Happy Labor Day!

Double rainbow over Natl Elk Refuge. Photo courtesy of Skip Hall.

Boy, August flew by fast.  Wet and warm August for us.  Here it is the 2nd of September and our lows remain above freezing.  And there's still water in Colter Bay!

We have another month to go here at the hatchery.  Fish deliveries begin Tuesday.  

We were able to get out and take a couple of hikes in the park. (Taggart lake Loop Trail and Colter Bay's Lakeshore Trail)  Otherwise, it's been a typical month here at the hatchery.  We're fine & appreciate everyone dropping by and checking up on us.  Here's some pictures from our walks this last month.

Taggart Lake, GTNP

Taggart Lake, GTNP

Lake Creek (Phelps Lake outflow), Larry S Rockefeller Preserve, GTNP

Colter Bay Picnic Area, GTNP

Lakeshore Trail, Colter Bay, GTNP

Lakeshore Trail, Colter Bay, GTNP

Leeks Marina, GTNP

Beaver Creek Trail (Taggart Lake Loop Trail), GTNP

 

End of July Update

Pic by Jonathan - all I got was a pic of Jonathan taking a pic of the bear.  Oh, well...

So we finally were out and saw some wildlife.  We've actually gotten out several times since our last post.  We walked some of Paintbrush Canyon, took a tour of the Elk Refuge, visited Colter Bay, and took an ATV ride up Flat Creek & Curtis Canyons in the Bridger-Teton National Forest (the mountain range you see in pictures I take of the hatchery.)  ATV tour courtesy of Calvin.

We've finally gotten warm and to our great amazement, wildfire smoke has continued to elude us.  We do get some haze from time to time, though.  Volunteers here seem to get out as a group more than in past years, so there's been several evening get-togethers and sometimes eating out.

We about two months away from time to leave.  We expect to be out of here by October 2nd.  At least that's the plan.  We have reservations for Utah, Nevada and Arizona to round out the year. 

Lots of pictures below of what we've seen.  Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Until next time, David

Our motley volunteer crew plus Mike & Janelle (Jonathan pic)

 

Wild flowers at the hatchery

Paintbrush Canyon - this is as far as we went

Jackson & Leigh Lakes

Heron Pond (Colter Bay)

Colter Bay (Jackson Lake some 92% full)

Colter Bay Picnic Area

Pond on Flat Creek (Flat Creek Canyon)

Flat Creek (Flat Creek Canyon)

View from Curtis Canyon

View from one of the campsites in Curtis Canyon

Our motley ATV tour group (Jonathan pic)

Happy 4th of July!

Sack Fry Snake River Fine Spotted Cutthroat

We only got about 300,000+ of these little sack fry hanging out at the hatchery.  We have about 120,000 one-year olds that'll leave in September.

Happy 4th.  We're working today (or more appropriately, volunteering).  We're fine though I'm just getting over a bad case on indigestion.  Did it to myself, and it's taking awhile to recover.  We having a wet, cool spring, but that's coming to the end.  We did get a bout of Canadian Wildfire smoke in early June.  It left after a few days.  We're now into wildfire smoke season, and we're told it'll start to arrive in the area later today - just in time for fireworks!

 Not a lot of time to write.  Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Until next time, David

Volunteer RV Pads at Jackson Nat'l Fish Hatchery

Happy Father's Day!

Egg Incubator

Just an update from us.  We're hanging out & doing fine. Fish eggs have arrived (about 330,000) & the hatchery is busy.  There's a total of 12 volunteers working here this summer, and they're all busy.  Two new TVs were added inside the hatchery. One TV runs a video dedicated to the Dace (looks like a minnow). The other TV runs a video showing manual spawning at the Auburn Wyoming Fish Hatchery followed by a video showing the release of the cutthroat. Additional traffic exterior signs were added to assist in visitor parking (and they seem to be working).

Visitation seems to be up as well.  Schools are beginning to bring their students out to the hatchery for a field day.  Donna & I managed to get the 180 student tour last week.  It's a great group of kids, but Donna & I were beat when that day was done!

Jackson not as busy as it could be for this time of year.  No long lines of vehicles trying to get into town, yet. Eating out continues to be expensive.  We're staying out of the parks, so not a lot of pictures.  We plan to get out and walk trails from other areas near here.  Just haven't done that so far.

Snow about gone off the Gros Ventre range.  Only a spot or two of snow remains on Snow King Mountain. We keep getting rain - mainly thunderstorms in the afternoon.  It's cool enough that snow remains (and sometimes gets added) at the higher elevations of the Tetons.  It still looks like the range is sugar coated when we walk from the hatchery up to the south entrance sign.

