Tagged: Puget Sound

On our last day in Washington, Crispy had to do some all-day school thing so Kathleen and I scoured the internet to find something cool to do. Luckily it’s super easy to find cool things to do up there. Our main activity of the day was checking out the Ballard Locks (officially named the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks). The Puget Sound is salt water and the lakes are freshwater, and the Locks give boats a way to go between them.

This boat is coming from a lake to the Sound and sits in a little holding area type of thing:

Here’s the “before:”

And the “after:”

The photos aren’t great, but you can see how the boat went from high to low as they let the water out. This way the level of the water can be controlled and boats can go from salt to fresh water and back again safely.

Then we checked out the fish ladder. Love this sign:

Some reading information for you (it’s actually very interesting):

This is where the fishies come out (we didn’t see any the day we were there):

This is the ladder that the salmon eventually swim up. The guys said that they had only gotten one that day, and we didn’t actually get to see any fish using the ladder. Still cool though:

The observation area below the ladder where you can see the salmon swimming against the current:

Fish eggs! Ew…

They look so determined don’t they:

We spent awhile trying to get photos of the fish jumping up out of the water. We saw quite a few but this was the best photo I got:

It really was entertaining for quite a long time. Much longer than most people would have spent there.

Kathleen:

Really liked this boat:

If you’re ever up in the Seattle area, I’d highly recommend checking out the Locks. It was educational, informative, and interesting. There were also some gardens around that we didn’t have time to really check out, but it looked like a great place to bring a picnic and spend a day or an afternoon.