Another chapter in the James Fitzpatrick Travel stories. The columbia river. We watch as the first Americans catch the salmon as they work their way around the waters. Crater Lake ! back in 1943 -- during WW II. According to Fitz, they were lured there for the camera by a pile of food. SO Wrong. But the landscape it so beautiful. The reflections. The colors, the mountains in the distance. Quite the patriotic ending wrap-up, as we WERE in the heart of the war. This one is OK. The landscape is just beautiful, but its a little sad to see them catching the salmon that are trying to spawn, and what they were doing to the bears just for our viewing entertainment. fortunately we know better than to lure the bears like this just for entertainment. These travel diaries show in between films on turner classic channel.

Scenic Oregon (1943) ** 1/2 (out of 4)With WWII at full speed it prevented James A. FitzPatrick from going overseas so his TravelTalks series stayed in the U.S. and this entry takes us to Oregon where we start off by looking at the Columbia River. We learn some brief history about it before traveling to a location, still owned by Indians, where they make extra cash by fishing in a strange way. We also see a location where fish are released into the river and apparently the record for fish released was just over 10,000 in an eight hour period. From here we travel to Crater Lake National Park where we see the legendary lake and hear about it's rather strange history. We also see some bears fighting for some food, which FitzPatrick says he put there so that they would get in front of his cameras (lets hope they didn't go into a campsite later that night for more and hurt someone). Fans of the series know what to expect and this is another nice entry. The beautiful lake and river look terrific in Technicolor and are good enough to make this 9-minute short worth sitting through.