July 25-26 Yosemite

Incredible! That one word sums up Yosemite National Park for many reasons. It's incredible how many people visit Yosemite. 6,000,000 people a year stop at Yosemite, and one doesn't just stop there on a whim – you must travel miles and miles of rugged, steep, winding, narrow roads to even get into the park. Anyway, we have shared Yosemite for the last two days with a good share of the 6 million! It was like being in Times Square on New Year's Eve – there were so many people in Yosemite Valley, we could hardly move down the trails, and finding a parking place anywhere on the premises after noon is impossible, so everyone is driving around in a kind of gridlock. Luckily we had campground reservations and could park at the campground and take the shuttle wherever we needed to go.

The park is incredible because there are so many things to do. You can hike on easy trails, or choose to hike up a steep mountain; you can go on a lazy raft ride down the calm part of the Merced River; or you can go horseback riding on the many trails. You can take a tour, listen to a ranger talk, watch a video of the park, attend a play about the park, and swim in the river, a lake, or the pool. If you want to drive some more, you can take other very rugged, steep, winding, narrow roads to incredible views, granite cliffs, and sparkling lakes.

Most of all the park's beauty is incredible! There are waterfalls whose water drops for a half-mile. Yosemite Falls – upper, middle, and lower together drop for that distance. If we had been able to come to the park in the spring, we would probably have gotten extremely wet just from the mist coming off the falls. When we went there yesterday in the 100 degree heat, we wanted to get wet, along with the hundreds of other people who were there, but the only way to get wet was to wade in the creek at the base of the falls, which several hundred people were doing.

We thought about joining more of the masses in the float down the creek, but decided we should take another hike, this time to Mirror Lake. We felt like we were walking in Central Park, because there were so many people on the trail. Mirror Lake is pretty, but mostly dried up in the summer., so after wading in the water for a few minutes to cool off, we hiked back down. We did a few other things on the valley floor, but we got tired of the masses, and tired from the heat, so we went back to the campground and treated ourselves to a steak dinner.

Other incredibly beautiful spots in Yosemite are away from the valley floor, so consequently away from most of the people. We drove through the mountains above the valley to Glacier Point where you can look down on the valley floor where it looks like ants are crawling around. We saw not only Yosemite Falls from there, but Nevada Falls and Vernal Falls, both of which seemed to have a lot more water than Yosemite. It seemed like we could reach across and touch Half Dome, the huge granite rock that is such a famous face for the park. We also saw all of the other waterfalls, Mirror Lake, and domes, mountains, etc. from the Point. Until 1969 there was a hotel there overlooking the valley. I would love to have stayed in a hotel up so high, but that hotel burned and was not rebuilt.

After that, we left the park via the Tioga Road which is about 40 or 50 miles long, and connects with a road in Nevada that we had to go on to get to Utah. The Tioga Road wound around in the mountains above the valley, too, but we couldn't see down to the valley from there. We could see the backside of some of the mountains including Half Dome. A large part of the Tioga Road goes through huge areas of granite, some just piles of rock, but much of it huge hills of whitish silver rock that you can easily climb on to the top. Many of these rocks have trees growing right out of the rock! One wonders how that can happen, but it does, over and over! We also saw some beautiful wildflower meadows today, and several large lakes. Just after we crossed out of the park at Tioga Pass, 9900 feet in elevation, we saw Mono Lake which appears to be a large salt water lake.

Now that we have visited Yosemite once, and know what's there and the best time to come, we hope to visit again some time.

At the present time, we are driving across the desert in Nevada on diesel fumes. The last several towns on the map seem to have disappeared. We have one possibility left before we run out, so we're hoping that's not a mirage, too!

Yosemite

Enjoy Yosemite with us!

July 23 –July 24 San Francisco and Placerville

Left our nice beach front campground this morning, drove through more redwood forests on our way south, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco in time for lunch. We had trouble finding a place to park our RV, but finally found two parking meters next to each other that were free so we went and got $10 worth of quarters to feed the machines, and set off to explore Fisherman's Wharf and have some lunch – clam chowder in bread bowls- Yum!

It was interesting to watch all of the tourists there. It is the same kind of tourist area you would find next to any beach type community – lots of junk for sale, lots of restaurants, and people all over the place. I was fascinated by all of the conveyances people were using in addition to the standard cars, buses, and bikes. There were “duck boats”, a fire engine taking tourists across the bridge, electric bikes, smart cars about as big as a child's wagon which are controlled by computers, segways, roller blades, bicycles built for two, open buses, motorcycles, and I'm probably forgetting two or three more.

The National Park has a nice maritime park on the wharf with about ten or fifteen old boats to look at. I think they also take people out for a sail sometimes.

