Day 6

Today we drove from Salem, OR to Seattle, WA.

Note that you can click on a picture to zoom in.

The first stop was in Salem to see the Capitol building. This statehouse is not as fancy as some, but is elegant in white marble. The sculpture on the right is a family traversing the Oregon Trail, the one on the left Lewis and Clark led by Sacagewea.

This is the Senate chamber of 30 members. The picture over the Speaker's dais is of Oregonians celebrating admission to the Union. The rug has alternating squares of salmon and (something, I forget).

This is the chamber of the Representatives. 60 of them. The rug has diamonds of pine trees, the state symbol.

The state seal, embedded in the rotunda floor.

We visited the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia river. There are two power plants generating electricity for Seatlle and environs.The Columbia is the dividing line between Oregon and Washington. It's big and fast moving. There is a lock enabling river traffic to avoid what used to unpassable rapids. The drop in 60 feet and a boat can go through the lock in 30 minutes.

This is a fish ladder at the dam. It allows almost all the mature fish to get upstream during spawning season and the young ones to get down, without being chewed up by the turbines in the generators.

This is a viewing port under the ladder where non-fish can view fish swimming upstream through the ladder. The number of fish that pass up the ladder is really amazing, some 700,000 annually!

Note the eels in the lower right corner. They use the ladder, too!

Tomorrow Seattle and Vancouver.