Crater Lake, Oregon
July 1st, 2005
The excitement was already building up with the anticipation of another great encounter with Wilderness. I got off from work about 6:30 pm. I and Giuseppe drove to R.E.I to pick up the camping gear for Saturday’s trip to Crater Lake. Mike joined us later and I had a Fajita Burrito dinner later at Chipotle. Giuseppe did not seem too happy with his bean burrito but politely mentioned that it was quite different. Later that day I meticulously packed for the next two nights camping in Create Lake National Park.
July 2st, 2005
My morning began with a half hour shower, perhaps the only shower in the coming three days. I was almost ready in time; Allison arrived right about 8:00 am as we had planned. However the guys were a little late. When they showed up, we packed Mike’s cooler with some of the food Allison had bought the previous night for the trip. The trunk of her car was almost full with the cooler, our bags, the camping gear etc. We finally took-off around 9:00 am. Allison was driving her car, Mike was in the pillion seat navigating and I and Giuseppe were at the back seat looking out of the window. There were few jokes floating around about Oregon rains. In fact, it started drizzling when we were on the roads. That made me a little worried, because we were planning to camp at a much higher elevation and can get really chilly at night. Nevertheless, we drove on. After some time of driving, we stopped for gas. Mike came back with a huge smile on his face and a large Pepsi in his hands. Apparently, the reason why he bought the large Pepsi was because it was cheap. Giuseppe had already begun getting desperate for an Italian style double Espresso shot. He did manage to buy an Espresso from the same small store as Mike, and looked he pretty happy after the coffee. We got back onto the car and started driving. We wanted to be in Crater Lake before noon to find us a good camp site because long weekends normally make them pretty crowded. So we did not stop anywhere on the way fro detours or hikes. However, Mike was concerned about the status of firewood for the camp-fire at night. So we stopped about 45 minutes away from Crater Lake, at a small antiquated road-side shop to buy fire-wood. The chicken legs and thighs on display looked quite yummy so I bought myself a big chicken leg and some fry’s. That was sort of a mini lunch for me. From there, we drove straight onto Crater Lake National Park and learned at the entrance that all the camp-grounds are full. Even all the boat-ride tickets are sold out. We decided to camp in the nearby Diamond Lake Recreation Area about 6 miles from Crater Lake. We drove there and found a quite nice campsite in the almost full camp-ground. I must say we were very lucky. We set the tent and the sleeping bags to return home in the evening to a ‘cozy’ bed ready and waiting to crash upon. The plan was to drive up to Crater Lake next and find out what can be done there. We all prepared our back-packs for short/long hike whatever appears interesting there. I got myself a ‘turkey-breast’ sandwich prepared by Mike, a bottle of water, some chocolate, a towel and my beach shoes. We entered Crater Lake and the landscape seemed very interesting. There were random piles of snow here and there on the hilly terrain on both sides of the street and suddenly we see vast stretches of near barren land with occasional appearance of short pine trees and some short plants strewn here and there. And lo and behold, suddenly appear in front of us, elegant pine trees, standing tall and proud welcoming us into the wilderness swaying their arms in the chilly breeze. We drive-up to a parking lot where we see lots of other cars parked. Tourists were walking around, talking pictures admiring the beauty of the Crater Lake in front. I also heard some people talking in Bengali. Makes me feel close to home and I threw them a friendly warm smile sort of thanking them for that nice feeling. Anyway, that was a good vista point for Carter Lake. We walk up to catch a view of the lake and