CraterLakePortlandSeattle_July4th2019
July 3rd
Worked from home. Stopped work a little early, looked up some routes to Seattle, settled on the route with Crater Lake, as I had heard direct positive reviews on it from my colleague Arun and through my friend Amruth as well. Booked a Motel 6 in Redding, which was about four hours from home, and about two hours before the Crater Lake national park.
The drive was not particularly pleasant with all the traffic, a bit of Sunol beauty was there on the way.Reached the motel, called Divya and slept.
July 4th
Shastha Cavern was a potential sight that was pretty close to the motel,which the elderly receptionist recommended as well, but for her, the crater lake was an all-day thing. With the daunting task of driving all the way up to Seattle, and still open to let any place on the way stop me short by it's sheer beauty, I decided to give Shastha the skip.
The drive from Redding to the Crater lake was green and interesting with the big Shastha lake and other lakes as well on the way.
A snow-capped mountain in front was also driving me along. Very pleasant drive, as compared to the previous day.
Once at the Crater lake, had clam chowder and a chicken sandwich lunch. The sandwich was pricey, but not tasty at all, so I did not eat it, but the fries and the clam chowder had filled me up, and I was ready to pay the hefty twenty five dollar entrance fee to get into the park.
The deep blue Crater Lake was very beautiful. It looked like the sky had fallen in and was trapped inside the crater.
Mesmerizing blue.I took out my DSLR and had a hard time with manual focus with a slightly waning eye sight. While it has been a while that I have done any photography, it was still disappointing to see the compositions edge out too thin too often.
Pretty crowded, and everyone with their cameras out. But the place was not going to hold me down. I was going to continue the drive to Portland, which was a bit relieving, as I did want to drive all the way up to Seattle.
Crater Lake to Portland drive
This was the best drive section in the entire trip in terms of the scenic beauty around. I might have had "Avoid highways" option selected in google maps, which meant I was driving all alone through beautiful winding green country roads. Windshield of the car was a mess with the remains of insects that hit the glass and died. While I was pondering this, saw a sparrow hit the car on the side and bounce back a good distance.
There was a rustic laid back charm to Oregon. Houses were not gleaming with immaculateness. They were real homes, with people gathered outside, spending time together. Then there were deers on the road. It is early evening, bright sun, and a deer comes right in front of my car and stops and looks at me. Eye contact. Beautiful eyes. Then she sprung over the fence in slow motion. Multiple other deers on the way as well, just as nonchalant, happily eating grass from the edge of the road.
I thoroughly enjoyed the drive, big difference from the previous day's drive, that had felt like a chore trip for a warehouse implementation visit. Stopped for taking some photos of the sunset as well.
It has been a while since I have seen sunsets.
Now, the light was gone, but the upbeat was still there. So I put on "Manmarziyan" songs and sang my heart out for the rest of the drive. As the beats came on, there were fireworks happening around as well randomly, some of which translated as pure joy in my heart.
Now was the time to do a google search for a cheap room. I called the one that showed 69 $ and enquired about the room rate, 99 $ was the cool answer that came back, which dropped back to 69 $ when I mentioned the google result.
July 5th
Friday morning, I had my fodor's choice short list for places to visit, but I still decided to get the local vibe from the receptionist. The first sight she mentioned was the "Multnomah falls", which I was sort of looking to hear as I remember Bijunu sending a waterfalls photograph from Oregon, and no falls had figured in the fodor's list surprisingly. The japanese garden, rose garden, chinese garden etc were the other suggestions that came from the conversation with the locals, and I had been very clearly informed that the japanese garden has a fee while the rose garden was free. I had brushed that advice away, thinking the fee should be within ten dollars. Grateful for the hospitality, I set out to explore the natural beauty of Oregon, which already had set a pretty high benchmark from the countryside drive on the 4th.
Multnomah falls
As I reached the parking spot for Multnomah falls and saw the thin long falls from the distance, I was wondering whether this is really the most-famous falls here. May be there is another one, once you walk past. But no, this was the one, but it is much better once you get closer, though I have seen waterfalls with much more water abundance than this.
So I took my DSLR out and became the photographer. Tried to play with the shutter speed and aperture to get silky or dark images.
