Oregon Vacation Photo Dump!

Last week I went on vacation to Oregon to visit my awesome friend Brad, who you may remember from blogs such as this one.  Andy and I went on vacation because I had one week between the end of my old job as a tech at USC (Go Trojans!) and the beginning of my new job as a lab manager at UCLA (Go Bruins!).  We road-tripped up to Oregon and saw crusty hippies and a couple of llama farms and a pick-up truck with a wolf-dog in it.  Most importantly, though, when we got to Oregon, Brad was there and he showed us a great time.

Highlights:

The Crater Lake

Brad insisted on taking us to this very cool lake, where we discovered that Brad is an excellent photographer and that nature is crazy cool.  We already knew one of those things, but I won't say which.

 

 

 

  

 

Fun facts: This is the bluest lake in the world, the deepest lake in America (over 2,000 feet!), and was formed by the explosion of a volcano.  You can see the volcano behind us on what people call "Wizard Island."  Yes, that is its real name.  Learn more about this bizarre lake here.

 

The Shasta River

We ate lunch at the side of the river, which runs though a redwood forest.  My view was mostly close-ups of the riverbed because I discovered frogs there.  (Protip: Never bring a biologist to a river.  They will get hyperfocused on the tiny things therein and fail to appreciate the scenery as a whole.)

 Brad's view:

My view:

 

 

 

Don't worry; we put him back.

The Redwood Forest

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Andy's view:

 Our view: 

Again, never take a biologist anywhere biological.  Every two seconds I was like "GUYS!  MORE FUNGI!"

How big are these trees?  Here's Andy standing in the center of one that had been knocked over:

Wee!  Nature!

 

Irony!  (Read the bench; it's a famous Giacomo Leopardi quote.)

♫ ♬♫ Moments in the woods:

Fun fact about redwoods: Redwood forests are considered to be "temperate rainforests."  Redwoods live 1,000 - 2,000 years.  They can grow to be 300-400 feet tall, so theoretically, you could pop like 5 end-to-end into Crater Lake and still have room left over, although the National Park Service would really prefer if you didn't.

 The House of Mysteries:

You might recall that Andrew and I are pretty big fans of a show called Gravity Falls.  Like, huge fans.  So you can imagine our glee when we discovered that the mystery shack is real:

Brad had no idea why I was flipping out over a stupid roadside attraction but was kind enough to let us get some pictures of the sign.

My only complaint about vacation is how brief it was.  I'm back now and settling in nicely to my new job as a lab manager, but that's a blog post for another time!

Note to self: Link the entire 400-picture Imgur album here and/or cross-reference Andy's blog.