The tourguide becomes the tourist ?!

One of the books that stuck to my memory from the college library reading days is "The Stone Leopard" by Collin Forbes. In that book, the line that stood out was "The hunter became the hunted!".

Along similar lines, someday I plan to become a tourist for the very same places I take visiting relatives, in my role as the family tourguide.

San's uncle was here this weekend, after attending a conference in the east coast and on his way back to India.

"Two and a half days in the bay area, maximum coverage!" declared the wife. I took up the challenge and inspite of one of the worst wheezing attacks in recent memory on Friday night, went on to drive to the following places:

The livermore temple (this was not a tourguide thing, just the usual drive and back)
The Mystery spot (my 8th visit to the place, 4th on the tour)
Santa Cruz boardwalk
Route 1 from Santa Cruz to Golden gate bridge with stops on the beaches.. (yes, we ate the packed Tamarind rice and curd rice on the beach, and yes yes, it was delicious, as usual!)
The golden gate bridge (somewhere in the 25-30 range on this vista point)
Crooked street (same thing.. and not once have I actually managed to take in the beauty of this street because as the driver I am always hanging on the steering wheel for dear life on the way up)
The chocolate factory (this, like the temple is just plain fun)
Carmel by the Sea (6th trip)
Monterey Bay aquarium (4th trip)

400 miles of local driving with lots of help from my friends Pseudoephidrine Hydrochloride, Azelastine Hydrochloride, Loratadine and of course Salbuterol who came through and helped me in some tough spots!

There will be some detailed posts with pictures of this hectic travel experience.. but leave you here with the customary stitch shots of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is one tough place for a merge shot but is also a good candidate for the shot. Even if you have a lens that goes to 18mm, you cannot capture the panorama from the vista point. That said, you need multiple shots.

Let me explain why is it a difficult place for stitch photos. Too many moving things, the water, the boats, yachts, the vehicles on the bridge, not to mention you and the camera (it is very windy at the vista point). You are better off trying this when :

a. there is good visibility

b. there are not that many vehicles on the bridge (at least avoid the huge trucks which move bigtime between your continuous shots)

c. avoid big barges on the water which also move perpendicular to the bridge. If they move parallel to the bridge, it does not matter much.

d. Use a tripod and swivel the camera across

e. The biggest thing I realized...do not do this in AUTO mode.

Go focus on the bridge in auto mode,
find out what the camera thinks is the best aperture and shutter speed,
then go to manual mode,
reduce the aperture by one stop to allow more light in (go to a smaller number),
decrease the shutter speed by one (ie., if auto says do 1/250, then do 1/400th of a second)
and then sweep the camera and shoot in manual mode.

f. Do NOT change the zoom throughout this sweep. That messes things up big time.

g. If you are worried about barelling (when you stitch a photo panorama, you get a barrel shaped composite picture, with the ends becoming short and the center long), shoot with the camera rotated 90 degrees. Take more shots, vertically and stitch them!

Now, hope all that advice works for you. I plan to take my own advice next time (there will definitely be another next time) and do all of the above instead of just some of the above.

ps. Don't try to upload them in blogger with the original size. You will probably get an internal error! Resize and then upload, save yourself some pain.

Now, my dear friends are inviting me to a party. Got to run. Ciao!

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Happy 4th !!!

Or should we say "belated" happy 4th, since it is already past midnight!

This year, the 4th of July was celebrated at "Roaring Camp" which included a nice train ride through redwood forests.

This was followed by some activities for kids (you can see Jr. and the little one trying to do some Hula Hoops in the video.. note the little one trying a hoop with a diameter larger than her height).

Then daddy took the kids to watch Fireworks with K. while the ladies went to watch the latest Hindi Movie with ARR songs, which for some reason is sold out, playing in the local english movie theaters as well!

All said and done, a fine day.. but.. but.. but..

Daddy made the mistake of formating his CF card just before the fireworks, forgeting the fact that he never downloaded the roaring camp photos from the camera! All may not be lost as there are apparently some software out there that can retreive the formated photos, provided we buy a card reader that can show up as an external drive on the laptop!

