Inauguration Day Hike

We celebrated this historic day with an early morning drive to Lyle for an Inauguration Breakfast at Bob's house, with fellow Klickitat Dems. A rock slide has cut off the road that's the short way to Bob's, so we had to go around the long way. It was worth getting up early for. What a feast! Waffles, eggs benedict, blackberry breakfast casserole, coffee, oj (with or without champagne) and of course, I brought the bloody marys.

Since we were already in Lyle, we stopped by the Klickitat Trail for a hike afterwards. Brindle had waited patiently in the car for us to finish watching the goings on in DC, and deserved a treat. We got one, too.

The Klickitat Trail is a Rails to Trails project. We are fortunate to have it in our back yard. Today we were treated to two eagle sightings. The picture to the right shows a tiny eagle up in the sky there in the center, but he was close to us when he took off from the tree by the trail. I just couldn't get the camera out fast enough. Gotta practice my quick draw! Trust me, it was an eagle. Bald. Big. And beautiful.

On the way back to the car, we climbed down a treacherous cliff to a place by the river where we have fished before. There's an easier way down, but we needed our waders to get to the gravel bar. The steep way put you right at some stepping stones. Here we found dozens of spawning coho salmon. A group of about 6 almost made it through the shallows to deeper water upstream, but panicked right near the end and went back to the beginning. I hope it wasn't us that spooked them. We were trying to be quiet. And keep the dog from romping in the water, or eating the dead salmon that obviously didn't make it to deeper water. I'll spare you that photo.

We waited and watched for a while, but started getting cold. It was about 30 degrees today, and overcast. So we headed back out, stopping at the north edge of the bar. There were a few big ones that were jumping around in the water. We had to stop and watch some more. Yes, we are easily entertained.

I tried taking some video, this one's passable. Watch at the end, I shifted to the left to catch some thrashing fish. You had to be there. What a day!