It's The Taylor Creek Fall Fish Festival! No, REALLY!

I shit you not.  What can I say, we really dig our fish up here.

Taylor Creek is an area near Lake Tahoe where salmon spawn this time of year.

The Fall Fish Festival is just a little thing, but it's cool because spawning salmon, man!  Although they cheated and reused last year's poster.

But it was just like last year right down to the taco truck, so meh, whatever, it's cool.

The area is gorgeous!  There is a half mile hike from the trailhead to our goal, the stream chamber.

Beautiful Fall colors!

Where there's spawning salmon there are bears.  Leave 'em alone, dummy!

Along the trail are signs educating you on the flora and fauna.
But it's...weird signage that seems off a bit.  Somehow menacing.  Dark.

A 'tree creature'?  Did I miss a memo?  Have we grown tired of calling them 'Birds'?

Or...are they creatures...?  Oh God...there's one behind me right now, isn't there?!
*don't panic*

EYES?!  Now there's EYES?  What in the actual fuck?!
It's those goddamned tree creatures, isn't it?!  

No escape?!  What is this place, a portal to Hell itself?  Jesus, why the Hell did I insist on coming here?!

Do I see movement in the what...?!  WHAT?!  Oh God, the Tree Creatures got the sign painter in mid-work, DIDN'T THEY?!
*i want to go home, please mommy*

AAAAUUUGGGHHH!  THERE IN THE BUSHES!  IT'S A TREE CREATURE!

Thankfully the Tree Creature realizes that we have no peanuts and lets us continue along the trail.

Taylor Creek is pretty...kinda marshy in spots and widening out to a serious creek in others.

Sadly we didn't see any salmon out here.  Sorry, 'Water Creatures'.

We finally make it to the underground stream chamber--a neato feature open most of the year, it's kinda like a giant aquarium where the walkway dives beneath water level so you can view fish and whatnot from underwater.

Inside the stream chamber.

The glass walls of the chamber gave a great view of the ecosystem.

Hey, salmon water creatures!

Forgive the crappy pics, the glass was quite grubby with handprints.

Fun salmon info...

We never saw the beavers, but evidence of them was everywhere.

Beaver dam!

More beaver dams

Kinda sucks for the beaver to do all that work and then have some smartass from the forest service come along and cut the tree down when he was *this* close to felling the tree.

And again, dammit!

Even worse to be denied your tree-chewing rights when they wrap the trees with wire...

Not content to leave natural wilderness actually natural, over the years various asshats have carved their initials in the trees along the trail.

After this it was getting late and time to go.  We stopped at a local Tahoe burger joint and had awesome burgers & shakes for dinner.

And for my birthday I got some cool stuffed Water Creatures!

Fun day, if tiring!