We have our fingers crossed..

In other news, Bush and Bush Sr. of the house have mandated that daddy edit them out of the video for this blog post!

That was not easy.

1. The guide told us so many interesting things on the train and I wanted to have all that in the video.
2. The ladies planted themselves right between me, the kids and the driver and made it next to impossible to get them out of the frame!
3. I could have been that dude from the next coach taking a video of the whole thing with GWB and GWBS who is possibly posting it on youtube right now with them in the frame!

It is high time the democrats in this house came to power!

Seriously, learnt so many new things today..

a. Switchbacks and how they work
b. redwood tree seeds lay dormant for upto nine hundred years.
c. The seeds germinate only after a forest fire. A forest fire is almost a must to get the next generation of seeds to sprout. Had no idea! For some strange reason this got memories of Gavaskar and Tendulkar .. on a freaking narrow gage train up a mountain!
d. I still love cricket, somewhere in the back of my head!
e. Most of the trees we saw today were 300+ feet tall and were >1000 years old!
f. Butterflys love a steam bath or at least excess moisture. From out of nowhere a bunch of butterflies came to enjoy the steam puffs from the engine.

and much much more, like how to switch from standard to night vision in my camcorder, how to possibly retrieve images from a formatted CF card, etc. etc.

A day well spent. Here is the video....

Next years July 4th will be interesting.

A different president!
A different US of A!
A different world?
A more powerful daddy?

Only time will tell!

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Trailheads and Headwaters

There are of course, the "other places" that were visited over last weekend, that made that trip complete.

I post this for my own kids. They go back and see these photos and Jr. actually reads what is written. She reads "Jr." as Jerr and after some explaining now understands Mr. Jr. Ms. etc. and even knows that Jr. is actuallly a reference to her!

Shasta Dam

The trail loop at Burney falls

Moss covered volcanic rocks

The moss that covers the volcanic rocks

Burney Creek, after it came down the falls, before it joined Lake Briton (there is a panorama shot of Lake Briton in the first Mt. Shasta post)

Burney creek from the trail loop bridge

The water at the falls head, just before it drops off

Bunny flat trailhead

Reflection Lake at Lassen. We did go to Manzanita lake, a place that has been on my wish list for years because the reflection of the mountain in this lake is supposed to be breathtaking. It was so foggy on the lake that visibility was reduced to a few feet. We will go to this park another time, just to see Manzanita lake!

"Hot Rock". No, we are not talking about me! It is a rock that landed miles from the volcanic eruption in 1914 which was found to be hot a year after the eruption. There is a whole field full of rocks this size which just landed there in 1914. One can only imagine the magnitude of the devastation when we see fields of giant rocks and the trees that grow around these rocks almost a 100 years later.

Summit Lake at ~7000 feet

The little one posing at summit lake

Sulfur springs where hot ash gushes out of the mountain side

and becomes a river of ash. We have seen stuff like this in the movie, Dante's Peak. But here for the first time we saw a river of volcanic ash!

Think this place was called Eagle point. This is where we stopped to eat lunch. The sun out come out and we could feel the heat directly. So we remove our jackets and within seconds a gust of cold air that swirls from the mountain would descend on us. It was very weird. We did discover though that home packed curd rice and tamarind rice have the same delicious taste at 8000 feet as at sea level!

This trip had us see our ups and downs in terms of viewing things, but for the first time in a long long time, the kids behaved! They did not fall sick during the trip, get cranky, no "are we there yet" , no "I want to go home right now!" and that was a blessing.

Hope this becomes the new trend!

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Turtle Bay in Redding

As part of our recent trip, almost a whole day was spent at the Turtle Bay Exploration park in Redding.

We have driven past Redding many times without ever stopping to find out what this was all about! Thanks to Mitr, AnuP, and the rest of their gang, who visited this place the previous day, we got to spend a nice day with activities for the kids.

On our way to Mt. Shasta, Jr. empatically declared that "the trip was boring!". On further questioning she said "I only like trips with small driving and where there are structures!". What structures? was our question. The prompt answer as "Structures where kids can play!".