That's about it from here. Sorry the update isn't a lot more interesting.  Thanks for stopping by, though. Enjoy the long weekend.  Until next time, David 

     

Another Day in the Tetons

String Lake

We've gotten a couple of weeks in at the hatchery since we last posted.  We may get fish eggs this coming week.  It's our first time to see the new fish egg incubators in place though the installation is not complete (missing plumbing).  Visitation at the hatchery is picking up.  People are beginning to get out & fish at the fish pond.  Jackson still not crowded though there are times that it gets pretty busy.  We're in a rainy spell.  It's unusual for us while being here.  Light rain on and off with thunderstorms mixed in each day with rain chances exceeding 50% most days.  This coming Monday looks to be a fairly dry day before rain returns on Tuesday.  

We made another trip into the Tetons this past Thursday.  We walked along String Lake (the lake between Leigh Lake and Jenny Lake).  We arrived at the String Lake Picnic parking lot about 9:30 AM, and plenty of parking was still available.  As this is our first "hike" in the park, we chose to walk along String & Leigh Lakes.  It's a good break-in hike - really an easy walk.  We celebrated by eating pizza and breadsticks at Leeks Marina.

Below are some of the pictures we took during our walk along String & Leigh Lakes.  I think this gets everyone up to date on us. Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Until next time, David

String Lake

Leigh Lake

 

Grand Tetons & Yellowstone Natl Parks

Satire, but it gives you an idea of Yellowstone's lower loop road

Settled in enough to start making our way out into the parks.  We're still a little early in the season and combined with a heavy snow over the winter, may facilities and services aren't up and running, yet.  Most should be up and running by Memorial Day weekend.

First trip out was Wednesday afternoon in the Grand Tetons.  We really went for lunch at Signal Mountain Lodge area.  To save time waiting in line, we ate at the bar.  One of the bartenders told us to go down to the boat ramp for a better view.  We did.  Cloudy & light rain, but it made for dramatic pictures.  More snow than we're used to seeing this time of year. Jenny Lake isn't frozen nor was Jackson Lake.  Jackson Lake remains very low.  

Friday was a trip out to the Old Faithful basin to shop for a new jacket to replace one of my jackets.  My Smokey Mountain NP jacket was wearing thin after 12 years of use.  I wanted a new one with a national park's name on it.  Jackets are few and far between in the gift shops, but we managed to snag one with Yellowstone NP (YNP) on it plus get a replacement shirt for Donna's Mt St Helens t-shirt (a light, 3/4 long sleeve t-shirt). 

The trip up into YNP was great until we started west from West Thumb basin to Old Faithful.  The trip from YNP's south entrance along Lewis River's gorge area was great.  Heavy snow remains in the area in heavily forested areas.  Unfortunately, the great views from the truck couldn't be captured as the piles from snow plowing that were too tall to see over, and I didn't come prepared to climb those little snow mountains.  Lewis Falls was running at high level but the pull overs are blocked with construction equipment as it appears they're working on a new new bridge.  Traffic control there was by a signal light when one-lane traffic was in operation.

The Loop Road appeared just beat up by winter and some rough areas existed and there was the occasional frost heave to pass over.  Head west to Old Faithful and things got interesting fast.  Several miles on two lane, gravel road.  An additional 5+ miles of single lane where some sections the out-of-use lane was being dug up as if a new base was planned.  Get stopped here while you're waiting for opposing traffic to pass & you'll be waiting awhile.

Old Faithful area busy, but not too crowded.  Daytime temps were warm.  Talked with a ranger and decided to make it a longer day and travel clockwise from Old Faithful up to Norris Basin, over to Canyon and back south to Jackson.  Missed most of the construction and got some great views and more snow that we anticipated.  

First up was Gibbon Falls.  The falls here run over the edge of the caldera.  The parking and trails are excellent and handicap accessible.  It just aesthetically pleasing giving how long Donna & I have set in stopped traffic as one lane of traffic made it by the area as the area and road was rebuilt.  Seems all that sitting there going nowhere was worth it.  We did manage to come across a coupled of bison traveling south along this section of highway (south of Madison Junction).  Guess they like traveling by roads, too.  We didn't stop for pictures.  It's tourist tipping season, so as soon as it was safe to drive by, we went!  Grand Prismatic parking lot jammed as were the sides of the road.

Norris basin was closed. We turned east here and headed over to Canyon.  This was our heaviest snow area we traveled through.  The road is open, but picnic areas and side loops still had significant snow on them.  We decided to try to drive the south rim of the canyon.  That road is open as is north rim drive.  Only the brink of the upper falls was closed (due to snow).    Artist Point was open, so I got my traditional pictures of Lower Falls. 

2+ hours later and we're back in Jackson - our day trip complete.  Pictures and a video below.  Thanks for dropping by and checking on us, David

Mt Moran

Mt Moran from the Signal Mtn boat ramp

Old Faithful Basin

Old Faithful Basin - you can see the snow in the forested areas in the background

Firehole River

Firehole River - Can you see the bison?

