A visit to Ballarat

The first time I knew that a place called Ballarat existed was in 10th grade. It was mentioned in a Sherlock Holmes story. All I knew in those pre Wikipedia days was that Ballarat was a place where lot of gold was found and many folks got rich in the "gold rush" in Australia. 

We did visit the place once in 2004 on our first ever Australia trip. Jr. was too small to remember anything and the little one wasn't born yet. So on this trip, we did an all day trip to Ballarat. They had also added a light and sound effects show in the night in the recent years and we stayed for that. We left Melbourne after breakfast and returned at midnight on what was definitely a day well spent.

Ballarat has a few streets preserved in the Victorian era. We have visited a similar gold rush town in California a few years ago called Columbia. Ballarat is a large scale version of this. There are folks walking down the streets (all actors) in ancient clothes, stores that sell ice creams of a distant era, buildings and facades that look like sets but are for real, candle makers, horse buggies, bowling alleys that take you back in time.. 

It is a wonderful experience trying to connect to a past and this place does give you that experience in a very nice way. The guy who did the musket firing is apparently a Ballroom dancer who does this as a part time job or so he told me.  All the actors and store folks who do demonstrations are nice and polite which makes you wonder where our level of politeness has gone with time! 

The sound and light show was interesting. The  quality of it was not bad, but it needs to be edited a little better to avoid long pauses between acts. It was not as good as a Hollywood production but a great attempt at getting close to one. It was interesting for one reason. I never knew that the Australian independence movement of sorts was started in Ballarat by the miners trying to get rights from the British authority. Never knew anything about the "Blood on the southern cross"! It was a really great history lesson!

The kids did enjoy the light and sound show. But what fascinated them the most was panning for gold. They got really furstrated after 20 minutes of hard work trying to find a spec of gold. They threw their instruments down and walked back disappointed. 

They were treated instead to a museum on Soverign hill where large gold nuggets were on display. Seeing all that gold made the girls happy. It is only a question of time before they grow up and seeing is not going to be enough. If my father in law is any guide, I should start robbing banks soon so in a few years the girls can have all the jewelry they want.

On an entirely side note, we had to wait for 4 hours between the morning tours and the light show at night. So we decided to go around "Downtown Ballarat" which boasted some really old buildings, a great town center space, 4 Thai restaurants, Thai kickboxing exercise places, Thai travel places etc.. within 2 blocks (let's just say the Thai's have taken over Ballarat or so it appears) and a Pizza Hut right next to Soverign hill with large pizza's for 5 Aussie dollars including breadsticks and soda!  Still cannot believe how good that pizza was and how cheap it was!

Here is Ballarat in pictures.. 

 

Mud roads with only horse carriages going through... a Bowling lane with wood balls that for some strange reason reminds me of Angelina Jolie (hey.. different things bring different memories to the foreground!)

Plates and other metal ware made in front of your eyes using methods from the late 1800's! 

The nice lady who poses for us (guessing she is also a ballroom dancer? like the guy with the musket)

Ladies in costume.. everywhere..

Candles, soaps, candies.. all made old school way, in front of your eyes. It was interesting for everyone.

Horse buggies ! They also had a studio where the entire family could pick costumes from that era and take a group portrait.. but it was booked for the day and we missed an opportunity. 

Clouds that made the place even more interesting..

Buildings that were surreal

and did we mention Gold! Gold! Gold! Had to get that photo as a mild sepia tone..

The kids were so sincere in their search for gold.. all of 20 minutes till they figured out that the miners were all idiots for wasting their time searching!

They had a show where a single bar of gold worth 160k $ was melted and poured into a mold. It was a nice demonstration of gold metallurgy. Brought back memories of sitting on the gallery seats writing notes in Prof. PM Prasad's class! 

For some strange reason, they had a bunch of domestic birds and animals on one side to try and show how things were hundred years ago.. The alpha turkey went and did a display for us..

but what caught my attention was the sparrows. There were thousands of them everywhere. In the vents, inside the little buildings. Looked like a sparrow invasion of sorts in the place. They were fearless too. One of them ate ribbon pakoda and thenkuzhal right from my hands!

Then we went across the street to Soverign Hill and the gold museum. It was a place with a view!

both outside and inside

Some lucky bloke kicks the ground in frustration and finds this! Must have been something in those days with gold found a few inches below the surface!

These things are the size of my head or slightly larger.. so you can imagine the girls getting all wide eyed!

An old hotel in downtown Ballarat.. 

and a more recent statue in the city center area.

The place seems to be getting a big time makeover. My BIL was giving me a lesson on how Australia is trying to bring up little cities as development hubs. IBM is going to be there big time in Ballarat apparently. Guessing that their cafeteria will have at least one Thai restaurant.