The most fun we had was driving up, up, up the streets, and then going down, down, down. It was kind of scary going down because you'd come to what looked like the edge of nothing, and then the road appeared to drop off before you went down again. I can see why in the Hollywood chase movies through San Francisco the cars actually get airborne! We were afraid we'd scrape bottom, but we didn't. We also went by the crookedest street in the US, but not down it – I don't think the RV would have fit.

Since we were heading out toward Sacramento, the GPS routed us through most of the city, so we got a good tour – including China Town.

Traffic was horrendous, even though we thought we left town early enough to avoid rush hour. It took 4 hours to go about 100 miles. We stopped near Sacramento because Bob was worn out with the stop and go traffic on the interstate and the morning's drive own windy, bumpy route 101 out of the Redwoods. That road was in such bad shape that everything rattled for two hours (usually nothing rattles in the RV) and gave us both a headache. So the driving was bad today, but we had a great time exploring San Francisco.

Redwoods

Take a drive with us through the Redwood forest!

July 21 - 22 Redwoods, California

We left our campground at Crater Lakes, elevation around 7,000 feet, and drove 160 miles to California. The first town we got to there said the elevation was 320 feet. No wonder my ears were screaming from the pressure change!

Just about as soon as we got into California, we were in a Redwood Forest. These massive trees are found in a band about 20 miles wide just a little inland from the Northern California coast, from about the Oregon border south to San Francisco. The area where we were is part State Park and part National Park. The trees need to be inland as salt water is not good for them, but they need the moisture provided by the coast. A single redwood may consume up to 500 gallons of water in a day. This area of California receives 60-80 inches of rain a year. There is also a lot of fog in the area that provides moisture for the trees.

As we hiked in several of these forests of massive trees, some as old as 2000 years old, standing 370 feet or more in the air, I was reminded of my father's favorite song, “How Great Thou Art.” One verse, which always reminds me of him because of his love for the woods, starts out, “ When through the woods and forest glades I wander...“. I don't think my father ever got to the Redwoods, even though our family lived in the LA area for several years when my older brother and I were infants. I felt his presence in the woods with me. Jodi, who was also traveling, had a similar experience. She and Andy were in Indianapolis with Rob and Katie at a Lillith Fair Concert which features several woman singers. Sarah McLaughlin, whose song “Angels” Jodi had sung with the voice of an angel at my mother's funeral, came on to sing, and the first song Sarah sang was “Angels.” Jodi said she sobbed through the entire song as she felt her grandmother's presence with her there at the concert.

When we were hiking, I felt as though I had been dropped on the movie set of “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” because I felt like an ant compared to the trees. One of the hikes was through an area called The Cathedral which seemed aptly named to me because the tall trees stood like pillars in the quiet peacefulness of the forest. One tree we saw, called Big Tree, was 1500 years old, and 287 feet high with a circumference of 68 feet, and a diameter of 23.7 feet. There were many other trees as old or older, higher, and wider, but they were deeper in the woods, so weren't “featured” trees. We'd be hiking along with our heads bent back looking up at the top of the trees to see how high they were, or if they were still alive, thinking we'd have sore necks from all of the looking. Sometimes we'd look at the base of a tree and have to look several times to determine if it was indeed as wide as it seemed, or if it was two or three trees that had grown together, a common occurence.

It's hard to believe that these majestic trees have been around much longer than the United States has been a country. Even trees that have been dead for 500 years are still standing because it takes so long for the wood to rot. They are not hurt too often by forest fires because their bark is so thick, and their wood doesn't burn well. Many of the trees that have been burned a little are still standing, some almost completely hollow trees that make neat little “houses.” I think perhaps natives used them for shelter sometimes when they were in the woods for long periods of time.

We saw how the trees helped each other, too. Despite their size, their roots are very shallow, and the trees, roots attached, often fall over with the wind. They must make one heck of a noise when they fall because they are so big! Anyway, after they fall, other species of trees and plants grow right on top of the downed tree. We saw lots of fallen redwoods with the roots of other trees wrapped around them, hanging on for dear life, growing tall in the forest because of their “helper” tree. We learned that redwoods will grow from the seeds in the very tiny pine cones they produce, but will more likely sprout from a downed tree.

Several years ago we visited the Giant Sequoia forests here in California, and the redwoods are related to them. The redwoods are taller than the sequoias, but the sequoias are wider and heavier. They have both been around for about the same period of time.

In addition to hiking through groves of Redwoods, we took a few driving tours through some of them. One of the drives was on a narrow, dusty, zigzag lane through several hundred huge redwoods on a road that had once been a stagecoach trail.

We saw a lot of Roosevelt elk here in the park. They almost became extinct years ago, but are now protected in the park, and have come back in huge numbers. There are signs all over saying to stay away from the wild elk, but the elk wander right down to the road, often in big herds.

