Into the Wilderness of Olympic Peninsula

Mystic mountain range of Olympics, rupturing rivers, lucent lakes, vampiric valleys, frightening forests, wonderful wildlife, peaceful Pacific Ocean beaches - that's Olympic Peninsula. Surrounded by Pacific ocean at west, Strait of Juan de fuca at north and Puget Sound at east, the sheer abundance of natural beauty this Peninsula hosts, is more than a mere miracle. For the complete 2 days that we (me, Arnab n Maa) were exploring this exotic place - we heard ourselves saying "wow", "Oh My GOD", "amazing", "beautiful" a lot. :)

So, it all started with we taking early ferry to Kingston from Edmonds ( 17miles up north from Seattle) to cross Puget Sound. After nearly, 1.5hrs of drive, we reached Port Angeles - largest city of Olympic Peninsula. A surprising thing that we noticed here was within two miles of main city street, we came across churches of many faiths - Episcopal, Presbyterian, Catholic and few more. This makes one believe that Port Angeles people are either very pious or with not-so-good history that so many churches had to be built to enthrust power of good-doing in them. Well, I would like to believe in former. :). After eating hefty breakfast here - we all geared ourselves to explore the wilderness of Olympic National Park.

First stop was heavenly Hurricane Ridge, 17 miles south of Port Angeles. One can see wonderful things standing on this ridge on a clear day (and thanks to sweet luck of mine, it was a clear day :) ) - mysterious u-shaped valleys formed by ever-moving glaciers right down in the southern direction makes one think of power of nature, Strait of Juan de Fuca far north, Victoria BC island of Canada on other side of this strait, glaciers on mountain tops and meadows full of wild flowers right on this ridge. We were even lucky enough to see black-tailed deers doing his morning munching of grass. What a picturesque scene. While trailing on .2miles Cirque Rim, we saw a big mountain full of naked trees - there was a wild-fire in 2004 here which had gulped down entire forest viciously. I was bit disturbed to see ruins of this massive destruction made by fire. Anyway, I consoled myself by thinking that nature did this as a balancing act and moved on.

While riding down and trying to save divine beauty of Hurricane ridge - we could see Mount Adams of Canada across strait and San Juan islands. Radiant rays of Sun shining over and ferries riding were adding to the beauty of Strait. Our next stop was Neah Bay - north-west point of Peninsula and accessible via US 101. True to it's fame, traveling on US101 is always a pleasure to the eyes. Its winding highway is so dramatic - I could never realize when I was on top of a mountain or by a lakeside. So, on the way is Lake Crescent. It is as if many mountains has artistically carved the lake into its crescent shape. Blessed by crystal-clear serene water, we had to stop here to savor its beauty. What we witnessed was a beautiful blending of reflection of densely forested mountain and clear blue sky in the water. Picture Perfect!!!

It was already 3o'clock when we entered into Makah Indian Reservation. The drive on US 112 plays hide and seek with Strait Juan de Fuca and you. It is beautiful nonetheless. :). We could feel the abundance of sea-life when we saw Seal pub resting on shores just below busy highway. It was amazing to see it playfully swimming in the water towards shore. After having Lunch on the Bay-side, we set off to Cape Flattery - north-western point of USA. Trail for nearly .75miles through tall trees and you are standing on the cliff overlooking strait of Juan De Fuca emptying itself into Pacific Ocean. Hard gigantic rocks, foamy waters, chirping sea-birds and soaring waves hitting against the cliff keeps this place ablaze. Seeing something like this makes oneself believe into rhythm of life. It gave me chills to even think how native Indians used to live in a place like this. It must had been such a hardship to hunt for food in such adverse climate. Thanking God for giving me wonderful life, I retreated myself towards parking lot.

Feeling overjoyed for witnessing various states of Mother Earth throughout the day, we decided to travel to our Lodge at Kalaloch beach. An evening at Kalaloch (pronounced as Klay-lock) was as mesmerizing as the entire day was. When we reached, sun was about to go under Pacific ocean. Sand all over the beach had beautiful golden tinge and so was the water. If a kid was told that Water is colorless on that beach on that evening, he would had surely disagreed and would had told you that water is yellow. After amazing sunset, we indulged ourselves into wine and food. When we came out of restaurant, Kalaloch treated us with star-studded sky. The sky was so clear, we could see Milky way through our naked eyes. It was also first time in US, I was seeing Ursa major in the sky. How very wonderful. Don't know whether it was miraculous natural beauty that I had seen entire day or the wine I had or the soft noise of nearby Pacific waves or the warmth of my hubby's arms wrapped around me, I fell asleep within few minutes after hitting the bed.

Courtesy of Photos : Arnab Deka

Twitter Words

Lot is being said about how Twitter is changing our lives and the fact that it is showing potential of becoming something really huge. Besides that, it is really mind-blowing to see new words twitter adding in our vocabulary. People use them everyday in their tweets and otherwise, but do they have potential to make it to the English dictionaries like Oxford? Do they have potential where literature guys will search for their origin? Like who used that word for the first time? I think only time can answer these question. :)

Some twee-words I often read/hear :
Twitterniverse
Twitterature
Tweepeople
Twitterific
Twitterish
Tweaming
Twittonary

Seattle Downtown - Tourist Attractions

Well, I agree when people say Seattle has got a depressing weather and I do not wonder that suicide rates are highest in this area but I have no-where seen more livelier city. It is like, weather does not matter much. For all it is worth, I just just love to live in this city.

