Our Combination of Words: NaBloPoMo Day 3: Fall Colors and Kokanee Salmon

It's day 3 of NaBloPoMo. Again, I chose this month's theme to be "past adventures that we haven't been able to blog about as well as what's happening currently." Since the last two blogs were a bit long and intense I'm going to make this one a little shorter. This blog will be about the spawning of the Kokanee Salmon at Porcupine Reservoir (September 23rd) and us going to take pictures in the Fall Colors near the Spring Hollow Campground by the third dam of the Logan River in Logan Canyon (September 24th).

The spawning of salmon is quite an interesting event that can be read about in this information sheet by the Utah Division of Wildlife. Salmon spawn in the streams where they were born. In Utah, the kokanee salmon are an inland subspecies of the Idaho sockeye salmon, so instead of living in the Pacific Ocean, they live inland in reservoirs and lakes. The Porcupine Reservoir is one inland lake where the kokanee salmon can be found. Every fall, they spawn by swimming upstream the East Fork of the Little Bear River, where they once hatched.

In Utah, the East Fork of the Little Bear River is dammed up to form the Porcupine Reservoir (I think).

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Here the Kokanee Salmon swim up the East Fork of the Little Bear River from the Porcupine Reservoir to lay their eggs and die to complete the life cycle of the salmon. When we visited the area on September 23rd, it was beautiful with the fall foliage color change.

Here you can kind of see the tiny stream that comes out of the reservoir in which the Kokanee Salmon swim up:

Jovie was being a funny baby, playing with sunglasses

The spawning salmon physically change during the spawning process: their bodies turn a brilliant red.

Kokanee Salmon working hard going upstream

Ben and his family came and Olsen had a great time playing with him

The relay team members each have a baton

The moon looked nice over the hills

Here are the rest of the pictures from the Spawning of the Kokanee Salmon.

The next day we decided to go take some pictures in the fall colors. The day before the kids all went on a hike in Dry Canyon and we got some great pictures of the kids in the leaves. But we felt like we wanted to attempt a group/family picture since we didn't get a good one the day before. We drove up Logan Canyon after I got off of work and drove until we found a spot that looked like we could be in some really colorful leaves. The Spring Hollow campground area seemed to be the best place.

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The biggest problem, however, was that it was past 6 pm and the sun had already gone behind the mountains. I wish there was a little more light but here are the pictures that we got