The effort was absorbing, but the results not as much. Following the crowd, I walked up to the top of the falls. The higher you went, lesser the photography opportunities. So, I became the trekker, and trekked through 12 hairpins, with 100 steps a time, 125 steps a bout sequences, and the decision to make it to the top.
Once up there, I again became the photographer and started photographing closeups of the water that was gushing down, as the falls is below me now.
My food schedule had gone crazy as I don't like to stop driving to eat, or stop sleeping to eat. So, after all the hiking I had done, I thought I should give my body some food. So I set the destination to the japanese gardens and decided to stop at some place close for food, and I landed up at "Elephants Delicatessen". I had "beef stroganoff" based on recommendation that I asked for from an employee there. It was really good. So, I decided to have a "macha tea with almond milk and chilled" as recommended by the coffee counter server. The almond milk and the chilled were indeed correct recommendations, and it opened up the avenue for buying more of starbucks coffees(made of almond milk) on my gas-station stops as was the pattern through out the trip, about eight starbucks bottles.
Happily fed, reached the japanese gardens. Was quite tired from the drive and the hike on top of it. The 18.50 $ ticket price for walking through greenery to feel some tranquility did not make sense. Any tranquility that you could have felt was taken away by the bill. It was a pretty good garden for a free-walk, but with the price tag, no fun, especially when nestled within such a lot of beautiful green anyways.
Rose garden, on the other side of the tennis court, was free and had about 6,000 species of roses. I became the photographer again, the same one who had photographed roses in Lal Bagh, Bangalore about twelve years back. Again, pretty absorbing experience. I could hear keralite families around, but not enough energy to acknowledge. So that was Portland, time to go on out to Seattle.
Drive to Tacoma, a little before Seattle
The drive to Seattle from Portland, said three hours or so, and that sounded like a cake-walk, from the drives so far. Crossed the bridge over Columbia river, I think to enter Washington state. Oregon has set a pretty high standard in greenish charm, which Washington although green as well could not meet. Rationalization I found out to like Oregon more was that the green was closer by, and hence entered the psyche much more than the spread out greenery of Washington.
During the drive, got a video call from Niya, and just then a car sped crazily across the lanes, to be immediately followed initially by a couple of police cars, which just seemed to shoot out of nowhere, and then there were swarms of cop-cars emerging from all over. I was running thin on attention, and found all the cop lights and noises disturbing. There was generally some chaos and crime in the air.
I took an exit in Tacoma, when I saw the Motel-6 sign, could not find it. So called up a wyndham hotel to be greeted by a charming and helpful girl, who finally got me into a pretty luxurious room with double beds. I thanked her in so many words, and just as I reached the hotel and was parking, a white distraught lady requested for my phone to call her ride Mike who had not yet arrived. I let her call, but Mike did not pick up. Once at the room, I enjoyed the luxury, and it struck me that I would have taken the same room if I had my family withe me, and I would have taken the same drive if I had my family with me, and so it made economical sense to do road-trips with family, and may be do flight trips when travelling alone.
July 6th
Seattle was finally here. I had reached where I had set out to reach. Oregon greenery and it's rustic charms was where my heart still was. With that bias, Seattle felt like an ostentatious rich city, with it's big buildings, and rich software crowd and it's city greens. One of the youtubers had warned me about how Seattle can just absorb money out of your wallet, and I was already realizing that the trip was costing me money as well, not just the time and effort.
The first free fodor's choice sight was "Gas Works Park",chosen as it sounded pretty unique, but was not much for a lonely traveller. Might have been unique for the kids to play around in the gas plant as opposed to playing in parks. As I was tired, half of me wanted to just relax and not do much of travelling, which the other half wanted me to push through and add some Seattle experiences to the trip.
Taylor shellfish oyster bar
Still unsure on how the rest of the day was going to unfurl with the negativity that had set in for Seattle for no good reason, I stopped at the Fodor's choice restaurant for some oysters. I love Oysters and go back to them once in a while. Seattle, with all it's water around, seemed a pretty good place for some Oysters.
While waiting for my oysters, I had decided on Sculpture park, Pikes place farmers market and the Hiram M. Chittenden locks to visit for the rest of the day. Where to stay during the night would be contemplated on after the visits are done.
