A Trip Across Oregon: Bonneville Dam, Fish Hatchery, and Vista House

My family and I decided to go out for a bit of sightseeing with our French Exchange student, and so we did a short little road trip and went to the Bonneville Dam, its Fish Hatchery, and an attraction called the Vista House.

We stopped at the Bonneville Dam first. There were a few things to look at inside, all based on how water became a power source, but nothing that really sparked any of our interests. I think our mom was the most excited out of all of us. Outside was a little stream of water that was made for the fish to go upstream and lay their eggs and back downstream with ease.

The Bonneville Dam was made between 1933 and 1938. This dam was the idea that stemmed from the Great Depression and the need for employment. The idea was to use the water current to provide electricity to the Pacific Northwest. It was a very dangerous job, especially being so near to such strong currents. The actual reservoir ended up to be 48-miles long and a 76.5-foot tall pool of water. More information found here.

Source

After visiting the dam we were making our way to the Bonneville Fish Hatchery. On our way there was a little market that piqued our interest, only having around 4-5 booths, 2 selling fruits and the others were selling salmon that they had just caught from out of the river next to the market. We had bought a type of plum that they called a donut plum. It was in a shape that we had never seen before, but they gave us a sample it was really delicious. Then we made our rounds, ending up buying smoked salmon and half of a salmon uncooked which we had for dinner that night.

The Bonneville Fish Hatchery was probably the most exciting out of all of the stops we made. There were multiple pools of fish, and they pride themselves for their massive sturgeon called Herman The Sturgeon. Herman was actually a female and was nearly 80-years old and almost 11-feet long. For a fish she's been through a lot, surviving a stabbing, kidnapping and recently a wildfire. We had visited this hatchery before and her sign had been up, but today when we visited there was no sign to be found. Our mom thinks she died, but I haven't found any evidence of her death online and we forgot to ask anyone working there.

Here are a couple of sturgeons that we did see, still as massive, and much taller than me in length.

More information on the attractions at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery here.
More information on Oregon's white sturgeons here.

A few pretty flowers I had seen as we made our way around, I especially like the one on the right.

I also took a few pictures of the scenery around the fish hatchery. I could tell that they took the effort to make the hatchery look nice and that they clean it thoroughly since I couldn't even smell anything fishy.

After checking the gift shop we left to make an on-the-spot decision to go to the Vista House. Once we arrived I was a little surprised of the shape, it definitely didn't look like a house or anything livable. Inside the interior was like a dome and the stairs led up to the balcony. The biggest surprise was that it actually continued downstairs, I wish it hadn't gotten refurnished to suit the needs of a tourist though, I would have been interested to see how it was when they first established it. After a bit of research, I learn that it wasn't a house at all, it was actually an observatory built on the summit of Crown Point, made to look over Oregon. More information on its history here.

---

Sources:
All pictures were taken by me using my iPhone 5S except the actual Vista House and any other sources that were linked.
I used PicCollage to put all of my pictures into a collage since I thought it would look more organized.

---

Thank you for taking the time to read my post! Please up-vote, re-steem, and consider following me for more content. :) Don't be afraid to comment either!