WEEKLY CHAT (non-osprey) SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4 2018

Here are a few photos of the Oregon trip (although most of them are from Northern California around and north of Redding, where they had some of the worst wildfires this year

First shot is of the normal view heading north - nice road, green trees and Shasta National Forest ahead.

A few miles on, we're passing through the areas of the state that burned so badly, with mile after mile of burned forest covering the hills....

There's a huge clean up job underway to remove the damaged trees, which are piled along the sides of the highway

Black Butte (below) consists of a series of lava domes associated with Mt. Shasta and its sidekick Shastina on the left (next photo) .  These are part of the currently quiet string of volcanoes (including Mount St. Helens, which erupted spectacularly on live TV back in 1982) that run up the West side of the U.S.

Mt Shasta is 14,000 ft high.

Now we're in Oregon at Crater Lake.  The original mountain was 12,000 ft high when it erupted 7,700 years ago, covering the surrounding countryside with lava and ash.  The eruption caused the mountain to collapse, forming the current crater, which is about 2,000 ft deep, making it the deepest lake in the U.S. They say it's one of the purest lakes in the world, fed only by rain and snow and it's the purity of the water that makes the lake so blue. The rim where I took the photo is at 8,000 ft elevation. It's 7-8 miles wide.

The road to and from the lake is heavily forested, so we stopped and looked at river gorges and also the unusual stump of a Douglas Fir, whose roots have joined with those of the tree behind it, thus allowing it to continue living.

And that should take care of any more photographs from me for this year!!!

Wonderful, interesting photos, Annette. Crater Lake is glorious. Fascinating stump! Metaphorical... Thanks for posting the pics. 

Annette - Thanks for starting us off for another new week.  I found your pictures both wonderful and sad.  Sad that such beautiful country could be so scarred by dreadful fires.  But the wonder of those mountains and particularly the amazing lake … a fantastic start to the day.  Thank you for sharing them.

Hope everyone has a good Sunday.

Good Morning. Dry here, and a watery sun trying to peep through the clouds.

Thank you to Annette for starting us off, and with such interesting pictures. I lurve volcanic mountains! The pure lake is just beautiful, too.

Lurker alert! Hello everyone. I just wanted to comment on the wonderful photos from around the world that our group puts on this thread - truly wonderful and speaking for me in Suffolk, on the East Coast of  the UK, it is very interesting and educational so please keep it up AQ, Diane and Annette.

To all others in UK and Europe please keep us supplied with your photos as on a cold and dull day when I log in to this site first thing, it really does make me feel part of a community.

Ive been to church a lot this week as we have been celebrating All Saints Day followed by All Souls Day and its been quite hard for me having lost my youngest Daughter last year but my 3 beautiful Grandchildren mean I must focus on the future, whilst at the same time remembering all the happy times we spent as a family.

On a slightly different note, I watch an old film on TV last night - Truly Madly Deeply with the late Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson - a masterpiece in grief and moving on, although I know some critics have not been so complimentary.

Anyway have a good Sunday and rest of week all and I won't leave it so long to post next time.

Hello, Harelady.  Good to see you.  I totally agree about the photographs - they are great.  I also agree about 'Truly Madly Deeply'.  I recorded it, even though I've seen it more than once.  Sometimes a good cry can be cathartic - and this will certainly fill the bill when necessary!  A lovely film.

Thanks Pat O. Are you an O' like me - a child of an Irish Father?

We began our holiday by getting up at silly o'clock and having a taxi to the airport, as no way could you ask a friend to be there for 4.00 am! After a rushed and chaotic start, due to Ryanair and their methods of business (we will not be using them again.....) we had our breakfast and boarded the plane for Barcelona, Spain.

We have never been to Barcelona before, so were gazing out of the coach windows with interest as we crossed the city on our transfer to the ship.  But it was disappointing in the main, as it was busy with traffic and just like any other European city, and of course we did not see anything of note. However, the cruise terminal was a modern arrangement and was already full of ships as we crossed a bridge and found our check in so that we could board our ship, the "Vision of the Seas" which was incidentally the same ship on which we took our first cruise three years ago.

Here is the first picture I took from the upper deck once we had boarded, looking back at Barcelona:

Don't know what the huge black building is, but it looked very new.

Sorry if this ship looks as if it's going uphill! I was actually looking with horror, at the tiny gondolas of the big cable car which were going to and fro - it looked terrifyingly high!  You can see the modern city behind, and the mountains in the distance around the city.

This is the pool deck of our ship, where some people had already made themselves at home on the sunbeds. (It was lunchtime by then).

The vast ship moored behind us, the "Symphony of the Seas"  -- the red squiggly things on the rear are the tubes you can hurtle through as part of the water slide arrangement.

As we pulled away, we could see the ship behind us plus the one behind that, also huge.

We then passed the "Eclipse" which dwarfed our ship, even though ours carries over 2,000 passengers.

That night we had a good dinner and went to bed early, ready for our big adventure.