Day: August 17, 2018

I have decided this is my new favorite place in Washington.  It isn’t even a town, it is a CDP – Census Designated Place.

When a local man saw me taking a picture of the Post Office window he explained, and I later confirmed, that Humptulips is derived from an Indian phrase meaning “hard to pole”.  What that means is that in the Humptulips River, in some places narrow and clogged with tree limbs and other debris, it may be impossible to propel a boat with conventional oars and even using a pole to move the boat forward by pushing against the river floor may be hard.

Sorry, Twisp.  You had a good run for the past year….

Thursday I went to two salmon hatcheries, one federal and one state.

These consist of large, rectangular concrete pools which can be filled with constantly changing water and in which fish are raised from a very small size.  Tracking chips are put in them and one non-essential fin is removed so fisherman and wildlife officials can later tell which fish came from hatcheries and which ones were bred and raised in the wild.

There was a Visitor Center at the federal hatchery and I learned there what the six species of salmon are and how to tell them apart.  Not all are raised in this hatchery.

As I was returning to Hoquiam I saw a sign for a state hatchery and it was virtually identical to the first one I saw.