Drive up from Pasadena to Richland

I was threatening to leave Caltech and come work at the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, for the uninitiated) site in Hanford Washington. The site is next to the so-called tri-city area in Washington, which consists of Richland (the city I live in), Kennewick and Pasco with populations of about 50000 each. They are on the bank of the Columbia river, which starts in Canada and flows about 2500 kms before it hits the Pacific Ocean on the Oregon-Washington border. The Columbia is the largest west flowing river in the Americas and is a majestic sight.

I started from Pasadena CA at around 1 pm PST (5 hours later than I wanted to), after having emptied my room (huffing and puffing after tens of trips to and fro my car). Before we go on, let me introduce the star of the trip, my car named mirchi for multiple reasons the least of which is her purpose to fetch mirchi and also because she kicks ass. She is a Nissan Sentra GXE, 2002 with about 40000 miles on her.

The first day was pretty uneventful and I drove up mostly the 5 from Pasadena to the Bay Area. I just stopped once to get petrol and eat at IHOP (Pancake place), where I had a very nice phone conversation with Vaibhav about the cricket match (Aussies had been bowled out for 212 and Sehwag was going great guns, so needless to say both of us were pretty excited). Reached Berkeley around 6.30 pm and met up with Rejean, a postdoc I used to work with and had a cup of coffee with him along with some pleasant conversation. After having dinner with another friend, I decided to decline an offer to stay over at his place and drive on as I was in a mood to do so. In retrospect it was a fantastic decision, since it meant less driving the next day, which was to prove to be the most tiring. I bypassed the Bay Area traffic and reached Santa Rosa in a good hour (in the morning it would have taken me a couple of hours to just get past San Fran).

All the excitement begins on day 2. Here I start driving up on the 101, which is almost all along the coast in Oregon and through the Redwoods in California. I was treated to views such as below and you can see how curvy the roads can get.

And then I literally started walking among the giants.

The picture above is to give you some perspective as to how tall these giants actually are. And these two are just the garden variety simple redwoods, some of these guys get to 300 feet plus. Its hard to capture their beauty in pictures and so I am going to try to describe some of it. First off some information about them. Redwoods come in two major species, one being the tall redwoods which are mostly found on the coast of Northern California and which are the tallest trees on the planet. The second variety are found on the Sierra mountains, called the Sequoia Redwoods and these aren't as tall as the coastal redwoods, but make up for that by being the largest trees in the world in terms of volume.

There used to be about a million acres of Redwood forests before logging reduced them to about the current 100000 acres, which are protected by various CA state parks and one big National park. I stopped overnight at the Redwood hostel, a very nice hostel on the coast, which had a very nice fireplace (I slept on the couch next to fire place, ignoring the bed). The Redwood hostel is just outside the Redwood National Park and has a fantastic view of the pacific.

The "cloud" seen there is the mist generated when the cold air from the land hits the pacific warm currents. This mist helps the redwood trees survive (I am not sure how), and thus their main habitat is the somewhat colder northern California coast. Anyhow this is one hell of a sight to wake up to.

I then drove around the National and a couple of state parks in the area and went for a short hike in a place called Stout Grove, which was along the Stout river, but due to a damaged bridge I couldn't complete the full hike. It was a spectacular albeit cold walk. Here are some pictures from the walk. I have taken a couple of pictures of baby-Redwoods growing out of dead or even alive Redwoods trees. Its one of the forms of reproduction practiced by these gentle- giants. One case of a baby and its mother is quite clear in these pictures.

The last picture is of the place where the bridge had collapsed. In theory I could have waded across, but it was too cold. The temperature difference in between the shade and sunlight is of the order of 10 degrees (Celcius too!!!). Outside it was pleasant, but in the canopy it was near freezing. Another thing to note is the apparent barrenness of the ground near the Redwoods. These trees block almost all the sunlight and almost next to nothing grows next to them. Also their droppings make the ground really soft and almost like a carpet.

With a heavy heart, I exit California and the giants domain to enter Oregon, which was nothing but spectacular. After walking in the cold Redwood forests I saw a nice coast and decided to have lunch at the beach. Here are some of the pictures from that lunch. By this time India had won the match and I was ecstatic. Blasting Chak De India in my car, I was driving along and hit this beautiful place near Brookings Oregon. My lunch bench is clear in one of the pictures.

After this, I continue driving along a beautiful coast and reach Newport Oregon, where I sleep for the night. The last day was a final hurrah home and it was the best drive of the lot. Unfortunately, I was too taken by the beauty and was very tired to have taken too many pictures of the last bit. Although I am sure I will be going to the Columbia river gorge quite often over the year and a half that I will be here. So here is a sampling of the drive pictures.

And finally I got to Richland to find that the temperature was a COLD -5 C !!! Here is one picture showing a smattering of snow outside my window.