it's a salmon watching, troll spying, outside kinda day!

on saturday, we made the most of the absolutely gorgeous weather we had been given!!! we started our day off at the ballard locks. right now the chinook are in the height of their run. at the locks they have a salmon ladder where you can watch the salmon moving upstream through the glass enclosure. the salmon were very impressive in size....a nice little morsel they would make! we also spotted a seal in the locks, he was putting on quite a show for whoever was watching!! and no doubt....he was filling up on some salmon! after the locks, we decided we would attempt to find the ever elusive fremont troll! now i say elusive only because he has been elusive to our family--everyone else i have ever asked about the troll are completely perplexed on how we could have missed it!! their claim is that this huge troll is in plain sight--okay so round 3 for the fox family.....i was determined we would find him this time! after some frustration on the part of the driver (me) and the navigator (shawn)- we were not on the same page for a better part of the seek and find troll mission- the troll was spotted! and while there was satisfaction in finally finding the troll, it was less than impressive! i think i had hyped myself up too much....yes the troll is huge and he is holding a real vw bug, but it is a concrete troll...hiding under a bridge...it was not worth the agony and frustration i had put my family through to find it! after troll mission complete, we decided to head down to ballard for a late lunch. we had the pleasure of dining outside on the main street in ballard. a little insight to ballard....it is a mixing pot of all sorts, the eccentric, the rich, the old & odd, the pet lovers, the i'm in my late 20's don't know what i'm doing in life but i'm a trail blazer sorts, you name it you'll see it in ballard! we had a yummy italian lunch and thoroughly enjoyed our people watching! we had some time left on the parking meter so we window browsed along mainstreet and finished up with a stop to tully's coffee! after a coffee energizer, we ventured down to issaquah. while i was in issaquah with gma a couple of weeks ago, i saw a salmon hatchery. i came home and told shawn about it and later that evening while he was rubbing elbows with jeff turner, jeff also mentioned the issaquah hatchery, and said it was a must see! this hatchery was much larger than the one we went to with shannon and erin a couple of weeks ago. there were not as many salmon on the ladders in issaquah as there were in ballard, but the size of the salmon were just as impressive! at this hatchery they had baby salmon who were trying to jump upstream...the cruel fact was that they had no where to go, they were jumping up into little tubes and then being flushed back out!! it was really humorous to watch these poor little fish trying so hard....and getting nowhere!! we had a great saturday--just taking in some great sights!