Flights to Seattle and Portland

Jesse dropped me off at Oakland Airport this morning for the start of the second part of my west coast adventure.
All I could see out the window of the plane were all the places in California that are on fire. I used some dave and jesse tricks on this pic to above so that all the stuff can be seen better.

For some silly reason, I had to fly to Seattle in order to get to Portland - I was slightly annoyed by this until I was actually flying over Northern California and realized that I was lined up perfectly to see many of the Cascade volcanoes.

It's so fun to have my geo-buttons tickled every once in a while!

Say, hello! to Lassen..

This one was so interesting because it looks to me like a much steeper version of Haleakala with glaciers. So interesting to see all of the vegetation stop at such a distinct line. Lassen's summit is at 10,457'. I didn't know that Lassen last erupted in 1914-1915 (after 27,000 years of dormancy!!! who thought that was even possible??!!)- if you're interested I encourage you to read about it on Wikipedia! I thought it was pretty cool.

I couldn't believe it, but i got to fly over Crater Lake too! The air was a little too hazy for me to be able to get a really good shot, but there it is!
I was surprised to see that there were places that still had snow.



Three Sisters, tallest peak is South Sister at 10,363'.




Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams














Mt. Rainer






I later found out this stuff on the water is a red tide.. I kept looking for a very silty river flowing into the Sound and imagine that, but there isn't one.

It was pretty interesting too see all the shapes the algae made. Actually red tides are caused by some kind of dinoflagellate if i remember properly from botany class freshman year (what a cool class!)

When i got into Seattle, I had enough time for a bread boule of chicken noodle soup (it was ok) and an Alaskan amber... oh man that was delicious.

It was also very interesting eavesdropping on the conversations at the bar. The bartender and one of the guys at the bar (i have to say the patrons of this particular bar were not the sharpest) kept talking about what one of the women that had been sitting at the bar would look like without her labcoat on (she was a chemist).

Anyway, the beer was good, I texted a hello to anne from her city, and I managed to make my plane to Portland with no problems.


I was on a little prop plane to Portland and I got some more cool shots of the red tide and the cuts boats made through it ...




And lastly this cool riverbed.