Visit From the Horned Frog

We have been blessed with visits from many of our friends and family this spring and summer.  Our friends Don and Barbie and their daughter Katie were here for a couple of days.  It was fun to see them and have a little time to share some of our part of the world with them. 

It is a little ironic that for years in Bakersfield we had a very nice guest room and bath that was hardly ever used.  Now we have a very small house with hardly any room and we have lots of guests!  I guess it IS all about location?  Don and Barbie were very adventurous and decided to sleep in the loft above the chicken coop / garden shed. 

If we had known it was going to get so much use as guest quarters, we might have designed it for more than storage.  You enter by way of the ladder and trap door.  Please note we have been working on finishing the interior of the shed, the exposed insulation is not the final look. 

 

It is small and a bit low to the ground, bit it does have a great view.  Don’s air mattress lost most of  the air during the night, but other than that they survived their “rustic” quarters.  They did tell us they enjoyed watching the deer at the feeder just below them.   

 

Katie was very generous and willing to let her parents experience the loft all by themselves; she stayed in the house in the guest room / office.   After breakfast, we all took a walk over to the river and fish hatchery. 

It was a cool, cloudy day, but still a nice view.  This is the mouth of Jordan Creek where it feeds into the Cascade River.  It is part of the spawning area just below the hatchery.

We have been to the hatchery several times, but it is always interesting to see the different cycles the eggs and fish are going through.  This time they were incubating rainbow trout eggs.

The lighter colored ones are not viable and will be washed away when they do the next rinse.

 

The staff at the hatchery has always been very polite and willing to let us explore.  We did notice that we seemed to get extra attention on this visit from the college student summer interns.  The (male) interns were very attentive and even gave Katie some food pellets and let her feed the fish outside in the larger tanks.  Never hurts to have a tall blonde with you!

 Whatever is in those pellets, the fish do like it.  

Our next adventure was a drive up the North Cascades Hwy. to Newhalem.  Here are Don and Katie on the bridge overlooking one of the little waterfalls and creeks that feed the Skagit River.

A photo op on the bridge.

 

The suspended walking bridge over the Skagit. You can really feel that thing bounce in the middle as you walk along. 

We also cooked dinner on the grill under the gazebo.  Poor Katie thought she was going to freeze even though we had a fire under the gazebo, so she bundled up. 

When she is not teaching summer swimming lessons, Katie is a proud TCU Horned Frog.  What is it with all these California girls going to college in Texas?  

All that fish feeding and touring around must have tired her out.     

 It was great to see our friends, even just for a little while.  And the Dewar’s chews they brought us were wonderful!