Tales of travelling … again …

This year has been seminal in terms of the amount I have travelled. Do not believe me when I crib that I am not travelling enough. I am just being a bad boy, and asking for more candies !
In February I went to north east Oregon with a few friends, to the Eagle Cap Wilderness and Wallowa Lake & Mountains. The night-stay in a charming cottage in the snowy wonderland that it was was worth way more than the forty dollars that the trip cost me. In retrospect the stay together with friends and spending the long hours after sunset came, chatting, making fun among friends, playing up each others’ imaginary fears of the netherworld, falling asleep in weird cozy positions mostly in the midst of talking and playing games was very, much fun. I am convinced it has added to that sum total of life’s pleasure invoking experiences. The album is here.
In June (5-12) I went on a car tour of the Pacific northwest, as I mentioned in the previous post with a an old college room-mate.The 2200 mi tour was nothing short of fantastic. In fact I was so enamoured I am ready to go back there the next summer if the chance so arises. While the weather had played spoilsport initially, and the day at Crater Lake was a total gray out, the rest of the days were out of that stack of post-cards at the souvenir shop ! Oregon’s Pacific coast is what the seascape lovers paradise look like. Forested headlands, cliffs, cobblestone as well the “standard fare sandy” beaches strewn with bleached driftwood, off-shore rocks with abundant birds, seals, and the amazing multi-coloured sea life in tide-pools – everything come together to make it a cornucopia of sorts ! The Coastal Redwoods of Del Norte county in northern California were all that they were promised to be from the brochures and more, a land of giants with an almost primeval flavour. The constant fogs rolling in, the dripping moss of the far-above branches, the dark, shadowy ominous groves of trees with their age wrinkled barks, all came together to take us into an almost make believe world, as if we were standing in the company of Elders of Prehistory !
Between the two of us, we clicked with such abandon, that the editing of all those photographs looks like a gargantuan feast to me, something that I am still to put my teeth into to relish enough. Only about a sixth of it is done, and hopefully the rest would be done in some not too far off future. The album, as much of it is done is here.
The judgment I had reserved in the last post about the city of San Francisco, comes now. It has its share of sky-scrapers but I must agree that the frenzy of Midtown Manhattan, or downtown Chicago is missing. The city still retains the cultural piquantness of the waves of immigrants who have come over the decades, and made the city their home. I like the distinctiveness of the old Victorian houses, the flavour of Spain in the areas near the Presidio, the pagoda lilt of Chinatown, and the little sidewalk cafes, eateries and churches in Little Italy. In short the flavours are still discernable, and have not become the hotchpotch of cosmopolitanism looking to become that suave, blended smoothie ! The patch work on the tapestry is very much evident. I am sure that under this welcoming warmth the city still has its ruthless commerce and under the carpet poverty, the daily drudgery of urban mayhem and cruelties of lives gone astray, but it is covered with an élan, that must be appreciated.
The stay in the academic environs of Berkeley also had its pluses I believe, the liberality espoused in that acclaimed university town has spread out in all its sentient sympathy and affected the whole of the Bay Area. In short it was a nice break over the weekend.