Messier Objects: The post that I forgot to post.

I wrote this weeks ago, but I totally forgot to finish it and post. But we had so much fun that I'm gonna post it anyway.

Every year on the first Saturday in June, Wolf Creek Dam hosts the Catch a Rainbow fishing derby. I wish I had words to describe it. It's just the most awesome event. You go up and register your kids and they give you some tickets for the prize drawings. Every kid who goes gets a prize. Then they give you a goody bag, usually candy an/or small gifts. This year's event had t-shirts, too. They also gave us pop-tarts and chocolate milk as we registered. Then you walk down the road and you'll pass a hatchery. We usually stop and feed the baby fishys. They have gumball machines filled with fish food pellets and the fish swarm up to be fed. Then you walk on down to the creek.

Now if you've ever been fishing you know that it usually means lots of time waiting around and hoping something bites. Not here. They know that there are going to be thousands of kids there so they stock it the night before with thousands and thousands of rainbow trout. It's so full of fish you could almost walk across it without getting wet. Just to give you an idea of how many fish there are, check out this picture. The whole river is like that. That little white thing? And how big are the fish? That little white dot is a one inch bobber.

Every hour a different age group fishes, starting with the youngest. But even so, they let kids age 1 through 4 fish out of a big kiddie pool stocked with huge trout. Some of these are fish that are so big the kids can't lift them. And while you're waiting for your kid's turn to fish, there's free hot dogs and cokes and cotton candy and music and booths to visit and raffles to enter and free candy everywhere.

Quinn didn't like standing in line for his turn to fish at all. So by the time we got to the front of the line he didn't even want to hold the pole. I dipped the line in the water to show him what to do and just then the kid next to us caught a fish. We turned to look and when we turned back there was a fish on our hook. Quinn was so startled. So they put it on a stringer for us, put it in an insulated bag, gave him a new fishing pole, and hung a big medal around his neck. He liked the medal the best.

Meanwhile, Zoe was doing her fishing. Don't ask me why she's pouting in this picture. Because she was having the time of her life. She caught four fish, won a new fishing pole, and had all the cotton candy she could stand. Actually, she caught a lot more than four fish. Scott says she hooked a dozen or more. But when she'd realize that one was hooked she'd get so excited that she couldn't reel it in and it would slip the hook. We ended up giving one of hers away because we met a girl who hadn't caught any.