Water themed day
Friday, 13 September 2019
Can a morning be murkier? Rain. Mud. Looked like the sky wouldn’t clear for a week.
So we set off to assuage our need for some activity, and pfft, by just after noon: sunshine. We found flooded rivers and huge puddles down along the Lake Michigan shore. It took more than our latest rains for these floods! Decorative carts in Nahma were all in puddles—four of them! Nahma must have a year-around population of something like 300, so that’s an outsize effort.
Came across this small gang/rafter of turkeys…two hens on each side of the tom. The ladies split two to each ditch. He went with the ladies on the right. We motored slowly past and assume they reunited.
Eventually, we stopped at the Thompson fish hatchery. It was after the buildings were locked, but we could walk around, following the yellow fish road.
I don’t remember this machinery. They pump fresh water from a super deep well, then swap out trapped nitrogen for oxygen (they oxygenate the water). However the water smells of rotten eggs as it has a high sulfur content.
The one open water pool was the waste pond downhill from the hatchery. All the nutrients from the fish and excess food is removed here, before the water flows back into the wild. Big sheets and islands of algae.
Even a few “no fishing” fish. Speckled trout?