it is a brilliant blue piece of serene something that appears neither to be the sky, nor the sea that we are familiar with. Guarded by strong mountainous arms on all sides, the lake lies there holding mysteries underneath it for thousands of years now. I wonder what was I when the Mt Mazama erupted 7,700 years ago? Was I a spectator to this explosion, or was I an extinct animal feeding on my own children? Suddenly I feel this urge to scuba-dive to the heart of the lake and beneath to see if the lava has any stories to tell, anything to explain. Anyway, from there we drove-off to the place where we need to buy tickets to the boat ride on Crater Lake that takes you to Wizard Island on the Lake. This island is also very interestingly formed and among the many visible cones that formed on the crater after the mountain exploded. The mound is formed of volcanic materials of some kind and has interesting green plants growing on them. There life-forms are so strange, they can survive on anything they find. Adaptation at its best perhaps and also a lesson for us humans, who spend their life only trying to perfect things around us to meet our needs. We found at the ticket office that to get onto any of the boat rides we need to be in queue about 7:00 in the morning. There was a crazy rush due to the long weekend. We decided to park the car there and take the short hike to the lake and enjoy the lake from close. It was a fairly easy hike and we reached the lake very soon. There was a strange yellow streak on the blue waters of the lake. A little girl was filtering that yellow substance from the waters on to the rocks. Her mom wanted her to come back but she would not stop doing the important work she was engaged in. Mike thought the yellow streak was pollen, Allison thought it was Sulphur, Giuseppe asked me what I thought. I said nothing because I had no idea. We sat there for sometime, I was munching my sandwich while Allison told us about a famous Scottish song that has her last name ‘Auld’ in it. We shortly took-off from there after I finished my sandwich. The hike back up to the top seemed very difficult for me. Maybe it was the sandwich, maybe it was just me. Mike and Allison very soon disappeared from our sight. Giuseppe spotted a giraffe looking tree and an elephant head looking tree on the way up. Right near the top, I enjoyed a short nap on a huge tree branch lying on the ground with my American Eagle hat on my face to save it from the sun. Once we reached the top, we promised we would get here early the next day to be able to make it to the boat ride. He drove back to the camp-site. Mike started making the fire, me and Giuseppe started looking for small rocks to build the height for the charcoal bed. Turkey and Beef burger were in this night’s menu. As me and Allison walked towards the nearby faucet to clean the Spinach leaves and marinate the chicken (for tomorrow’s dinner) she pointed out that the guys are making fire and we the girls are preparing the food. We are from opposite parts of the globe and yet similar in subtle ways. The rest of the night, me and Allison just sat around the fire while Mike was doing most of the work with Giuseppe as his apprentice. We tried bar-b-q corn which tasted quite uncooked. I nevertheless had it. Now Mike had this great idea about wrapping the corn in foil and putting it in the charcoal. It turned out pretty nice. Then he was in this frenzy of wrapping things in foil and throwing them in the fire. He tried to cook spinach that way that Allison trashed after the first scoop. Besides that we had a great dinner. The dinner was followed by Marsh-Mellow for dessert. Burning marsh-mellow is always Mike’s favorite. We sat around the fire till quite late and finally went to sleep I think around 10:30 am. The starry sky above was looking so beautiful. We had noisy neighbors that night. I gazed at the stars lying on my sleeping bag in the tent. I thought I saw something flying. Giuseppe said that may be a flying bear. This was quite a joke that lasted us through out the trip.