This morning we took a jet boat ride on the Klamath River to see wildlife. It was a great trip, and we did see lots of animals. We saw many birds like ospreys, mergansers, herons – both blue and green, bald eagles, and a golden eagle, the first I've ever seen. We also saw a seal, a baby bear, a deer climbing straight up the side of a cliff, and several wild cattle that were stranded on the river during a flood about 20 years ago. The captain was very knowledgeable and fun-loving. We had two family reunion groups on the boat with us, with a lot of kids, so he wanted to make the ride fun for them. We did several 360s in the river as well as sudden stops which would make the back row of pre-teen boys get wet. They loved it and so did the rest of us. It was sort of like being on a Disney ride, but the wild animals and scenery were real!

The first night we camped in one of the state parks where the redwood grow. Tonight we moved about 80 miles down the highway, still in redwood territory, but are camped along the sandy beach. Tomorrow we will head to San Francisco.

Oregon

This is the Columbia River

Look for pictures of the cobalt blue Crater Lake

July 20 Oregon

We camped overnight last night in the town of Cascade Locks near the Columbia River. This morning we drove along the rushing, white-capped river for a few miles before heading south. There were many people on boats and other watercraft enjoying the morning sun on the river.

As we headed south we could see Mt. Adams in Washington behind us, and Mt. Hood in Oregon in front of us with acres and acres of fruit trees on either side of us. We stopped at a roadside fruit stand and came away with blueberries, cherries, peaches, marionberry jam, raspberry jam, and assorted baked goods. Yum!

Leaving the fruit country, we climbed higher into the Cascade Mountains with tall trees on both sides of us. This mountain road was not nearly as steep and winding as the one we took yesterday, however. Then we reached a plateau and the landscape changed to desert sand with small evergreen trees of some sort dotting the land. It changed again to sand with low desert bushes, dotted with green agricultural fields watered by huge sprinklers on wheels. We could still see many snowcapped mountains behind, beside, and in front of us. We saw the Three Sisters mountains to the west of us, along with Mt. Bachelor! He must have struck out with all three sisters, but another must have had good luck because The Husband was nearby!

Many of the mountains we've seen are dormant volcanos. We passed an area of huge lava rocks piled up on top of each other with a hill beside it that must have been the volcano in Newberry National Volcanic Monument.. We are in the high desert area now, and although it is 90 degrees outside, a local told us that this is hotter weather than normal and that they often get snow on the fourth of July. They must get significant snow here because we have passed several signs for “chain up areas.

The last half-hour or so before we got to the park, the drive became boring as we drove through a fairly new-growth forest and could only see sand and trees about 8-12 feet tall. So we were glad when we arrived at Crater Lake National Park, and were immediately on the Rim Drive which goes around the rim of the crater for 33 miles. In some places, you're very close to the rim, in others, you're farther down the outside of the crater. We stopped at the first lookout we could, walked up the sandy hill, and Wow!, 2,000 feet below us we saw the bluest lake we had ever seen in the “bowl” of the crater! It's beauty, after such a boring drive, was breathtaking. We could hardly take our eyes off it, except that we were at this point on the edge of the rim, and the sand underneath our feet was so soft and slippery that we feared we might slide down the edge into the craggy rock wall below.

The lake is cobalt blue in color and was so far below us that the ripples on the water looked like white dots, and the few boats there that take tourists around the lake could hardly be seen with the naked eye. It is from 4.5 to 6 miles wide, and contained within the crater. At one side of the lake is a fairly large island called Wizard Island. Across the lake from that is a rock structure that looks kind of like a ship, hence its name, Phantom Ship. Other than that, there's nothing else on the pristine lake. There is only one trail down to the lake from the rim, and you need to walk down it. It descends steeply for over 1 mile, and they compare the climb back up to climbing 65 flights of stairs! I would love to have gone down there to see the lake up close, or even to take the boat ride, but I thought it would take me several days to get back up, so we didn't try that trail!

The surface of the lake is a little over 6,000 ft., and the rim above it varies from 1,500 to 2,000 feet. Some of the time on our drive around the lake we were above the tree line, and some of the time we weren't. There was lots of snow still dotting the sides of the crater, both inside and out, chilling the warm air as we went past the snowy areas.

The snow did not kill the mosquitoes! They were out in attack armies of a million or more to one human! We went on a wildflower walk near the crater, and were swarmed by the nasty creatures! That might have been alright if we'd seen a meadow full of flowers like the brochure said, but we saw only about 5 flowers that were actually blooming!

Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States, is in the remains of a volcano called Mount Mazama which erupted and collapsed into itself 7,700 years ago. It filled with rain and melted snow, and evaporation must keep it at about the same depth from year to year. The area gets about 44 feet of snow a year. There are 16- 20 foot poles stuck in the ground along the roadway every 20 feet or so, so that the snowplows will be able to tell where the road is supposed to be!

The campground was several miles from the rim, and mosquito infested, too! We put on lots of mosquito repellant, built a huge campfire, and managed to keep most of them at bay while we enjoyed our dinner and the night sky. Tomorrow we're headed to the redwoods of California!