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You must be surprised why I chose this color as my background color. I am sooooo Green.
I made one decision after this trip, I am not going to plan about a trip in advance. This is the first time that both my flights (to and fro) were very much on time and reached the destinations earlier than their scheduled arrival time. Usually it is the other way round where i have to wait for hours at the airport (Detroit Airport loves me a lot and tries to hold me back).
Now coming to the reason why i am feeling sooooo green. Portland is full of Coniferous trees. They are ever green and also they were so closely growing/planted that it is as if you are moving in a forest when you are infact moving in a city. They are very tall usually up to 50 feet high. So the amount of greenery is almost 100 %. One reason for this greenery is that it rains almost everyday there. But the wonderful thing that could happen was it did not rain as long as i was there. Portland is a small place but has grown in to prominence due to Seattle and other big cities which are nearby.
My friend Sridhar picked me up at the airport and his place was 25 miles from the airport. His apartment complex was a nice place with lots of Indians around due to the offices that were around and located in such a way that the people coming on Business Visa need not buy cars but can walk to their offices from their apartments. It was 12.00 PM by the time we reached Sridhar's flat.
We decided to see Multnomah Falls (Water Falls) which were 30 miles from Sridhar's place. We decided to take a scenic drive route which goes through the mountains as suggested by Sridhar's friend instead of the Freeway I84 which proved to be a very good advice. The road went through narrow winding routes full of trees where sunlight could not pass the trees to reach the ground. Columbia River flows through the Gorge (An area between mountains for the water to flow) in this state. The gorge is named after the river "Columbia Gorge". There is an Observation point on top of the mountain from where we can clearly see the Gorge and the river flowing with the freeways laid beside the river. The width of the river was around 1-2 miles. It was a very good sight to watch from this observation point which is called the "Crown Point - Vista House". There were a lot of small water falls along the way. One of the bigger ones was the Wahkeena falls. Multnomah Falls plummets 620 feet from its origins on the Larch Mountain and is the second highest year-round water fall in the USA. The amount of water flowing was not so much but the height from which it was falling was huge. Then we decided to see the Rose Garden.
Portland is called the City of Roses. It houses three big rose gardens and the size of the roses is that of a Sun Flower. The rose garden was beside the Portland Zoo. There were roses of all colors. Again i cannot name all the colors of the roses that i have seen. I captured most of them in my camera and i am waiting eagerly for the photos to be developed. There was a couple getting married in the garden. Here people strangely choose parks to get married. We spent around one hour there and returned home since we were planning to go on a long drive next day.
We started early in the morning around 9 AM and started to see the Crater Lake. It is a Five-hour drive from Portland. We took a scenic route after traveling for some distance on the freeway I5. The Scenic road passes through huge mountains and big lakes and waterfalls. Most of the mountains are still covered with snow. On the way we stopped at a huge water fall called the Salt Creek Waterfall and had our lunch. The amount of water flowing was 50,000 gallons per minute and the height was 264 Feet. The Crystal Lake supplied water to this water fall. This is the first time i saw a water fall with such a huge volume of water flowing after the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam and Srisailam Dam. I am planning to see Niagara Falls soon so i will have a chance to see a bigger water fall than this one. We reached Crater Lake around 4.30 PM. Actually we went on a route which approaches the lake from the north side. This route was closed due to the snow on the road. Then we had to take a round about route to approach the lake from the south side.
Let me tell you something about the lake. This was formed mainly in four stages where Mount Mazama Collapsed due to volcanic activity.
1. Cone-building began a half million years ago.
Magma from Earth's interior spewed out.
2. Lesser magma vents and cones developed on the
mass, weakening it.
3. About 7,700 years ago so much mass blew out
of the cone that the mountain had no support and collapsed.
4. It created the caldera that Crater Lake now
occupies.
I tried to look for the meaning of caldera but could not find it but i guess it means something about the deep area formed so that it can hold a huge lake of width Six Miles. Now my version - The area is full of mountains and a trough like area in between which holds the lake. The water is crystal clear as no other river joins it. The color of the water is blue. It is a very good scenic place. The place was full of snow. The snow stays there till the end of July it seems. This is the source of water to the lake. In August they have boat rides etc on the lake which were not there now. There is a road which goes round the lake along the mountains. This is called the Rim road. This was closed for traffic due to the snow.
Then we started home and we had to take a longer route to reach the freeway I5 and reached home around 12.30 AM. It promptly started raining after we came on to the freeway I5.
Next day i woke up late and my flight was at 12.40
PM. I had to run to catch my flight as it was very much on time. I hope
its like this everytime i travel.