siddhartha saha dot net

Well, I finally made it. I am sitting at the bottom of Bridal Veil Falls. It is absolutely gorgeous. The first time I saw the picture of this falls, I knew I have to come here. But still, I had to wait till the my last day in Seattle (or maybe second last, if I leave on Monday) to come here. But I am really glad I did not miss it. Its quite late - almost the end of the day. I don’t see anybody here - and it is going to be dark soon. I hope I don’t get eaten by a bear. It is kind of cold and damp up here, and the sky is cloudy - but these things make this experience even more worthwhile.
Since I plan to do this kind of travel blogging from wherever I go, I bought this really handy, small and cute bluetooth keyboard so that I don’t have to endure the pain of typing in the cell phone keypad. It is really neat to see that the letters that I type in that keyboard appear in my cell phone window. Whether you like it or not, I have to put some amout of geekiness in everything, and this is no exception. This kind of cool little things make amateur mobile bloggin quite fun.
Anyway, back to where I was. The driving: Being extremely confident in my skills in maps and direction, I did not even look up the directions to this place in the net. All I had were a AAA map of Oregon and Washington and the book 100 Hikes in Alpine Lakes (which is an extremely good book by the way). As usual, I was late in starting. I got lost and drove mostly based on a compass for half an hour before I reached Highway 2. Continuing east on Highway 2, past Monroe (a really small and cute town) you have to turn right on Mount Index road, just after crossing milepost 35 and then follow the signs to Lake Serene trailhead to reach the parking lot in the trailhead. I did not have the parkign permit and I didn’t have the time to get one, so I have parked my car without permit and I am hoping that I don’t get a ticket.

The Trail: I was planning to go all the way to Lake Serene, but I don’t have time and physically it is not possible for me to go 1000 feet more elevation. My bad knee is starting to hurt agin - I will have difficulties in going down - and it is going to be dark when I get down. Anyway, the trail is damp, slippery (it rained today) and quite rocky. If you ever plannin on coming here, wear hard soled good hiking shoes - else you feet will be uncomfortable. Elevation gain around 900 feet in 1.5 miles.Sometimes it was quite steep.
I think I am getting used to these kind of hiking. It took me 40 minutes to reach the falls, and I was out of breath - but not dying. It is so quiet, calm and serene - I am feeling wonderful. There is nobody around, and I needed a photo of myself with the falls in the background. After some careful and risky placements of the camera, I finally was able to take a couple of shots :).
What more to say, it is getting dark. I better start the return journey. I have to pick up Jennifer, my landlady, from the airport at 9:30pm today.

I woke up to the sound of my cell phone alarm at 0730 in the morning. It was cold outside but inside the sleeping bag, it was heavenly cozy. My tent is a little bit small for two people, but dipu and slept quite comfortably. I didnt want to get up so early and dipu was not showing any sign of life, I decided to in to sleep again.
Finally we woke up at 0830 and got ready. Had a quick breakfast consisting of hot tea, cookies, yogurt and cereal bars. After that, we began our day. After some debate and discussion about what to do first, we decided that we would hike to the top of Garfield Peak. It was a great hike. Relatively short: 1.7 miles with around 1000 feet elevation gain. It was an interesting trail with wonderful views of the lake and some nice volcanic rock formations. We took quite a lot of pictures on the way. We had a lunch of sandwich, apple, and banana on the top of the peak. While coming back down, I developed a strange pain in my right knee which made any kind of walking difficult for me for the rest of the day. That was bad.
It was bright and sunny so far but now the sky was gradually becoming cloudy and temperature started falling. After that we decided to hike up to the Watchman’s Point. That was a rather short and steep road: about 800 feet in a quarter of a mile. It was real simple but my right knee was hurting so badly that even this small walk was difficult for me. But the view was rewarding from the top and we had a nice photo session also and I also had the chance to peek into a fire lookout station. According to our plan, the next stop was Cleetwoot Cove. This is the place where you hike down to the lake and hop on to the boat tour of the lake. At this point we realized our biggest mistake of the day. By the time we reached there, all the tickets have been sold out for the day. So, a tip for all of you who want to in there: if you want to take the boat ride, get your ticket early in the morning. Since the boat ride was ruled out, the motivation to hike down to the lake kind of died. Also the pain in the right knee having intensified considerably, I was not in the mood of hiking down myself. So we all decided to visit all the points of interests and overlook points around the rim. We did that, took a lot of snaps, and enjoyed the view and quiet. The last stop for the day was the Pinnacle Overlook. Pinnacles are interesting natural chimneys which are formed when got gases from solidifying lava try to escape upward. After that, we came back to the camp. It was cold and damp. There was a paid shower in a nearby inn and paid 75 cents for 4 minutes of hot shower. It was nice after a tiring day. There was a small open air amphi theater nearby and there was a show by a ranger about the origin, history and interesting facts about crater lake. It was pretty good. As Matteo was keen on having a nice dinner, we had made a dinner reservation at a fancy lodge overlooking the lake. The dinner menu was ridiculously expensive and I reluctantly spent 30 bucks for a delicious salmon dinner.
We came back to the camp at 1100 at night and lit a nice campfire and finished the day with a decent bottle of wine and a bunch of marshmallows.

My cell phone is out of network. I will post it when I have a chance. This photo shows a view of the lake from Garfield Peak.

Recently my blog is becoming a travel journal. Well, it is better than nothing, even though I didnt finish up the writing on the recent trip to Olympic National Park. This is one of my last couple of weekends in Seattle. This is the long weekend of Labor Day. The destination this time is the Crater Lake (along with a few other interesting destinations). I am writing sitting at the back seat of the car. It is about 11:30 in the night on Friday, 2nd September and the drive seems fantastic. Especially since I am relieved of the duty of driving and I am able to watch the crystal clear sky above and the engulfing darkness and the big black evergreen trees on both sides of the road. This is so soothing. Night driving always fascinated me, and this experience is just great. This day so far had been pretty hectic for me. I woke up pretty late as usual. The morning was dull, gloomy and cloudy. I just wished I have a clear weekend. I left from work at 1:30, and started to drive south towards Portland. The plan was that I would reach there before 5 and them we would start from Portland sharply at 5. The road was so crowded. The bad traffic took me over four hours to cover the 190 miles. As a consequence, we were late in starting. We are almost there now. We will camp at the Mazama village campground tonight and we will hike around the place all day tomorrow.
We: Sudipta, Vishal, Matteo and me.

~ Siddhartha Saha
UCSD

(Sent through: MPX220)

A wonderful hike along the beach. Here is a crappy shot from the cell phone.