Gibbon Falls (Gibbon River)

Valley below Gibbon Falls

Yellowstone River Lower Falls from Artist Point

@Jackson Natl Fish Hatchery

Snake River Cutthroat Trout (11 months old)

If you managed to hit this site as a result of a search on the Jackson National Fish Hatchery, don't hesitate to come out and visit. Bring a picnic lunch.  Bring your clean fishing gear & a Wyoming Fishing License and you can fish in the hatchery's pond.  The hatchery is open 8 AM -5 PM each day.  Tour guides are available from 9 AM - 5 PM each day through mid-September.  Dogs are welcomed when on a leash.  We expect the new batch of fish eggs to arrive near the end of May.

For the personal side: We arrived Monday, May 8th, and been busy until today.  On the way here, we had a new hydraulic leak from a fitting that needed to be tightened.  Probably worked loose bouncing along I-80.   We noticed the leak when we felt the front of the trailer slowly dropping.  (3rd time in 10 months for this one symptom.)  Found the leak after dark when we'd stopped at Newton, IA for the night, so lots of fun around 10 - 11 PM that night. (On the good news side, the first wrench I pulled out of the toolbox to try and tightened the fitting fit perfectly - when does that ever happen??)  

Next day traveling & Donna's not feeling well.  That day's stop was one of our sit-a-day breaks in traveling (that is, a 2-night stop.)  We made a trip to the emergency room in Lincoln, NE after we arrived and finished setting the trailer up for the night.  Who knew bronchitis gave off the same symptoms as a heart issue?  Off we go with a new prescription for an antibiotic and we keep going.   

As mentioned earlier, we got here Monday, met the other couple that's working as tour guides.  We received our National Fish & Wildlife shirts, sweater & jackets and started work the next morning.  We're both dehydrated and still acclimating to the high elevation.

New highway hatchery signs are up.  The hatchery has renovated a room to be a visitor center.  It's nice and keeps the tour guides out of the weather.  Previous years, we sat on the front porch of a cabin and met people as they arrived from the parking lot.  Today, five TVs each playing a looped GoPro video of a single stage in the growth of the Snake River Cutthroat from egg to adult.  

Two aquariums are also in the visitor center.  One contains the Kendall Warm Springs Dace.  Kendall Warm Springs is located in the headwaters of the Green River near Pincedale, WY and is considered an endangered environment.  The dace (think minnows) are not endangered, but since their environment is considered endangered they are treated as endangered.  The Jackson Hatchery was one of two hatcheries selected to learn how to raise & take care of the dace.  That process started in 2018 and was completed while we volunteered here in 2021. So what to do with the dace?  Put them in an aquarium and teach people about them.  Primary predator for the dace are birds - think blue herons as an example.

The second aquarium shows some of the Snake River Cutthroat Trout that currently reside in the outside raceways.  It's perfect for showing people what the fish (currently 11 months old) look like (see picture, above.)  

The visitor center is still evolving.  The goal is to make it as self-guiding as possible when tour guides are not available.  Boards explaining hatchery operations need to be rearranged to make more sense or at least a more logical order.  There are a significant number of pictures of the history of the hatchery that can be added.    The path down from the visitor parking lot is now completely paved and has a rail fence to "guide" visitors along the preferred path.  New information signs are up.  

Outside, the split rail fence along the pond is gone.  The cabin where tour guides use to sit is now moved to the northeast corner of the hatchery and "improved" to make a room for a volunteer eager enough to stay there.  The overgrowth around the pond is gone.  This first raceway to the west side of the hatchery contains the adult cutthroat trout.  The cutthroat being raised for delivery are all located under tents with restricted access. (That's the aquarium's job to show people what they look like!)  The area where the old hatchery administrative building use to stand is being considered for renovation where they plan to add three more full-hookup volunteer pads.  This year's fish eggs are due in a couple of weeks.

Tour guides and one maintenance volunteer have arrived so far.  Two more volunteer biologist are expected.  There may be one more maintenance volunteer expected - just not sure.  The hatchery's full-time maintenance position is currently open.

As I sit writing this blog entry, it's partly sunny, 57 with a 15 mph east wind.  There's more snow on the Snow King Mountain than Donna & I have ever seen.  Snow still remains on East Gros Ventre Butte.  We're told this area has gotten the most snow this last winter than has ever been recorded.  It looks it!

So that gets you up to date with us.  Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Pictures of the hatchery and Snow King Mountain follow.  More later.

Kendall Warm Springs Dace

Snow King Mountain from the volunteer pads

Sleeping Indian Pond (Hatchery Pond with Sleeping Indian Mtn in the background)