The place was beautiful. The stones were screaming for a HDR picture..

There were no pictures allowed in the sound and light show and that was a surprise given we are allowed to take all the photos we want in Universal studios. You will have to go experience that one for yourself.

If you visit Melbourne area, definitely worth a visit. Budget a day for Ballarat and the entire family will come home happy after experiencing something unique.

Tall trees tell many tales

The redwood forests are amazing. 

Here are some pictures from the trails along Avenue of the Giants!

Our sincere hope is that the last of the original forests in our Northwest don't die because stupid politics and the interests of a select few trump what we leave for our future generations. 

Redwood beats Elephants

On a whim, we decided to go to Redwood National Park on a quick trip. Given it is 300 miles north of here, it involved an overnight stay at a hotel close to the Park. The cousins had recently visited this place on the previous long weekend and given it a two thumbs up. 

We started off on a rocky note, with daddy coming home from work as usual and getting a special dose of looks and silence from mommy because the "sitting in SFO traffic" was blamed on Daddy's arrival time from work. Daddy Narayanan had fun after a long time on a drive, because he was NOT driving! Instead he was using the Waze app as a real life video game with the kids, reporting traffic, confirming cops were indeed still there at certain points, there were objects on the freeway etc. etc. It was fun!

Then a few hours in, the weather got nasty. There was thunder and lightning everywhere. Downright spooky as we were going through a windy freeway with tall trees on either side. So San promptly relinquished the steering wheel. There was no phone service anywhere and that meant no Waze. Driving in those conditions was the better real life video game! 

We made it to the hotel exactly at midnight and started in the monring. On the 4th of July, we had an aggressive plan. Go all the way to the Tolawa dunes state park almost near the Oregon Border, then come back down and see as many things as we can before sunset and get to the hotel. Anything south of that, we see on the way back home the next day. As usual, plans are just plans, when one gets to a National park.

Distraction number 1? Elks on the ocean front! There are these beautiful fresh water lagoons between the ocean and the highway and on the sandbars are a zillion elk, enjoying the sea breeze! So we just took in that sight for like 30 minutes.

Distraction number 2? The kids wanted to go on a Ranger guided tour of Lady Bird Johnson grove. We had to race to get there, and race we did. The tour was nice and informative as none of us in our group knew any of the details the ranger was giving. By the time we finished the tour and started back north, it was 11:30 and we decided to change our plan to "no plan". 

Above HDR composite. Below, no HDR with adjusted highlights and shadows...

The next stop was Fern canyon. This place takes you back in time. No wonder it was used in Jurassic Park scenes. It was a good thing that Grandma backed out of this trail. We had to climb over fallen trees, wade through creeks to keep going. Have never seen the kids happier!

Fern Canyon is a perfect place to practice HDR shots! See this one below..

A view of the lagoons from the trail to Fern canyon. Nature puts out the best teaser trail-ers!

Even San, who was not happy with her Frock and shoes attire for the trip decided to let go once she crossed over the big trees and was all smiles!

We saw the American National Park bird, aka Stellar Jay at trailheads close to parking lots! The Stellar jay is like the zoom lens test before venturing into the trail.. kind of a "pillaiyar suzhi"!

We came back to have some "thachchi mammu" in the car and headed north. Made it all the way to the dunes, but unlike the dunes in death valley, these dunes are right near the coast (or at least the point we got to, on the map). It was so windy and deserted that the rest of the family simply refused to come down to the sand. Sadly, there were no photographs taken at this beautiful place. Still think that we went to the wrong Park entrance and maybe if we had gone a few more miles north we could have come to the dunes from the redwoods. That is left to explore for another trip.

After the dune experience we headed south and hit Crescent city and the beaches around this place. The beaches were reallly good. Shallow crystal clear water for at least few hundred feet. Guessing that if the beach is shallow, the foam from the waves is less and that is why we get clear reflections.  We had fun at the beach. There were few people there and we pretty much had a large section of the beach to ourselves. 

Then we went to the state parks to see the outlook of the coast and the lagoon created by the Klamath river. 

Crossed the Klamath river and saw these nice golden bears on teh bridge. 

while taking a picture of the bear was intrigued by this little sticker on the sign. Went in to take a closer look and saw something that was "Fresh and Strange". Have no clue what that dude in the hat is about! If anyone knows, please do tell!

Continued on to our next stop,  Stone Lagoon. It was so beautiful. 

You see the ocean on one side, the river creating a lagoon on the other side. Breathtaking beauty!

We saw more elk grazing in front of a building which apparently was of historic interest. 

On the way back towards the Howard Johnsons in Arcata, there was a vista point. I really wanted to stay for sunset photos. The minute I mention the word "Sunset", the car erupts in a noisy discussion of why "sunset is a sunset" and "what is with taking photos of the same sun in different places?" etc. etc.

