The other day we visited Ballard Locks in Seattle and got some great shots of the boats moving from Lake Union through to Elliott Bay.  They have two locks in Ballard, one really really big (it’s like two football pictures) and one that’s pretty small.  The big one takes a LONG time to fill up with boats, then it takes a long time for the water to rise.  So if you go into the big lock you have better have a lot of time.

The smaller lock (in tonight’s picture) is a lot smaller.  For example here you can see it containing pretty much one big boat and a few small sail boats and it’s full.  So with this one you get in and out quicker.  I’m not sure what the rules are, if it costs more or something but most boats you see there go through the larger lock.

In the image below I’m standing on the gates that open and let the boats out so I’m literally at one end and the can see the gates at the other.

This is a cool place to take a camera, the only down side is that there are either too many people there in the way or you end up with all these fences in the way of the pictures.  They fence off every thing here.  So it’s hard to try to take pictures that focus on the subject you want.

Beside the docks they have a fish ladder where you can go and watch the salmon jump up the ladder to get up river to spawn.  I’ll go back there in a few weeks and try to get some shots of the fish as it’s quite amazing to see.

Carter decided to make some paper plane’s tonight, they didn’t fly very far though.