Raystown Lake
We were aware of the fact that the largest manmade lake in Pennsylvania i.e. the Raystown Lake is about 100 miles away from our city and is famous for its natural beauty and luxury cruise boat trip. As we never made any cruise trip before, we were immensely eager to go for the Seven Point Marina trip there by any means. We decided in August to visit the Lake as it is the best time in fall to visit anywhere in America. One can say that this might be the best time for the amateur photographers to enjoy nature and take great shots. So, we started our journey to Raystown on one Saturday morning. First, after reaching there we took our lunch outside and then aboard the luxury cruise boat "Princess" to start our trip to Seven Point Marina on Raystown. She was really gorgeous. The dinner table was beautiful. The deck and tourist sitting arrangements were also excellent. But the real pleasure was to visit different points on the lake. The largest marina in Pennsylvania is having the most wonderful shoreline . The lake islands are great for taking some unforgettable shots. Lake water takes different colors at different places. The speed boats on the marine was excellent to view from the deck. Different fishes like trout, salmon were swimming side by side. We even fed them. It was an unforgettable cruise boat trip on the marine.
After September 11, we couldn't even imagine to visit any tourist spots in the USA. We were worried to travel by car. But during mid October, we again decided to visit few places as it was almost the end of the fall and the winter will come pretty soon. We wouldn't be able to visit anywhere till the next spring.
Bushkill Falls
So, we started to make up our mind and prepared detailed plans for visiting spots. The first one in our second phase of US tour was the beautiful Bushkill Falls. It's situated at the border of Pennsylvania and the New York. And it's far away from home. We made up a full day travel plan. We left State College early in the morning and after a long journey reached Bushkill in the afternoon. We took our lunch there and started visiting the place. It's well known as the Niagara of pennsylvania. We had seen seven falls and taken some mind blowing pictures. We walked through the trail and by the bank of the river. Before dark, we started returning to State College. The overall journey took ten long hours but we were quite happy with the pictures of the falls and the beautiful surroundings.
City Of the Pittsburgh
The next week was Durga Puja. That was the end of October. We were upset being in an alien land during pujas. So, we decided to attend the Bengali Samitee Durga Puja in Pittsburgh on Vijaya Dashami. But weather didn't permit us to be there on that scheduled day. Amit, me, Ashokeda (Ashoke Sen) and Sumatidi (Sumati Rao, wife of Ashokeda) started very early in the next morning for Pitts. We had nice time during the two hours journey by our car when Amit was driving. We reached Hindu Jain Temple around 10 A.M. but unfortunately the puja was over on the day before. So, we were upset but visited all the gods and goddesses of that temple, took our Durgapuja "prosad" and left the place. We reached at the Pitts University next. Beforehand we planned to see the tallest university building in the eastern America i.e. the Cathedral of Learning. The structure was huge enough to stun us with curiosity. We entered the building to realize its hugeness. Inside we were astonished enough by visiting the classrooms of different countries, reflecting the traditional and cultural backgrounds of those respective countries. The moments inside the classrooms were the most exciting of all. We visited the Indian classroom which might be the sole representative of that kind of the great Nalanda Mahabihar. We had a feeling of being students of that institution when we sat in that classroom. The memories are still golden. We also visited the Austrian, Armenian, African, old American, Japanese, Ukrainian and the Israel classrooms. The reading room of the library is also exciting.
Then we had our lunch in one of the Indian restaurant in Pittsburgh downtown and started for the famous Pitts Zoo and aquarium. We drove through Pittsburgh downtown, different shady areas with big buildings. Pittsburgh is a old traditional city of Pennsylvania. Then we reached at the zoo. There are several areas for different kinds of animals like Asian, African and tropical etc.. The animals are mostly kept in their natural environments and they looked happy and healthy. We saw leopard, cheetah, African lion and lioness, African two-horned rhino, giraffe, zebra, Siberian tiger,African elephant with her cub, deer, brown bear and different birds. We also visited Gorillas, Chimpanzee and few other species of tropical Apes. The aquarium was also quite big. Different kinds of marine lives and Peruvian Penguin delight the tourists. The latest attractions were tiger sharks and a huge Arizona river dolphin. Then we visited the sea-lion pool also. Before dark we left for our last visiting spot which was The famousS.V. temple. We came to know from the web site that this is one of the 10 most famous Hindu temples in the US right now. The illuminated white structure of the temple is visible from the highway itself. We drove to the entrance and entered through the gate. We visited several Hindu gods and goddesses and took "prosad". Then after taking few pictures we started our return journey to State College.
More Pictures from Rays'town Lake
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