Spent the day wandering around with Cathy’s aunt and uncle. In the morning, went out with Cathy’s aunt and introduced her to geocaching while wandering around the WSU campus. Found a couple, skipped a couple others that were in areas I was less sure about. Stopped by the bear research area and saw the couple of bears that were out. Also stopped by Ferdinands, WSU’s version of their dairy store. As usual for a college dairy store, their ice cream was pretty decent.
In the afternoon, headed out to the Snake River. Crossed the Lower Granite Dam, where they seem to be somewhat on the overkill side of security. ID required for everyone in the vehicle, no pictures while on the dam (yet you can take them from just below the dam). Visited the visitor center and watched the fish swim through the fish ladder. Apparently we were between salmon runs, so there really weren’t many salmon visible, only saw a couple. Lot of carp in the river, which did kinda surprise me, always thought of them as lake fish. What was also kinda amusing is that the young salmon going downriver are actually filtered out of the water with some big fish filtering plant, and then actually put on boat and taken downstream by boat. Apparently at one point they used to actually truck them downstream. Just seems kinda bizzare. Then we went a little further downstream to a dunes area that you can actually get out and swim in the river. Well, you can swim in it if you manage to get far enough out in the water. At about 50 or 60 feet out, I was still only knee deep, although in about another 25 or so it did start to get deeper faster. Water felt pretty cool considering it was about 95 degrees or so, walking back over the dunes not so cool.