I had one single raw oyster for three dollars followed by another single raw oyster for 2.5 $, when the server asked whether I would like some food as well in addition to the oysters. Filling up with oysters at three dollar a piece did not seem practical at this point anyways. So, I ordered a plate of fried oysters, which was pretty good, and pepped me up a bit as well, and like the youtuber had warned, a handsome eighteen percent from the bill had already been collected as service charge, and I could walk out with no extra tip as I was prepped from a mindset perspective.
Sculpture park
Based on fodor's recommendation, reached the Sculpture park, and had a good time, appreciating the outdoor sculptures. Seattle is a pretty good destination for arts, except again that the tickets can be pricey. On another frame of mind, I might have done binge museum visits here. By now, I was beginning to like Seattle better and was seeing Seattle for what Seattle was, instead of trying to see Oregon greenery here.
Pike place farmers market
This showed up on many lists, and I landed there to a disarray of crowds, and I found a parking spot right next to the market. It was just a bunch of vendors, and fresh food and fish and coffee. Lot of people, the kind of place my wife would love. Just walked through the stalls couple of times, on the side there was the beautiful ocean view, and the giant wheel, and the rides for the kids. I have had people tell me that they love Seattle. That is a possibility. Not to leave the farmers' market empty handed, I bought an apple-pear slush for six bucks, which was fresh and nice.
Hiram M Chittaden Locks
Saturday was coming to a close. Monday morning, I need to get to work. There is about a thousand miles and a day to go. But I stuck to the plan hatched with the oysters and drove to the locks, which was an engineering structure, a lock-system to control the water level between the Lake Washington which can be 4ft to 12ft higher than the salt water section based on the tide.
Once I reached here, Seattle was up there with Oregon greenery. The waterfront had been working it's charm from the sculpture park walks to the pike place farmers market sights and had hit the crescendo here.
There was the railway bridge with two sections, one of which could be opened up. When a train needs to go through, an alarm sounds and the section is brought down to complete the circuit.
Then there was the boat coming in after the trip to the sea, being roped in by amateur sailors, reminding me of the sailing trip I had done a while back under the golden gate bridge. Once about four boats were tied, the section is closed, and the entire section rises up like an elevator for the boats to meet the level in Lake Washington, and then the doors on the other side open to let to the boat into the lake Washington. Was mind opening to watch all of these mechanisms, especially after coming with such low expectation.
Next up was the fish ladders, which is again engineered mechanisms for fish to migrate back to the oceans. And there is also a glass viewpoint from where people can see the fish migrating back from the lake to the ocean. With all that done, as I walked back to the car, I heard the alarms for the railway bridge closing, ran and video-graphed it. While waiting in the car, making rest of the plans, saw a train come through the bridge, video-graphed that as well. Now, I wanted to take a video of the gate opening back up. So I went close to the bridge and waited. While waiting, I enjoyed the reflections of the bridge in the water, and the friendly kayaking tourists, and the fishing birds, and the stray sea-lion/ seal that was swimming by. But the bridge did not open, and I started on the next leg.
Over-Nighter drive back
Ashford's shakespeare festival was one thing I had wanted to try out on the way back, but with about thirteen hours of driving back left, and not wanting to go to work completely tired, decided on not visiting any other place, and instead take up the challenge of doing an all-nighter on the drive back. Seattle to Fremont in one-stretch.
Cop on the side
So I was enjoying this long challenge that I had taken up, and was going at about 80 mph in a 70 mph zone, when an SUV appeared on my left and was about to overtake. I had hit 100 mph quite a few times on the trip, but I did not just let him overtake and did not mean to race him either. Suddenly something happened and I dropped my speed to 65 mph, my neighbor turned it's blue lights on. He did not stop me thankfully.Saved me couple of hundreds.
Sunrise
As I reached the Shastha lake section, the sun had risen with me. I had been driving all night, and now the sun had shown up. I turned off the headlights and continued on.
Rest area outside Sacramento
Just about two more hours left to home, I felt sleep swinging on my eye-lids, and just then saw a rest area sign. I took it, and slept like a log, with a smile of my face for about three hours. Then drove on to Fremont, to the newly opened chinese restaurant that served me very tasty home-style double-cooked pork for lunch.