July 3rd, 2005
We got up quite late today, had a quick breakfast and left for the boat ride. I was almost sure the tickets would be sold out and so it happened. The tickets were all sold out. The blonde lady at the ticket counter was trying to appease angry tourists who had come all the way for the boat ride and now cannot make it. She had a black mosquito feeding on her cheek while talking to the tourists. That was funny I thought. Now we needed an alternate plan. There was a Klamath Falls about 80 miles south of Crater Lake. But we all voted to go there though Mike was a little reluctant. While in the car, Mike was reading Giuseppe’s “Lonely Planet” Travel Guide for the Pacific Northwest. He found that Klamath Falls has no Falls in there, the name is highly deceptive or has been made deceptive by some miraculous works of Nature. So we decided to stick around Crater Lake area. We pulled over to a vista point to decide our next plan. The look-over from the vista point was very beautiful. It sometimes amazes me how often this word ‘beautiful’ comes to my mind when I am in the wilderness for 2 days as opposed to the 363 days of city life. Is city life so drab and sad or is it just the change? Perhaps the latter. Anyway, so I was looking down at this gorge deep below, surrounded by mountainous terrain all around. It looked very strange I thought. The mountains around were very barren but the valley in between had an exceedingly green color to it, almost felt like an Oasis in a desert. I wanted to hike down there and others agreed. So we drove back to Mazama village to follow that trail. It was called Annie Creek Canyon Trail. The trail-head starts behind an open air amphitheater in the Mazama village camp-ground. It was a 1.7 miles loop trail. We reached the base of the trail very soon. There was a musical creek flowing down there and we walked along the creek for sometime. I wanted to follow the creek as long as it goes. Perhaps it would take us to the Pacific in its course. We figured that would be a bad idea because we would have to wade through the water and get frost-bites as Allison mentioned happened to her in some trail in England. There was a small wooden bridge across the creek at one point. We decided to wet our feet there. Giuseppe spotted a frog when posing for a photograph. We got lot of pictures there. Mike and Giuseppe were captured at their ‘gay’ best in some photographs. Occasionally there were hikers trying to cross the bride when we had to give way to them. We were eating chocolate and Trailmix. I noticed Allison had beautiful pink flower painted on her toe nails. I would hunt for those next time. Anyway, we decided to move on after a while. As usual Mike and Allison ran up very fast while I and Giuseppe were enjoying the slow walk up. At one point up the hike there was this strange looking bench that was skewed at an angle towards the creek side. I and Giuseppe posed there for a photograph. I also narrated my experience in Mystery Point, Santa Cruz, CA last year with DP, Shailaja and Shirshanka. On reaching the camp-ground I noticed showers and immediately decided to take a shower. The others were in a shop buying post-cards. I bought one too and thought I would send it home. Now this shower was interesting. You buy 4 minutes with 75cents. So, if you still have soap on you the shower will in any case last only for 4 minutes with the 75 cents. So I decided to be on the safe side and take lot of change with me. The shower was great, warm water touching my dusty body for the first time in a while. I changed to a clean set of clothes and walked back to the car. From there we decided to go canoeing in Diamond Lake. In the order of having canoed before Mike was the first, followed by me, Allison and Giuseppe. However I was as novice as the other two because I was just sitting at the front of the canoe rowing for speed and not too worried about the technicalities of steering it. Nevertheless we made the brave decision of me and Allison in one canoe, with me at the back and the guys in the other with Mike at the back. It did not work out quite well because we seemed to be circling in one spot. Once in the lake, Mike rowed his canoe close to us and told us Giuseppe has excelled his canoeing skills and is ready to take the back seat. So I moved to Mike’s canoe and Mike moved to mine. It was fun doing the switch in the water with the canoe’s swaying. Anyway, once in the canoe we wet-off. Mike was way ahead of us. Giuseppe started singing some songs from Bolonia, his home town in Italy. It surprises me so much to find an European as slow-paced and finding pleasure in simple things of life. At that point he did not seem much further away from my memories of fishermen in the Bay of Bengal singing aloud in the sea. But anyway, a sudden surge of wave topples our canoe and the next thing I know is I am under water and cannot find the ground under my feet. I panicked but quickly floated up to the surface and I and Giuseppe were clinging on to the canoe now full of water. It was funny because Giuseppe started speaking in Italian suddenly. It is strange but how effortlessly your mother-tongue flows mellifluously when we are in strange situations. I was clinging on to the water-filled canoe