A week and a half before Halloween, I got to go to Eggs on Toast's school field trip to Taylor Creek (near Lake Tahoe) to see the Kokanee salmon.
After beautiful, endless, sunny summer and fall days, this day slushed in the valley and snowed in the mountains. Just three weeks before, we had been at the lake, swimming.
I don't know how the poor little wet, shivering kids survived. I almost didn't.
Eggs' class had been studying the life cycle of the Kokanee. By the time we got there, they were nearly finished spawning.
The red color of the salmon was spectacular and it was cool for the kids to see what they had been studying. However, we were so very, very cold, it was a little difficult to enjoy. But I think everyone was still glad that we got to go.
After I got home and changed into dry clothes, I got into bed and stayed there until the kids came home from school, and I still felt cold.
Check out the video below to see exactly where we went and what we saw (minus the snow). Although, in the video, the narrator says that the bears eat the salmon, but the tour guide told us that while there are many bears in the area, they don't eat the salmon. She said that they don't for two reasons. One is that the fish are about to die and they are pretty much rotten so they wouldn't taste good to the bears. The other reason is that fishing is a learned behavior for the bears and because the salmon are not native to the area, the bears do not know how to catch them. So now what are we to believe? The tour guide or the movie?