Thereafter, it was a lot of sleep in the rest of the morning, followed by more sleep at night.
Worked from home. Stopped work a little early, looked up some routes to Seattle, settled on the route with Crater Lake, as I had heard direct positive reviews on it from my colleague Arun and through my friend Amruth as well. Booked a Motel 6 in Redding, which was about four hours from home, and about two hours before the Crater Lake national park.
The drive was not particularly pleasant with all the traffic, a bit of Sunol beauty was there on the way.Reached the motel, called Divya and slept.
July 4th
Shastha Cavern was a potential sight that was pretty close to the motel,which the elderly receptionist recommended as well, but for her, the crater lake was an all-day thing. With the daunting task of driving all the way up to Seattle, and still open to let any place on the way stop me short by it's sheer beauty, I decided to give Shastha the skip.
A snow-capped mountain in front was also driving me along. Very pleasant drive, as compared to the previous day.
Once at the Crater lake, had clam chowder and a chicken sandwich lunch. The sandwich was pricey, but not tasty at all, so I did not eat it, but the fries and the clam chowder had filled me up, and I was ready to pay the hefty twenty five dollar entrance fee to get into the park.
The deep blue Crater Lake was very beautiful. It looked like the sky had fallen in and was trapped inside the crater.
Mesmerizing blue.I took out my DSLR and had a hard time with manual focus with a slightly waning eye sight. While it has been a while that I have done any photography, it was still disappointing to see the compositions edge out too thin too often.
Pretty crowded, and everyone with their cameras out. But the place was not going to hold me down. I was going to continue the drive to Portland, which was a bit relieving, as I did want to drive all the way up to Seattle.
Crater Lake to Portland drive
This was the best drive section in the entire trip in terms of the scenic beauty around. I might have had "Avoid highways" option selected in google maps, which meant I was driving all alone through beautiful winding green country roads. Windshield of the car was a mess with the remains of insects that hit the glass and died. While I was pondering this, saw a sparrow hit the car on the side and bounce back a good distance.
There was a rustic laid back charm to Oregon. Houses were not gleaming with immaculateness. They were real homes, with people gathered outside, spending time together. Then there were deers on the road. It is early evening, bright sun, and a deer comes right in front of my car and stops and looks at me. Eye contact. Beautiful eyes. Then she sprung over the fence in slow motion. Multiple other deers on the way as well, just as nonchalant, happily eating grass from the edge of the road.
I thoroughly enjoyed the drive, big difference from the previous day's drive, that had felt like a chore trip for a warehouse implementation visit. Stopped for taking some photos of the sunset as well.
It has been a while since I have seen sunsets.
Now, the light was gone, but the upbeat was still there. So I put on "Manmarziyan" songs and sang my heart out for the rest of the drive. As the beats came on, there were fireworks happening around as well randomly, some of which translated as pure joy in my heart.
Now was the time to do a google search for a cheap room. I called the one that showed 69 $ and enquired about the room rate, 99 $ was the cool answer that came back, which dropped back to 69 $ when I mentioned the google result.
July 5th
Friday morning, I had my fodor's choice short list for places to visit, but I still decided to get the local vibe from the receptionist. The first sight she mentioned was the "Multnomah falls", which I was sort of looking to hear as I remember Bijunu sending a waterfalls photograph from Oregon, and no falls had figured in the fodor's list surprisingly. The japanese garden, rose garden, chinese garden etc were the other suggestions that came from the conversation with the locals, and I had been very clearly informed that the japanese garden has a fee while the rose garden was free. I had brushed that advice away, thinking the fee should be within ten dollars. Grateful for the hospitality, I set out to explore the natural beauty of Oregon, which already had set a pretty high benchmark from the countryside drive on the 4th.
Multnomah falls
As I reached the parking spot for Multnomah falls and saw the thin long falls from the distance, I was wondering whether this is really the most-famous falls here. May be there is another one, once you walk past. But no, this was the one, but it is much better once you get closer, though I have seen waterfalls with much more water abundance than this.
So I took my DSLR out and became the photographer. Tried to play with the shutter speed and aperture to get silky or dark images.