and enjoying those moments under the Sun. The water was quite cold and finally Mike and Allison arrived to our rescue. I was asked to slide over towards Mike’s canoe while the three of them were trying to throw the water off the canoe. After few unsuccessful attempts they managed to get the water out. I was holding on to Mike’s canoe which maintained the balance while the three tried to clear the water. Finally Giuseppe managed to push himself into the canoe I floated back towards the canoe and got back on it. My cap and one the oars were rescued by Mike and Allison already. Once on the canoe I and Giuseppe headed back to the shore because it was very cold. I thought, so much for the warm shower a while ago. I changed to dry clothes and was lying on the green grass starring at the sky for some time. I noticed a small rainbow in the sky but the others teased me saying I was hallucinating after the fall in the lake. A little boy was picking up his little shoes throwing them in the water and picking them back from the water and repeating that exercise till his mom yelled at him to come back. Me and Giuseppe waited for Mike and Allison to come back from there swim. Then Giuseppe has this great idea of capturing our fall into the lake with a photograph. He asks Allison to take our picture. While we pose for the photograph Giuseppe suddenly lifts me off the ground in his ‘shaking’ shoulders to pose for the photograph. It was a very uncomfortable feeling for me but I decided to forget about it thinking perhaps this Italian wanted to mean in this photograph that he rescued me from drowning. He did rescue me but with his funny Italian words when I forgot about the freezing water for a moment and started laughing clinging on to my boat there. We then set-off towards our car. We arrived at the camp-site and today it was bar-b-que chicken for dinner. I was very hungry. Today we managed to get the charcoal fire going very fast. In no time we were relishing our chicken. This was followed by the bigger fire. I had a cup of soup after much effort of heating it. Giuseppe decided to give all of us an Italian neck message known to be very effective for weariness apparently. We went off to bed quite late that night about 12:00 am. Next day we were leaving.
July 4th, 2005
Today is America’s Independence Day celebration. They mark this occasion by fire-works. We had decided to go to a wild-life safari on the way back home. I had spotted this on the brochure of ‘Things to do in Oregon’ that I picked up from a Max Train. But it turned out to be very far then. Now that it is on the way we could definitely make a trip there. We dismantled the tent and packed everything back into the car. After a quick breakfast we set-off on the roads again. We decided to drive up to Rosenburg on Highway 5 and depending on the time left, we would either go to the Safari or head home straight. We had to return the camping gear before 6 pm today to avoid late charges. On reaching Rosenburg Mike called up R.E.I and they agreed not to charge any money even if we return the gear on Tuesday. So we decided to visit the Safari. The Safari was first created by an American called Frank Hart who undertook the mission of saving endangered species from all over the world by transporting them to this area in Pacific Northwest, and providing a breeding ground for them there. We arrived at the Safari, bought our tickets at AAA discounted prices. The boy at the counter lived in Hillsboro where our office was and his father worked for Intel in Jones Farm. Anyway, we were all very excited for this 1.5 hours safari trip. The safari was divided into animals from three continents – Africa, The Americas and Asia. Except for the bear and lion areas we could keep our windows down all the time but had to be inside the car. We saw exotic animals from all over the world – giraffes, zebras, bison, black and brown bears some taking a bath in a man-made pond inside the safari, lions and tigers lazing around in the sun, white fallow deer from Asia with their carpety beautiful horns, polka dotted Sika deer, Ostriches, elegant cranes, Tibetan Yaks, Rhinos, yawning Hippos, the royal Bengal tiger, Llamas etc. An Asian bird called the Rhea was really curious and walked right up to our car when we were parked to take their pictures. It would not go away to let us drive past. I managed to capture a hippo while yawning and two giraffes cuddling. It was all very beautiful. At one point we noticed a strange looking animal that had a black head, brown body and white back. Mike was of the opinion that that was the result of the mating of two species of animals that were not supposed to mate. We noticed a red-necked bird with a long neck. I did not know what that was so decided to call it a red-neck. We were out of the Safari in about an hour and half. We then drove straight home. I was sleeping for a long time. We actually drove straight to R.E.I to return the camping gear and then headed to my home where Mike’s car was parked. We distributed the remaining food-stuff between us took a final picture and headed our individual ways. The rest if the day was quite lazy for me. The sound of fire-crackers soared up roaring on to the sky, while I started writing this travel log.
