Oregon Trip - Portland

We tried to get a reservation for brunch at Tasty n Alder, but the wait was long. We walked around downtown and found Jake’s Famous Crawfish. What a find! I had Parmesan + Horseradish crusted Steelhead which was excellent.  Alicia had the blackened Steelhead.

Visited the Portland Japanese Garden in Washington Park, which was beautiful.  We took a look at the International Rose Garden, right across the street, then we bought shaved ice. The rose-flavored shaved ice - tasted exactly the same as it used to taste in summer in India in Pune.

Short hike around Hoyt Arboretum - pleasant early evening hike. Portlanders are lucky to have so much green space right in the city.

Drove to Lake Oswego where the AirBnB reservation was. We were about an hour early, and I knew that my friend from college, G, lived around there. We looked up her address and it was close by, so we decided to go to her place and knock on the door. It was _really_ nice seeing her. Hung out with her, drove to do some grocery shopping with her and got a good chance to catch up one on one. She asked me if “I was happy with my life” :), and I answered, pretty truthfully, “more or less, yes”. She said she was pretty happy too on the whole. She is a senior process engineer and likes her work. Her younger son P was home too and he is interested in programming. All in all a very nice evening. I was very happy that I decided to take a chance and show up unannounced at her place :).

Spent the night at AirBnB and it was meh.

Oregon Trip - Corning CA to Woodburn OR

Our first stop after leaving Corning was Mount Shasta supercharger.

We took the scenic route through Medford and Ashland - which are both charming little towns.

The next stop was Grants Pass supercharger. We walked across two one-way streets and had lunch at a nice Thai place. We also bought lemonade at grocery store called Ray’s. We stayed the night at Best Western Woodburn OR.

Oregon trip - Home to Corning, CA

Left home after 3:00 pm.

Encountered traffic.

Charged in Vacaville.

Dinner at Williams Chinese Restaurant, which was unexpectedly good. We ordered “Beef Satay” assuming that it was going to be meat on a stick but it was nice sauted beef and a bunch of vegetables.

Stayed the night at Best Western Plus Corning CA

Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens were beautiful. They had an India-themed orchid exhibition which I quite enjoyed.

We had lunch at the cafe at the Kew Gardens, which was so so.
After lunch we each had a half pint of beer at Tap on the Line pub by the railway station which was nice.





After we got home and rested for a bit, we walked to a really nice Kerala restaurant called "Anjanaa's" and had a very good meal.

Here are the rest of the pictures: https://goo.gl/photos/GFqjQcVLmWQbukfUA

National Archives

Gits and I visited the National Archives and Kew gardens in Kew on Saturday. The National Archives hold "The Domesday Book" which was basically the first land registry compiled about a 1000 years ago.


They have all kinds of other government records such as the poster here:








They also had an exhibit by Ian Kirkpatrick on the First World War. He had created these amazing sculptures from cardboard that were quite evocative.

 Here are my other pictures from National Archives:


https://goo.gl/photos/2qjPCzYakXy2coVR9

Richfield UT

I did a little over 500 miles of driving today through some really gorgeous country (no pun intended).
Mojave CA to
Barstow CA to
Primm NV to
Las Vegas NV to
St George UT to
Beaver UT
and finally checked into a Holiday Express Inn at Richfield. I got the last room - a king suite apparently. I was really lucky as the supercharger is on this property.
On the way I saw the Ivanpah Solar Thermal project at Primm NV. The scale is huuge.

Trip to Colorado

I am going to drive to Aspen, Colorado and go hiking with a bunch of friends. Here is the driving route I plan to take: