Today Kittee and I took the day off to enjoy a day of rest, riding and relaxation. Right after breakfast we groomed Misty and Nugget, loaded them in the trailer and headed up the river - to ride the So. Fork Walla Walla River Trail.
While riding through the river fords, we counted 17 mature King Chinook holding in the river crossings in there annual rite of moving upriver to spawn. These were some gorgeous fish ranging in size from 24" up to 34" or better. A few had the spawned -white fin/ tail- deterioration. We found salmon in every crossing except the one pictured below which is a narrow, deep, and fast portion of the river, not really salmon holding
waters.
As you can see from our photos the day was beautiful, with highs in the low 80's and pure sunshine on our shoulders. It was a wonderful ride, but we had to cut it a bit short as I began to realize back pain for the previous bucking ride of a month ago. This day we made about a 2 hour ride , of which was non-eventful except for the joy of riding through our beautiful northeast Oregon upriver back country, which is 7 miles from home. One thing that was pretty neat was that at our last river crossing there was a very large salmon that had white dorsal fins that ran right along side Kittee and Nugget as they crossed the river, the four of us were amused by this
happening, not sure about the King Salmon, he could have been pissed by our presence in the back country. It was a very good ride. After settling Misty and Nugget into their pastures back at the ranch, we made a quick trip into town to watch/ listen to some great western music (composed 1840-1920) by various artist and preformed by Coyote Joe and the Western Trio Band. It's Muddy-Frogwater Festival weekend in Milton-Freewater, Oregon. We are having a good time, enjoying life.
Dale - a day in the life around the ranch
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