The excitement was already building up with the anticipation of another great encounter with Wilderness. I got off from work about 6:30 pm. I and Giuseppe drove to R.E.I to pick up the camping gear for Saturday’s trip to Crater Lake. Mike joined us later and I had a Fajita Burrito dinner later at Chipotle. Giuseppe did not seem too happy with his bean burrito but politely mentioned that it was quite different. Later that day I meticulously packed for the next two nights camping in Create Lake National Park.
July 2st, 2005
My morning began with a half hour shower, perhaps the only shower in the coming three days. I was almost ready in time; Allison arrived right about 8:00 am as we had planned. However the guys were a little late. When they showed up, we packed Mike’s cooler with some of the food Allison had bought the previous night for the trip. The trunk of her car was almost full with the cooler, our bags, the camping gear etc. We finally took-off around 9:00 am. Allison was driving her car, Mike was in the pillion seat navigating and I and Giuseppe were at the back seat looking out of the window. There were few jokes floating around about Oregon rains. In fact, it started drizzling when we were on the roads. That made me a little worried, because we were planning to camp at a much higher elevation and can get really chilly at night. Nevertheless, we drove on. After some time of driving, we stopped for gas. Mike came back with a huge smile on his face and a large Pepsi in his hands. Apparently, the reason why he bought the large Pepsi was because it was cheap. Giuseppe had already begun getting desperate for an Italian style double Espresso shot. He did manage to buy an Espresso from the same small store as Mike, and looked he pretty happy after the coffee. We got back onto the car and started driving. We wanted to be in Crater Lake before noon to find us a good camp site because long weekends normally make them pretty crowded. So we did not stop anywhere on the way fro detours or hikes. However, Mike was concerned about the status of firewood for the camp-fire at night. So we stopped about 45 minutes away from Crater Lake, at a small antiquated road-side shop to buy fire-wood. The chicken legs and thighs on display looked quite yummy so I bought myself a big chicken leg and some fry’s. That was sort of a mini lunch for me. From there, we drove straight onto Crater Lake National Park and learned at the entrance that all the camp-grounds are full. Even all the boat-ride tickets are sold out. We decided to camp in the nearby Diamond Lake Recreation Area about 6 miles from Crater Lake. We drove there and found a quite nice campsite in the almost full camp-ground. I must say we were very lucky. We set the tent and the sleeping bags to return home in the evening to a ‘cozy’ bed ready and waiting to crash upon. The plan was to drive up to Crater Lake next and find out what can be done there. We all prepared our back-packs for short/long hike whatever appears interesting there. I got myself a ‘turkey-breast’ sandwich prepared by Mike, a bottle of water, some chocolate, a towel and my beach shoes. We entered Crater Lake and the landscape seemed very interesting. There were random piles of snow here and there on the hilly terrain on both sides of the street and suddenly we see vast stretches of near barren land with occasional appearance of short pine trees and some short plants strewn here and there. And lo and behold, suddenly appear in front of us, elegant pine trees, standing tall and proud welcoming us into the wilderness swaying their arms in the chilly breeze. We drive-up to a parking lot where we see lots of other cars parked. Tourists were walking around, talking pictures admiring the beauty of the Crater Lake in front. I also heard some people talking in Bengali. Makes me feel close to home and I threw them a friendly warm smile sort of thanking them for that nice feeling. Anyway, that was a good vista point for Carter Lake. We walk up to catch a view of the lake and it is a brilliant