Multnomah Falls & Wahkeena Falls

This would be the last post about the beautiful Columbia gorge. Certainly saved the best for the last. I splitted a days visit into 5 posts, since the place is so beautiful and posting just a couple of pictures would have been rude on my part.

Other posts from Oregon

• Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Oregon (Part I)
• Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Oregon (Part II)
• Oregon Coast Drive
• Shepperd's Dell & Bridal Veil Falls (Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area - Part 3)

The second last in the waterfall was Wahkeena falls. This humble waterfall gets shadowed by the mightier Multnomah falls, but in itself its a beautiful cascade of water with very easy walk from the parking area.

Multnomah falls is indeed the most photographed waterfall in Oregon. The fall drops in two steps for a total height of 620 feet. The bridge in the middle gives an enchanting look to the waterfall.

It was foggy day and hard to capture, and the below picture is no where near to explain how beautiful this fall is.

September 1995, a 400-ton boulder, loosened by erosion, fell 225 feet. If you see that large boulder in the below pic, its almost the size of a school bus. There is a 2.6 miles round trip trail with an elevation gain of 700 feet. Its a moderate and beautiful hike, I liked the way they have put milestones on the hike, giving you a sense of how much is still left.

The below pictures have been taken from the top of Multnomah falls. In my words its a three step fall if you consider 4 feet fall too, you know what I mean.

The trip to Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area is still incomplete, as we left a lot of other waterfalls unexplored and hikes untouched. We are going back for sure.

Adieu
Divya

Day Visit to Point Reyes National Seashore California

Point Reyes National Seashore is a prominent cape, just 30 miles north of Golden gate San Francisco. Famous for the beautiful lighthouse and extreme high winds, this is a popular day activity in bay area.

We visited this place on a lazy day, but seems our GPS was rather more lazy. We were misguided twice by google maps and Garmin, which is very rare. So make sure you have a handy map when headed for point reyes.

Before you hit on point reyes, there is this iconic abandoned boat which is probably more photographed than point reyes itself. We stopped here for a quick byte.

Cypress tree tunnel, KPH Radio Station is popular photography spot for tree tunnel, tree infinity pics. The Radio station was closed but we got a clear sunny day to click these trees.

According to records Point Reyes is the windiest place on pacific coast and second foggiest place on north american continent. We probably visited this spot on a calmer and more clear day though.

The waves were calm and the colors were great, but it was late to visit the lighthouse which closes by 4 PM.

The trail to lighthouse is beautiful and the lighthouse itself was colorful. The stairs to the lighthouse were locked but could get a good glimpse with that telephoto lens.

The day ended with some sporty Elks and purple wildflowers at Tule Elk preserve.

Point Reyes is a very scenic spot with abundant hiking opportunities. We kind of missed the hikes, since it took us so much time to locate it at the first place.

We will be going back for sure.

Adieu

Divya

Alaska Trip Day 1 - Prince William Sound Whittier

We spent beautiful 9 days last summer in Alaska. It was indeed the most beautiful place I have ever visited. Alaska trip will have around 9 posts, else I might just lose out on so many thing to talk about and share pictures.

It took a lot of research and planning to finalize this trip to come up with the perfect itinerary for us, in my opinion.

Day 1: We flew in Anchorage at midnight. The magic started on the plane itself, it was pitch dark in Seattle at 9:00 PM but as we approached Alaska the sky started getting some colors. We landed in quite late maybe 1:00AM, and the sky still had some hue of Orange. Picked up the car, checked in, pulled in the curtains and slept.

The day started at 8:00 with a bright sun and a beautiful drive to Prince William Sound in Whittier. The road from Anchorage to Whittier is through the beautiful TurnAgain Arm. We were already getting late for our Prince William Sound Cruise and since we knew we would be driving this arm another 5 more times, we did not stop. The scenery was breath taking.

First Click in Alaska, while waiting for Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel to open

The road to Whittier goes through Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel(Whittier tunnel), which opens every 15 minutes for opposite direction. On reaching WhittieriIt all started with the 26 glacier cruise,

On board Ship, the view was breathtaking

The cruise began and it started getting chillier. It was quite sometime before we reached a glacier, but there were several other receding glaciers at the distance, glistening like silver specks on the green mountains.

We saw a lot of wildlife from jellyfish, otters, killer whales but the most memorable was the breaching humpback whale, I shall share the video on youtube, it was indeed the highlight of the day. How often do you see a humpback breaching not once, not twice... just lost the count.

If the breaching whale was not enough, we saw some enormous and loud calving at the glaciers. We went closest to the Surprise glacier. These glaciers are humongous and make the sound of a loud rock falling and breaking into water,

The view from the ship was dreamy, as I had probably seen on LOTR(maybe) where you have hundreds of waterfall surrounding you, and I did not know when to click the picture, when to awe and when to start recollecting all my dreams.

Some other ways of travelling Alaska are either by train or cruise, but we chose to drive. It gave us the flexibility to stop where we wanted, do some trails and hikes late in evening.