Once up there, I again became the photographer and started photographing closeups of the water that was gushing down, as the falls is below me now.
My food schedule had gone crazy as I don't like to stop driving to eat, or stop sleeping to eat. So, after all the hiking I had done, I thought I should give my body some food. So I set the destination to the japanese gardens and decided to stop at some place close for food, and I landed up at "Elephants Delicatessen". I had "beef stroganoff" based on recommendation that I asked for from an employee there. It was really good. So, I decided to have a "macha tea with almond milk and chilled" as recommended by the coffee counter server. The almond milk and the chilled were indeed correct recommendations, and it opened up the avenue for buying more of starbucks coffees(made of almond milk) on my gas-station stops as was the pattern through out the trip, about eight starbucks bottles.
Happily fed, reached the japanese gardens. Was quite tired from the drive and the hike on top of it. The 18.50 $ ticket price for walking through greenery to feel some tranquility did not make sense. Any tranquility that you could have felt was taken away by the bill. It was a pretty good garden for a free-walk, but with the price tag, no fun, especially when nestled within such a lot of beautiful green anyways.
Rose garden, on the other side of the tennis court, was free and had about 6,000 species of roses. I became the photographer again, the same one who had photographed roses in Lal Bagh, Bangalore about twelve years back. Again, pretty absorbing experience. I could hear keralite families around, but not enough energy to acknowledge. So that was Portland, time to go on out to Seattle.
Drive to Tacoma, a little before Seattle
The drive to Seattle from Portland, said three hours or so, and that sounded like a cake-walk, from the drives so far. Crossed the bridge over Columbia river, I think to enter Washington state. Oregon has set a pretty high standard in greenish charm, which Washington although green as well could not meet. Rationalization I found out to like Oregon more was that the green was closer by, and hence entered the psyche much more than the spread out greenery of Washington.
During the drive, got a video call from Niya, and just then a car sped crazily across the lanes, to be immediately followed initially by a couple of police cars, which just seemed to shoot out of nowhere, and then there were swarms of cop-cars emerging from all over. I was running thin on attention, and found all the cop lights and noises disturbing. There was generally some chaos and crime in the air.
I took an exit in Tacoma, when I saw the Motel-6 sign, could not find it. So called up a wyndham hotel to be greeted by a charming and helpful girl, who finally got me into a pretty luxurious room with double beds. I thanked her in so many words, and just as I reached the hotel and was parking, a white distraught lady requested for my phone to call her ride Mike who had not yet arrived. I let her call, but Mike did not pick up. Once at the room, I enjoyed the luxury, and it struck me that I would have taken the same room if I had my family withe me, and I would have taken the same drive if I had my family with me, and so it made economical sense to do road-trips with family, and may be do flight trips when travelling alone.
July 6th
Seattle was finally here. I had reached where I had set out to reach. Oregon greenery and it's rustic charms was where my heart still was. With that bias, Seattle felt like an ostentatious rich city, with it's big buildings, and rich software crowd and it's city greens. One of the youtubers had warned me about how Seattle can just absorb money out of your wallet, and I was already realizing that the trip was costing me money as well, not just the time and effort.
The first free fodor's choice sight was "Gas Works Park",chosen as it sounded pretty unique, but was not much for a lonely traveller. Might have been unique for the kids to play around in the gas plant as opposed to playing in parks. As I was tired, half of me wanted to just relax and not do much of travelling, which the other half wanted me to push through and add some Seattle experiences to the trip.
Taylor shellfish oyster bar
Still unsure on how the rest of the day was going to unfurl with the negativity that had set in for Seattle for no good reason, I stopped at the Fodor's choice restaurant for some oysters. I love Oysters and go back to them once in a while. Seattle, with all it's water around, seemed a pretty good place for some Oysters.
While waiting for my oysters, I had decided on Sculpture park, Pikes place farmers market and the Hiram M. Chittenden locks to visit for the rest of the day. Where to stay during the night would be contemplated on after the visits are done.