blue piece of serene something that appears neither to be the sky, nor the sea that we are familiar with. Guarded by strong mountainous arms on all sides, the lake lies there holding mysteries underneath it for thousands of years now. I wonder what was I when the Mt Mazama erupted 7,700 years ago? Was I a spectator to this explosion, or was I an extinct animal feeding on my own children? Suddenly I feel this urge to scuba-dive to the heart of the lake and beneath to see if the lava has any stories to tell, anything to explain. Anyway, from there we drove-off to the place where we need to buy tickets to the boat ride on Crater Lake that takes you to Wizard Island on the Lake. This island is also very interestingly formed and among the many visible cones that formed on the crater after the mountain exploded. The mound is formed of volcanic materials of some kind and has interesting green plants growing on them. There life-forms are so strange, they can survive on anything they find. Adaptation at its best perhaps and also a lesson for us humans, who spend their life only trying to perfect things around us to meet our needs. We found at the ticket office that to get onto any of the boat rides we need to be in queue about 7:00 in the morning. There was a crazy rush due to the long weekend. We decided to park the car there and take the short hike to the lake and enjoy the lake from close. It was a fairly easy hike and we reached the lake very soon. There was a strange yellow streak on the blue waters of the lake. A little girl was filtering that yellow substance from the waters on to the rocks. Her mom wanted her to come back but she would not stop doing the important work she was engaged in. Mike thought the yellow streak was pollen, Allison thought it was Sulphur, Giuseppe asked me what I thought. I said nothing because I had no idea. We sat there for sometime, I was munching my sandwich while Allison told us about a famous Scottish song that has her last name ‘Auld’ in it. We shortly took-off from there after I finished my sandwich. The hike back up to the top seemed very difficult for me. Maybe it was the sandwich, maybe it was just me. Mike and Allison very soon disappeared from our sight. Giuseppe spotted a giraffe looking tree and an elephant head looking tree on the way up. Right near the top, I enjoyed a short nap on a huge tree branch lying on the ground with my American Eagle hat on my face to save it from the sun. Once we reached the top, we promised we would get here early the next day to be able to make it to the boat ride. He drove back to the camp-site. Mike started making the fire, me and Giuseppe started looking for small rocks to build the height for the charcoal bed. Turkey and Beef burger were in this night’s menu. As me and Allison walked towards the nearby faucet to clean the Spinach leaves and marinate the chicken (for tomorrow’s dinner) she pointed out that the guys are making fire and we the girls are preparing the food. We are from opposite parts of the globe and yet similar in subtle ways. The rest of the night, me and Allison just sat around the fire while Mike was doing most of the work with Giuseppe as his apprentice. We tried bar-b-q corn which tasted quite uncooked. I nevertheless had it. Now Mike had this great idea about wrapping the corn in foil and putting it in the charcoal. It turned out pretty nice. Then he was in this frenzy of wrapping things in foil and throwing them in the fire. He tried to cook spinach that way that Allison trashed after the first scoop. Besides that we had a great dinner. The dinner was followed by Marsh-Mellow for dessert. Burning marsh-mellow is always Mike’s favorite. We sat around the fire till quite late and finally went to sleep I think around 10:30 am. The starry sky above was looking so beautiful. We had noisy neighbors that night. I gazed at the stars lying on my sleeping bag in the tent. I thought I saw something flying. Giuseppe said that may be a flying bear. This was quite a joke that lasted us through out the trip.