Seattle Downtown has got its own culture - you can see people with purple colored (you can imagine any color here - you name it and you will find it) hair and green colored tights (same applies here too) roaming even at around mid-night. Young girls and boys - totally doped (dont know for sure but their behavior makes me believe so) singing loudly on streets and spreading joy of happiness :). I am sure they must be feeling on Top of the world. When they pass by you - they will make nice comments - like "You are looking very beautiful" or "Your coat is top-class" or "Hey, your boots are sexy" or when you are with your boyfriend, they would say "You guys look cute together" or "Are you guys getting married?". Where have you found a girl complimenting other girl with so much honesty? Here, I see it happening everyday. It is such a feel-good factor here.

What is amazing about this city is you always have something to do. Now here is little insight about some of the tourist attractions of Seattle

1. Pike Place Market
Now this is a kind of place you have to visit to experience it. Pike Place Market is always in chaos but you get the freshest of vegetables and fish and flowers. At early dawn, they have this peculiar practise of throwing big fishes at people - who-ever catches it, gets it for free. You get best view of Seattle waterfront from balcony of this market. It has got romantic restaurants too - it is very quite inside and you can get really lost with your special one their very easily. It is amazing how it can be so much of hustle-bustle outside and so much of shush-shush inside. Regarding merchandise cost, do not assume that you will get things cheaper here - a pashmina shawl will cost you the same as in Nordstrom or Macy's. This place also has the Starbuck's first coffee shop. They have still preserved it in its original state.

2. Space Needle
This is a symbol of the city. It is 600 feet high structure which has observatory dock above and a gift shop below. Well, in-between, you have a revolving restaurant, Sky City at nearly 510 feet height. You need to book this restaurant in advance and minimum of $35 needs to be spent on each person. Consider this situation - you are planning to take your special one to a lovely evening - you need best of wine, best of food and if you get to enjoy beautiful view, it would be like icing on the cake - this sophisticated restaurant is the place to go. You get personal attention here - get best food (warning for veggies though - you will have to survive on salads. ). You start getting glimpse of what is ahead of you while you are on-board on the elevator to the restaurant. And once seated in the restaurant, you start getting nice view of restaurant - you can see Union-lake, illuminated cruises on glittering water, totally lit-up downtown - It takes around 45mins to complete one rotation. This restaurant has one very interesting desert - if you want to surprise other person, you should definitely be going for it. It is an ice-cream called Lunar Orbiter. Well, it is not ice-cream that makes it interesting but it is the way they serve it you. I wont reveal much about it though :P.

3. Shopping Attractions -
Like any other US city, Seattle too has big shopping centers. Nordstrom's first store (it was just Shoe store then) was set up here in Downtown in 1901. This store is now its head-quarters and flagship store. Then you have Macy's and many other big brands. So, if you like to shop till you drop - you can do it here.

Well, I am running out of time now - I'll finish this list later. But if you stay nearby and have not been to these places, please go and visit - you will start loving this city as much as I do.

An Interesting World Of Goo

Well, it is 11.30 in the night and it is raining cats and dogs outside. And the only other sound that is noticeable is that of cars speeding on nearby high-way. Sound of rain somehow makes me sleepy. I have always felt that water dripping from balcony telling me something. Well, this "something" is always interpreted (of course, by me) as "Go girl...you had a hard and long day. Take some rest. Go, go and sleep". I thought it is same case tonight too. So, I dashed to my bed early. While I was pursuing my favourite habit of sleeping, all I could see in-front of my eyes were some multi-coloured, funny-shaped, sort-of-animated balls dancing away to glory. Now, wait- what is that? For a split-second, I was not able to guess what I was seeing. And the moment this scary thought of "rain slowing down my mind" cropped up, I realised that they were Goo balls.

Hmmm, Goo balls! Lately, I am playing this WII game named "The world of Goo" and I must admit that I've fallen in love with it. What initially started as "What-the-heck, let me try this game everyone is so raving about" is soon turning out to be "Woohoo-what-a-game!". So, this game is about an aim, lots of goo balls and lots of physics. Ohho, don't get demotivated reading the word "Physics" there. To tell you, if I had played this game when Physics was one of my academic subject, I would not had hated it so much.Nevermind. Game has basically 4 seasons - Summer, Fall, Winter (I am right now in in this season) and Spring (Don't know for sure but I dont think we need Einstein here to guess it :)). Each season has different levels - you clear each level and then you reach to the end of the season. Aim is defferent in each level. But Before talking about aim, let me tell you something about Goo balls - aesthetically, some of them are beautiful and some of them are not that fortunate. Behaviour-wise, some really beautiful balls are real vile and ugly ones are pretty understanding and caring. Wait - Have you already started to imagine Goo balls as Human beings? Well, they are just balls. But they laugh, they cry loudly, they weep silently, they jump, they dance or for that matter, they even shout at you. Quite interesting...isn't it? Now, what can be so useful by just being balls? So, they have this wonderful power of getting attached to each other through strings (which gets formed automatically when you try to attach them).

What makes me fall in love more with this game is the way it is played. You begin with some Goo balls - running merrily in a teeny-tiny structure. You have to construct a well balanced structure (by applying basic Physics rules) using these Goo balls on the original one and take it to the aim. In most of cases, aim is a suction pipe which sucks rest of the balls (i.e. the ones which are not used in constructing structure - so, you see, you need to be economical to earn more points). The way to take Goo balls towards aim goes through lots of struggles and pains. In some cases, you have to be really creative to take them from one point to another. There are lot of things in between which can either make your life easier or may even make you think "what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-these-guys?"

Ohho, while writing this, I am getting this strong urge of restarting WII and playing this game rather than blogging here. Looks like, Goo balls are calling me - I gotta go......