I had one single raw oyster for three dollars followed by another single raw oyster for 2.5 $, when the server asked whether I would like some food as well in addition to the oysters. Filling up with oysters at three dollar a piece did not seem practical at this point anyways. So, I ordered a plate of fried oysters, which was pretty good, and pepped me up a bit as well, and like the youtuber had warned, a handsome eighteen percent from the bill had already been collected as service charge, and I could walk out with no extra tip as I was prepped from a mindset perspective.
Sculpture park
Based on fodor's recommendation, reached the Sculpture park, and had a good time, appreciating the outdoor sculptures. Seattle is a pretty good destination for arts, except again that the tickets can be pricey. On another frame of mind, I might have done binge museum visits here. By now, I was beginning to like Seattle better and was seeing Seattle for what Seattle was, instead of trying to see Oregon greenery here.
Pike place farmers market
This showed up on many lists, and I landed there to a disarray of crowds, and I found a parking spot right next to the market. It was just a bunch of vendors, and fresh food and fish and coffee. Lot of people, the kind of place my wife would love. Just walked through the stalls couple of times, on the side there was the beautiful ocean view, and the giant wheel, and the rides for the kids. I have had people tell me that they love Seattle. That is a possibility. Not to leave the farmers' market empty handed, I bought an apple-pear slush for six bucks, which was fresh and nice.
Hiram M Chittaden Locks
Saturday was coming to a close. Monday morning, I need to get to work. There is about a thousand miles and a day to go. But I stuck to the plan hatched with the oysters and drove to the locks, which was an engineering structure, a lock-system to control the water level between the Lake Washington which can be 4ft to 12ft higher than the salt water section based on the tide.
Once I reached here, Seattle was up there with Oregon greenery. The waterfront had been working it's charm from the sculpture park walks to the pike place farmers market sights and had hit the crescendo here.
There was the railway bridge with two sections, one of which could be opened up. When a train needs to go through, an alarm sounds and the section is brought down to complete the circuit.
Then there was the boat coming in after the trip to the sea, being roped in by amateur sailors, reminding me of the sailing trip I had done a while back under the golden gate bridge. Once about four boats were tied, the section is closed, and the entire section rises up like an elevator for the boats to meet the level in Lake Washington, and then the doors on the other side open to let to the boat into the lake Washington. Was mind opening to watch all of these mechanisms, especially after coming with such low expectation.
Next up was the fish ladders, which is again engineered mechanisms for fish to migrate back to the oceans. And there is also a glass viewpoint from where people can see the fish migrating back from the lake to the ocean. With all that done, as I walked back to the car, I heard the alarms for the railway bridge closing, ran and video-graphed it. While waiting in the car, making rest of the plans, saw a train come through the bridge, video-graphed that as well. Now, I wanted to take a video of the gate opening back up. So I went close to the bridge and waited. While waiting, I enjoyed the reflections of the bridge in the water, and the friendly kayaking tourists, and the fishing birds, and the stray sea-lion/ seal that was swimming by. But the bridge did not open, and I started on the next leg.
Over-Nighter drive back
Ashford's shakespeare festival was one thing I had wanted to try out on the way back, but with about thirteen hours of driving back left, and not wanting to go to work completely tired, decided on not visiting any other place, and instead take up the challenge of doing an all-nighter on the drive back. Seattle to Fremont in one-stretch.
Cop on the side
So I was enjoying this long challenge that I had taken up, and was going at about 80 mph in a 70 mph zone, when an SUV appeared on my left and was about to overtake. I had hit 100 mph quite a few times on the trip, but I did not just let him overtake and did not mean to race him either. Suddenly something happened and I dropped my speed to 65 mph, my neighbor turned it's blue lights on. He did not stop me thankfully.Saved me couple of hundreds.
Sunrise
As I reached the Shastha lake section, the sun had risen with me. I had been driving all night, and now the sun had shown up. I turned off the headlights and continued on.
Rest area outside Sacramento
Just about two more hours left to home, I felt sleep swinging on my eye-lids, and just then saw a rest area sign. I took it, and slept like a log, with a smile of my face for about three hours. Then drove on to Fremont, to the newly opened chinese restaurant that served me very tasty home-style double-cooked pork for lunch.
Thereafter, it was a lot of sleep in the rest of the morning, followed by more sleep at night.
Including photos enriched the narration.
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