July 3rd, 2005
We got up quite late today, had a quick breakfast and left for the boat ride. I was almost sure the tickets would be sold out and so it happened. The tickets were all sold out. The blonde lady at the ticket counter was trying to appease angry tourists who had come all the way for the boat ride and now cannot make it. She had a black mosquito feeding on her cheek while talking to the tourists. That was funny I thought. Now we needed an alternate plan. There was a Klamath Falls about 80 miles south of Crater Lake. But we all voted to go there though Mike was a little reluctant. While in the car, Mike was reading Giuseppe’s “Lonely Planet” Travel Guide for the Pacific Northwest. He found that Klamath Falls has no Falls in there, the name is highly deceptive or has been made deceptive by some miraculous works of Nature. So we decided to stick around Crater Lake area. We pulled over to a vista point to decide our next plan. The look-over from the vista point was very beautiful. It sometimes amazes me how often this word ‘beautiful’ comes to my mind when I am in the wilderness for 2 days as opposed to the 363 days of city life. Is city life so drab and sad or is it just the change? Perhaps the latter. Anyway, so I was looking down at this gorge deep below, surrounded by mountainous terrain all around. It looked very strange I thought. The mountains around were very barren but the valley in between had an exceedingly green color to it, almost felt like an Oasis in a desert. I wanted to hike down there and others agreed. So we drove back to Mazama village to follow that trail. It was called Annie Creek Canyon Trail. The trail-head starts behind an open air amphitheater in the Mazama village camp-ground. It was a 1.7 miles loop trail. We reached the base of the trail very soon. There was a musical creek flowing down there and we walked along the creek for sometime. I wanted to follow the creek as long as it goes. Perhaps it would take us to the Pacific in its course. We figured that would be a bad idea because we would have to wade through the water and get frost-bites as Allison mentioned happened to her in some trail in England. There was a small wooden bridge across the creek at one point. We decided to wet our feet there. Giuseppe spotted a frog when posing for a photograph. We got lot of pictures there. Mike and Giuseppe were captured at their ‘gay’ best in some photographs. Occasionally there were hikers trying to cross the bride when we had to give way to them. We were eating chocolate and Trailmix. I noticed Allison had beautiful pink flower painted on her toe nails. I would hunt for those next time. Anyway, we decided to move on after a while. As usual Mike and Allison ran up very fast while I and Giuseppe were enjoying the slow walk up. At one point up the hike there was this strange looking bench that was skewed at an angle towards the creek side. I and Giuseppe posed there for a photograph. I also narrated my experience in Mystery Point, Santa Cruz, CA last year with DP, Shailaja and Shirshanka. On reaching the camp-ground I noticed showers and immediately decided to take a shower. The others were in a shop buying post-cards. I bought one too and thought I would send it home. Now this shower was interesting. You buy 4 minutes with 75cents. So, if you still have soap on you the shower will in any case last only for 4 minutes with the 75 cents. So I decided to be on the safe side and take lot of change with me. The shower was great, warm water touching my dusty body for the first time in a while. I changed to a clean set of clothes and walked back to the car. From there we decided to go canoeing in Diamond Lake. In the order of having canoed before Mike was the first, followed by me, Allison and Giuseppe. However I was as novice as the other two because I was just sitting at the front of the canoe rowing for speed and not too worried about the technicalities of steering it. Nevertheless we made the brave decision of me and Allison in one canoe, with me at the back and the guys in the other with Mike at the back. It did not work out quite well because we seemed to be circling in one spot. Once in the lake, Mike rowed his canoe close to us and told us Giuseppe has excelled his canoeing skills and is ready to take the back seat. So I moved to Mike’s canoe and Mike moved to mine. It was fun doing the switch in the water with the canoe’s swaying. Anyway, once in the canoe we wet-off. Mike was way ahead of us. Giuseppe started singing some songs from Bolonia, his home town in Italy. It surprises me so much to find an European as slow-paced and finding pleasure in simple things of life. At that point he did not seem much further away from my memories of fishermen in the Bay of Bengal singing aloud in the sea. But anyway, a sudden surge of wave topples our canoe and the next thing I know is I am under water and cannot find the ground under my feet. I panicked but quickly floated up to the surface and I and Giuseppe were clinging on to the canoe now full of water. It was funny because Giuseppe started speaking in Italian suddenly. It is strange but how effortlessly your mother-tongue flows mellifluously when we are in strange situations. I was clinging on to the water-filled canoe and enjoying those moments under the