The real issue my dear readers is the fact that sunset photo taking time usually clashes with kids dinner time. So these days, the experienced travelers that we are, the custom is to drop the women and kids at the hotel and come back for sunset photos. BB would have had a "porai eri" event that evening as I missed him for a few moments.  

Then lo and behold, we meet some of our bay area friends at the Hotel who had just arrived there. The guys went back to the vista point, for sunset photos while the kids and women folks caught up.  

The kids were all happy that they could run from room to room and play with friends even if it was for a very short time. We parted ways the next morning as they went north and we started on our way back home towards the south. 

The return trip was awesome! We came through the "Avenue of the Giants". This is a long stretch of road through redwood forests, but with the worst map ever. Think the map was drawn by a toddler. It was not to scale and very confusing. We did not just want to go through the main road but take some detours to see some very special trees. Tall tree, Flat iron tree, Founders tree, Fallen tree, Big Tree.. guess the names say it all. 

There are 300 photos of the redwood forests which need to be HDR composited. Will have to work on it when time permits! The pictures above put things in perspective.. Most of these fallen trees are more than 300 feet long!

We were pretty much lost and were on a road that went to a Prison inside that park (why anyone would maintain a prison in the middle of a state park is beyond me) when we met an older couple who were both school teachers. We jointly navigated and figured out how to get to Bull Creek and to the Giant tree. The trails to get to these trees were amazing. It is just lush green with redwoods and ferns and light streaming through the top. 

After this, it was a straight drive back home. With more thachi mammu in stock we pretty much took turns driving and eating and made it back. All said the trip was a few minutes shy of 48 hours. Very hectic, lot of driving, but a ton of fun!

A few things I learned from this trip.

1. Let San drive as much as possible. Have missed on too much fun taking in the sights, by focusing on the road. This way there are no complaints about my driving speed and I get to actually enjoy the scenary and the air. The only exceptions are windy roads, bad weather, late night driving. Even with these exceptions, she can drive a lot. 

2. Always have personalized ziploc bags full of thachi mammu (rice with plain yogurt) and some fried "mor milagais" (more on that in another post) in the car. We can drive and eat and keep going! No food stops. 

3. Take the time to convince everyone in the car that the extra 30 minutes to go to some point is worth it. Even if you are not so sure yourself and there are only one or two pictures on Google maps that show promise. You will be surprised. 

4. You win some, you lose some. The dunes were too windy and the whole family was mad at me for driving them there, but we would not have had as much fun in Del Norte and Crescent city beaches but for that drive!

5. Always make sure you pack at least an hour before the trip. I had 15 minutes to pack and forgot my T-shirts of all things! Had to shop for shirts in Arcata. 

6. Always let San pick hotels. This Howard Johnson was awesome. Nice rooms, heated indoor swimming pool to entertain kids, walking distance from all food sources, a nice grocery store with lots of Thachchi in it, not to mention T-shirts, swimware etc. 

Like in Tamil movies, we have to come to the title at some point. Here is what Elephants have to do with Redwoods! There is a saying in Tamil "Yaanai irundhaalum aayiram pon, irandhaalum aayiram pon" (யானை  இருந்தாலும் ஆயிரம் பொன், இறந்தாலும் ஆயிரம் பொன்) which translates to "Elephant when alive is worth a thousand gold coins, when dead also is worth a thousand gold coins". 

This was probably the big sales pitch for elephant salesman in south India a few thousand years ago. This was before the time when anyone wrote the book on Elephantonomics for fear of upsetting the salesmen. Once people figured out that, for the same amount of food you could hire a few hundred poor folks to pull stuff, it was prety much downhill for the elephants from there... 

A redwood seems to be different. There are at least three trees that we saw, where cars could drive through the trees for a fee! They all have different names like Drive Thru tree, Tour Thru tree, etc. etc. The folks who own these trees on their properties simply put a ticket booth outside their house, route you through the tree and collect 5 or 6 bucks for the 2 minute experience. There were long lines to go through the trees. It is a "cash only" business! These trees were probably making a cool 8-10 grand a day! No amount of rides an elephant can give to excited kids will make that up!

It is a fun experience though, to drive through a tree! Kind of puts the whole redwood size in perspective. These trees are still alive after that hole has been carved through them and they still take in 300 gallons of water a day! 

Strongly recommend this set of National and state parks. It is not a two day thing. Given time, one can spend a few more days at a leisurely pace and let the kids be kids and not hurry them from things just when they open up! They never wanted to leave Fern canyon, or the beaches or the trails aound Tall tree. 

This place will be visited again.. in a few years!