The People of the Big River 2017

Day~8 Sunday July 16, 2017 It was a cold night in Wellpinit, the local dogs and coyotes sang me to sleep. I woke up feeling refreshed. It is nice being up before any orders are being yelled. I had my person time before breakfast. Breakfast was too good. I over ate. Two pancakes, two eggs, 5 pieces of bacon, and a BLT! I only ate once today. Geocashing wasn't as fun as I wanted it to be. Taylor and I was a team and it took us too long. It was already hot outside and mosquitos were starving. But we prevailed and found our reward. We also drive to the Spokane River, we had our eyes peeled in hopes in seeing a moose. It was a beautiful drive. The river was a beautiful site to see. When we arrived Mike, Pedro, and I played a game of 21 on a dirt a basketball court. Brought me back to my childhood, when we all had dirt courts. Afterwards we swam, I dove off the dock and stood on the logs in the river and did a yoga pose. We only had an hour at the river. Then we came back. I fell aslee...

Selfie 😜

Day~7 Saturday July 15, 2017 We left Mission Oregon with good feelings. We didn't get to visit the museum, but over all it was a good stay. We did stop by the McNairy Dam fish viewing area and the visiting center. We seen a few eels and by golly we seen shad! I seen too many shad already this year fishing. When I visit the dams, I always pray for them to fall apart and crumble at my feet and let the water start flooding. Maybe one day the river will be restored. We were then quickly on the road again. Jessica's quote of the trip, "Look, appreciate, and move on, we need to hurry!"  We drove to Pasco to do laundry and upload our blogs.  Every stop we have to blog, we struggle with technical difficulties, and it takes a lot longer than planned. We packed up and were off to Wellpinit, Wa hours later. We finally started getting excited when we reached Rearden, WA. It was also very nostalgic drive to the Spokane Reservation. I lived here once in my early twenties and wor...

Day~6 Friday July 14, 2017 Today we did a little touring of the reservation and the ceded lands. Our first stop was an overview of the Umatilla river. Winex was our guide she talked about habitat restoration on the river. She explained how they are working toward restoring the river to keep it cold and clean. River rocks are important in filtering the water. Riperian vegitation is important for bank stability and shading over the river. The meandering of the river slows the flow so water can charge the aquafir. They have also restored flood zones to also help recharge the aquafir. It made me feel good hearing about the efforts done here. Our second stop was at one of their fish hatchery facilities where we met with Micheal McCloud. He is a Fisheries Tech 2 and is very invested in his work. He said that he can't go any further in this field without his education. He encouraged us to get educated. He was a fisherman on the Columbia River who ran up to 30 nets. Now he has dedicated ...

Day~5 Thursday July 13, 2017 We were up early and off to the Nixya'awi Governance Center around 7:30 am. Wenix Red Elk our host and our first presenter is the Public Education and outreach specialist for CTUIR DNR. The one thing that really caught my attention is the tribes mission statement. The tribe uses our first foods to  guide how the tribe manages it's natural resources. I also really liked the way they use Elders and members of the tribe to get the base line abundances for their natural resources. Their goals they have set forth are to revitalize resources to these baselines that were once here. The tribe has made some good progress in the past 30 years to bring fish up the local tributaries. Their white tail deer populations are high, I usually see deer in yards and around residential areas since I can remember. One thing I did find interesting was that Winex said that Elk is first in their food line after Salmon, it and before deer. For the Yakama's, I was taugh...

Day~4 Wednesday July 12, 2017 Our last Morning in the Deschutes National Forest, bitter sweet. We are off to greet the people of the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla. Before we left the area we stopped off at the Deseret High Museum. We didn't have much time to look around. I headed over to Native American exhibits of the museum. I was standing at the entrance looking at some exhibits and there was a lady looking at the tipi. We weren't facing each other. I heard a loud duck call noise or maybe it sounded like a buck snort. I turned to look behind me where the noise was coming from and the lady looked at me with the most surprised look on her face. She excused herself right away and said she thought I was her child. I couldn't help but laugh. I tried to tell her it was ok, but she was practically running down the hallway apologizing as she left. I continued looking at all the beautiful bead work and many outfits they had on display. I noticed a lot of the work and the ...

Day ~3 Tuesday July 11, 2017 Today we were split up into 2 groups. My group went to South Twin Lake and did some trail maintenance. It was a nice trail that went around the lake. It was fun watching everyone so eager to work.   Jesse and Chase were easy to work with and seemed to like their jobs. It would be a good job for our youth. I was happy to hear they have a lot of volunteers. They cover a large land base and are a crew of 6 and work in pairs. It was fun to see people get out of their comfort zones and do some work with the hand saws and the pulaski.  We had the pleasure to meet a Fish Biologist by the name of Tom Walker. He said he has been working for the Deschutes National Forest since 1989.   He had us doing some restoration efforts on Soda creek as it comes into Sparks lake. Sparks lake has no outlet and the sediment that drops into the lake is slowly turning the lake into a meadow. We worked on soda creek and placed logs in areas to help disperse the wat...