Sun. The water was quite cold and finally Mike and Allison arrived to our rescue. I was asked to slide over towards Mike’s canoe while the three of them were trying to throw the water off the canoe. After few unsuccessful attempts they managed to get the water out. I was holding on to Mike’s canoe which maintained the balance while the three tried to clear the water. Finally Giuseppe managed to push himself into the canoe I floated back towards the canoe and got back on it. My cap and one the oars were rescued by Mike and Allison already. Once on the canoe I and Giuseppe headed back to the shore because it was very cold. I thought, so much for the warm shower a while ago. I changed to dry clothes and was lying on the green grass starring at the sky for some time. I noticed a small rainbow in the sky but the others teased me saying I was hallucinating after the fall in the lake. A little boy was picking up his little shoes throwing them in the water and picking them back from the water and repeating that exercise till his mom yelled at him to come back. Me and Giuseppe waited for Mike and Allison to come back from there swim. Then Giuseppe has this great idea of capturing our fall into the lake with a photograph. He asks Allison to take our picture. While we pose for the photograph Giuseppe suddenly lifts me off the ground in his ‘shaking’ shoulders to pose for the photograph. It was a very uncomfortable feeling for me but I decided to forget about it thinking perhaps this Italian wanted to mean in this photograph that he rescued me from drowning. He did rescue me but with his funny Italian words when I forgot about the freezing water for a moment and started laughing clinging on to my boat there. We then set-off towards our car. We arrived at the camp-site and today it was bar-b-que chicken for dinner. I was very hungry. Today we managed to get the charcoal fire going very fast. In no time we were relishing our chicken. This was followed by the bigger fire. I had a cup of soup after much effort of heating it. Giuseppe decided to give all of us an Italian neck message known to be very effective for weariness apparently. We went off to bed quite late that night about 12:00 am. Next day we were leaving.
July 4th, 2005
Today is America’s Independence Day celebration. They mark this occasion by fire-works. We had decided to go to a wild-life safari on the way back home. I had spotted this on the brochure of ‘Things to do in Oregon’ that I picked up from a Max Train. But it turned out to be very far then. Now that it is on the way we could definitely make a trip there. We dismantled the tent and packed everything back into the car. After a quick breakfast we set-off on the roads again. We decided to drive up to Rosenburg on Highway 5 and depending on the time left, we would either go to the Safari or head home straight. We had to return the camping gear before 6 pm today to avoid late charges. On reaching Rosenburg Mike called up R.E.I and they agreed not to charge any money even if we return the gear on Tuesday. So we decided to visit the Safari. The Safari was first created by an American called Frank Hart who undertook the mission of saving endangered species from all over the world by transporting them to this area in Pacific Northwest, and providing a breeding ground for them there. We arrived at the Safari, bought our tickets at AAA discounted prices. The boy at the counter lived in Hillsboro where our office was and his father worked for Intel in Jones Farm. Anyway, we were all very excited for this 1.5 hours safari trip. The safari was divided into animals from three continents – Africa, The Americas and Asia. Except for the bear and lion areas we could keep our windows down all the time but had to be inside the car. We saw exotic animals from all over the world – giraffes, zebras, bison, black and brown bears some taking a bath in a man-made pond inside the safari, lions and tigers lazing around in the sun, white fallow deer from Asia with their carpety beautiful horns, polka dotted Sika deer, Ostriches, elegant cranes, Tibetan Yaks, Rhinos, yawning Hippos, the royal Bengal tiger, Llamas etc. An Asian bird called the Rhea was really curious and walked right up to our car when we were parked to take their pictures. It would not go away to let us drive past. I managed to capture a hippo while yawning and two giraffes cuddling. It was all very beautiful. At one point we noticed a strange looking animal that had a black head, brown body and white back. Mike was of the opinion that that was the result of the mating of two species of animals that were not supposed to mate. We noticed a red-necked bird with a long neck. I did not know what that was so decided to call it a red-neck. We were out of the Safari in about an hour and half. We then drove straight home. I was sleeping for a long time. We actually drove straight to R.E.I to return the camping gear and then headed to my home where Mike’s car was parked. We distributed the remaining food-stuff between us took a final picture and headed our individual ways. The rest if the day was quite lazy for me. The sound of fire-crackers soared up roaring on to the sky, while I started writing this travel log.
posted by Amar @ 9:02 PM
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