Miles to Memories

Its fall time!!!. Fall or Autumn is one of the four seasons and it is when the summer ends and the winter starts. It is the time when every leaf is a flower. The green leaves turn their color to yellow, orange, red and finally shred into the ground. At the end of the season the trees look bare without a single leaf on it. During fall, nature looks more colorful and beautiful. The trees that lost their leaves in the winter begin to grow leaves again in the spring time.  This is my second fall in U.S and I have been lured both the times by the beauty of the nature. The cool weather and colorful landscape will definitely cool your mind as well. Then why not go for a fall drive and enjoy the season?!!!. There are many scenic fall drives in Washington and three among them that we visited are Chinook Pass, White Pass and drive to Leavenworth. The Chinook Pass provides east entrance to Mount Rainier National Park and is located on SR 410 between the towns of Emu...

It was December 30th 2017. For the rest of the world it is Christmas season and also a day before the year ends. But for me it is a very special day. We were celebrating our second wedding anniversary!. So soon the time flew. Just like everyone we too were planning for a special destination for the special day. But our plans were dropping one by one as we were checking the flight tickets. We realized that our anniversary day is a very expensive day for travelling. No matter what, I wanted to celebrate the day by travelling  somewhere where I can  have a great time with my husband and enjoy the momentous day. I really do not know when I actually turned into a travel freak!. Be it a holiday or any weekends I just did not want to stay inside the home. Finally we decided to go to Lake Chelan. We also got to know from our friend about one of the main attraction that is  'The Lady of the Lake', a ferry ride between Chelan and Stehekin city.  ...

I was very excited because we were doing beach camping for the first time!!!. We had done around 7-8 camping's last year which included camping in the forest and lake side camping and at that time we had wished to do a camping at sea shore. We had been to Olympic National Forest last year and had spent some time at Second beach. We had seen some people camping there, so this time we decided to camp at the sea shore of Second Beach. There is no such thing called campsite in the beach, you can camp wherever there is place in the beach shore but make sure you are setting up your camp behind the drift woods since it is safe. Also you cannot reserve the place prior, its just a walk-in. You are lucky if you find an empty space behind the drift woods. But one important thing you have to do before going to the beach and setting up the camp is obtain permits in person at Wilderness Information Center in Port Angeles or at the South Shore Lake Quinault Ranger station. This ...

When we say hiking, the picture that comes to our mind is hiking in the forest, in the mountains or in the hill areas. But what if you are hiking inside a large cave where it is pitch dark that means complete absence of natural light and bunch of surprises awaiting for you as you walk in the trail because you will not be knowing where and how the trail ahead goes. Its somewhat unusual right!. Ape caves in Washington will give us similar kind of experience. Ape cave was formed about 2000 years ago when Mount St. Helens erupted. It is 13,042 ft long and is the third longest lava tube in North America. It is located at Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington. We did a little bit of research in the internet to find out how difficult the trek will be. We got to know that there are 2 caves: Upper and lower with lower cave being the easier one and upper cave being the difficult one. It was also mentioned that inside the cave it will be pitch dark and temperature will drop, so we h...

How about getting out of home, going out where you can be yourself, forget all the problems and finally get completely lost in the lap of nature?, sounds great right!!!. I wanted a pause in my daily routine life and relax and enjoy for sometime. For me travelling is the only thing that refreshes my body and mind and add zest to my life. Summer had already started so me and my husband decided to do camping and spend some time in the woods. We had already done several camping's last year and this year we thought we will begin it at North Cascades. We had visited North Cascades once and had decided that we should do camping here because it is a very scenic place and we were charmed by the large mountain ranges and greenish Diablo and Ross lake. Diablo Lake It was Saturday and we were ready at 8.30 after having breakfast and preparing lunch for that day. The car also had to be fed because we had to drive nearly 600 miles round trip from our home. After filling the fuel...

Finally we were going to Crater Lake, a dream come true moment for us because we were planning to go to Crater Lake from the beginning of the last year but due to some or the other reasons we could not accomplish it. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the USA, about 1950 feet deep and perhaps the most pristine on the earth.  It is about 350 miles from our place (Redmond, Washington), so we decided to begin the trip on Friday evening and return by Monday early morning. We had booked the hotel at Roseburg and Reedsport for Friday and Saturday night respectively. We were 7 members together, so we had booked a 7- seater Dodge car. We started our journey at about 6.30 pm. After driving for almost 3 -4 hours we stopped at MacDonald's for tea and had upma (Indian dish) for dinner. As we are not a big fan of pizza and burgers, every time we go out we carry homemade food for lunch and dinner. Next day at 2 am we reached our hotel at Roseburg. Si...