Alaskan Rail, Whittier

None of these pictures can ever do justice to what I saw in Prince William Sound in person. I had hundred of pictures from this cruise. We also managed to do the Bryon glacier hike thanks to the prolonged daylight. More about those in later posts.

Adieu

Divya 

Long weekend Trip to Mendocino

We drove out on Pacific coast highway last February from San Francisco to Mendocino. Its a beautiful drive through the mountains by the seaside. Every view out of the window is breathtaking, the heart would want to take a halt at every bend in the road. Since this drive is a very casual one, it was great to take stops and have some sipping coffee while doing that.

We drove 225 miles in 10 hours taking our sweet time and crashed into a motel.

Fort Bragg Historic Skunk Train:
Started the weekend with Historic Skunk train at Fort Bragg. Its an old locomotive that takes you through Redwood forests. Had some packed lunch, sipped some hot chocolate and were back by Afternoon. I was not really thrilled, i would suggest this only to kids and families. There is not much to do, we saw much better Redwoods in and around Mendocino. Also there are no trails or hike opportunities. But a great getaway with kids.

Glass Beach:
Had heard a lot about the beach and seen some beautiful pics out there. It felt like a regular north california beach, cold yet beautiful. This beach has curated glass particles, due to some old garbage being dumped at site. The beach and the glass was beautiful, though depleted a lot due to tourists picking up the glasses.

Lighthouse:
One of the best spots to have a majestic sunset view. The clear sky, the lighthouse painted white and red and the shimmering sun made the evening very picturesque. It a beautiful quiet location and a great spot for whale watching. Mendocino has Whale watching festivals in the month of March.

Botanical Garden:
The next morning started with the beautiful colors of the Mendocino Coast botanical garden. Surprisingly it was not the garden but the beautiful coast that caught the attention.

We drove towards north before driving back home. Drive through pacific highway is again a beauty with lush redwoods and mountains.

Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree Park is a privately owned property, and even though there are quite a lot of drive thru trees in California, but a trip without this picture would have been incomplete.

Adieu
Divya

Shepperd's Dell & Bridal Veil Falls (Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area - Part 3)

Third in Columbia River Gorge series is Shepperd's Dell and Bridal Veil Falls.

Shepperd's Dell is a small canyon in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon, which is on the road itself. Its nothing grand visually but had read that its an engineering marvel in itself to get a bridge in this section of the gorge,

Bridal veil falls is a very short trail from the parking, and but one of the most beautiful falls in this gorge. At Least this fall unlike many others stands true to its name. One can walk the trail and reach a wooden deck to get the below view. The drop is set beautifully and gives the fall a dramatic look.

Columbia river gorge is home to some of the most beautiful falls, easily accessible from road. The fall colors did give them a new dimension. I had missed on some of the hikes in this region and would come back for sure.

Adieu
Divya

Oregon Coast Drive

We just had a day for the coast drive, which is not sufficient enough. At Least 4-5 days are required to travel through the Oregon coast and enjoy it fully. But we decided to do the Scenic Highway 30 and Reach Astoria and then drive back to Portland.

Portland to Astoria on highway 30 is a beautiful drive by the side of river columbia. You can't see the river from the road but its there at a nearby distance. The highway is beautiful during fall and has some amazing fall colors.



When about to reach Astoria, you get a beautiful glimpse of this bridge joining Oregon and Washington, the north end of the bridge takes you to a new state. The bridge is beautiful and fascinating.

The Megler Bridge outside of Astoria

We got on the bridge and drove to Ocean Park, and back from Long beach to Astoria via the same bridge.


Long beach was very quiet, just few fishermen looking out for crabs. You could just sit here whole day and look at waves.

Started back from astoria to Portland through  Seaside.

Spent couple of hours at Seaside with coffee and an excellent view of the sunset.

Drive from highway 16 back to portland was very beautiful in full moon light. For us it was more like a casual drive. But we plan to go back the same route with 4-5 days in hand, stay near side side inns and enjoy the beaches.

Adieu

Divya

Monument Valley in Winter - Part 1

Let me start with it was not supposed to snow, but I am glad it did.

We started our drive from Las Vegas which is approximately a 6 hour drive, that later turned out to be 12 hours due to unexpected blizzard storm and fog. The drive was quite exciting and nerve wrecking at the same time, since it was constantly snowing with low visibility and it was a completely unfamiliar terrain. Thankfully we did not take the Scenic Byway 14 from Cedar city suggested by our GPS and went with Google maps as things could have been worse on that route.

Scenic Byway 14 is an absolute heaven, a separate post about that later.

We reached Monument valley late at night and stayed at Goulding's Lodge. Its a beautiful places, feels like carved out of red rock.

View of Monument Valley from the Goulding's lodge

Few other shots from the Goulding's lodge

Undoubtedly Monument valley was an absolute delight under 4 inch of snow. The valley was quite different from the lone red rocks as I had imagined and seen on Internet. The snow added a nice texture to the valley and made it more beautiful.

Adieu
Divya