Well, this place had "structures" per her definition. It was nicely laid out. A little bird house where kids got to feed parakeets, a butterly garden, a beautiful kids play area with picnic tables where we had our lunch.

When you have four uncles in the party (namely periappa, chitappa, mama and uncle!) you get a chance to actually free up your hands from kids! It is always nice to have the extra "uncle" hands! Balaji, my brother, BIL and BIL's housemate are all a big hit with the kids!

Many a type of "butterchi's"!

And let us not forget the "bumble bee"!

You cross this and go to a museum, gift store and cafe. The museum had a display of the local fish and some history of Indian tribes that occupied the area. We never figured out why the place was called Turtle bay, but this museum did have a few turtles swimming in the display cases and a wall of little metal turtles with peoples names on it! The little one displayed her counting skills "one, two, four hundred, two fifty...."

Then you get to cross the Sundial bridge. It was neat and clean and had amazing views of the sacramento river This place is apparently more beautiful in the night when the bridge has lights on it, but we could not wait that late. The little one was so thrilled to run around the glass surface on the bridge and pet all the doggies that were on the bridge.

On the other side of the bridge is a international garden of sorts with little sections of plants from every major continent. There were also some interesting ponds, water fountains and bonzai displays.

The right caption for this picture would be "Cute - On Demand!"

It was long walk and on the other end of the garden was a kids play area with a beautiful water fountain and a "structure" made from willow branches which made Jr.'s day.

Pavan uncle watching the kids while they pose. They definitely did a better job of posing from the fountain top compared to the mountain top!

If your kid demands "structures" and you have no clue what "structures" are, they are there in the Turtle Bay Exploration area. Even if you dont spot them, your kids will!

Strongly recommended as a break for kids in between trails, hikes, snow, forests, lakes and mountains.

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Mt. Shasta and Lassen National Park

Another long weekend. Another drive to a national park.

This time, we went to Mt. Shasta and the Lassen Volcanic park area. It was a really great trip. We went with the cousins and as an added treat, my brother happened to land here the previous week for a business trip and my brother in law drove down from Seattle! We were met a bunch of familiar faces at the hotel where we stayed and the kids thought we were going to a wedding in Shasta!

We pretty much covered a lot of places and saw what we could, given the rain, snow and the hiking trails being closed.

Shasta Dam, Lake Shasta, Burney falls, Mt. Shasta, Turtle bay museum, Sundial Bridge in Redding, The arboretum in Redding, Shasta Caverns (which included a boat ride, bus ride up the mountains, a descent into the caverns and another descent on a mountain wall after we exit the caverns!), the Waterhead of the sacramento river where all the underground water channels come out of the mountain wall (which incidentally is where Evian water is bottled) and the entire loop on Lassen national park!

An amazing trip, with harrowing moments when it suddenly rained, and the rain instantly turned to ice on the just plowed highway at 8000 feet with daddy trying to steer a van full of people around a sharp bend. People started reciting whatever slokas they remembered and many "kalpoorams" will be purchased on the next India trip. Daddy is just praying that no "vendudhals" have been made to some remote deity in India like Hairpinbendkaapaathamman which involve tonsuring his head! These days, you never know!

Without further ado, here are the "stitch shots" made of anything from 6 to 21 photos.

Burney falls, wide, majestic, crystal clear waters, it was really beautiful.

Considering that the images are 30 to 51 MB, blogger is not allowing me to upload those the way they are. The remaining pictures are resized to 3k pixels.

This was taken from a boat, as we crossed the Shasta Lake to see the caverns.

Lake Britton, on route 89 from Burney falls to McCloud. The place had an eerie tranquility to it.

Just past the Summit lake trails on Lassen, a little creek that cuts through a field of snow. Did not venture too close to the creek because we could see the ice was too thin and slippery.

Bunny flat, 6950 feet, as far as the road would take us on Mt. Shasta.

Bumpass Hell, a solitary boulder on a ledge, an amazing view of the snow covered hills and the valley below.

We will definitely visit this place again when the sky is clear and we get some contrast between the sky and the snow.

There are always the pictures of the little ones spicing up the landscape. Those come later!

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