrypted
The tech community is pushing to increase the use of encryption on the Internet. You can help by changing your bookmark for this page:
That little 's' is the change. It will cause the connection between your computer and our Web page to be encrypted and unreadable by others. We have nothing to hide, of course, but in a small way we increase the amount of Internet traffic that is scrambled and off limits to snoops. You won't notice any differences. Our page will be just as inscrutable as it has always been.