Yosemite - Oh, My Gravy! Look at That!

Roger here....  The second part of our first day at Yosemite was a jaw-dropper.  From the Mariposa Sequoia Grove we drove about forty miles to Glacier Point, going uphill most of the way.  Glacier Point provides a panorama of the Yosemite Valley 3200 feet below.


We made sure to take this drive on one of our early visits, because the road could be closed by snow at any time, and it closes for the season November 1.


  We thought that the waterfalls would be nonexistent in the fall, but as you can see in the first pic, Nevada and Vernal Falls are pretty healthy.  The view of Half-Dome gave me the same sense of wonder and awe that I get when viewing the Grand Canyon.

Dianne and I lingered at Glacier Point for quite a while.  Enjoy the view in the next few photos.


(Dianne here:  Remember that you can click or double-click on the smaller photos to make them large.  Some of these are worth it!)

Dianne cringed when she saw an old photo of two young ladies balancing on an overhanging rock: 

Dianne here:  I guess reckless youth isn't just a phenomenon of our time!

Time to head back to the campground so that I won't be driving on these twisty, steep roads after dark.  


But wait, there is a 2.2 mile round-trip hike to Taft Point just a few miles down the road.  The literature says it would take a couple of hours to do this hike, but it might be a really cool hike.  (Dianne again:  We couldn't imagine it could take two hours to walk 2.2 miles!  Trust me, with the fantastic sights to stop and see, it really does take 2 hours.)


  Let's see if there is a parking spot at the trail head.  If there is, we'll do the hike and get back late.  


There's a spot at the end of the lot.  Let's do it.  What a mistake it would have been to skip one of the best hikes we have ever taken.  


Into the woods!


Due to the lateness of the day, we started the walk at a pretty good pace.  Then, crack.  Then crack, crack, crack, crack.  What is that loud noise?  Is a tree falling?  In the distance, and through the trees, I saw it go down.  Were we far enough away to not get squished? Thump!  Missed us by a long shot.  Up ahead we heard a fellow hiker shout, "Holy S***!"  We caught up with the three hikers ahead and discussed why a healthy tree would just tip over on a non-windy day.  Not something you see every day.  A puzzlement.

OK, we need to move on.  Let's pick up the pace.  Wait, what is that?  That is one big bird, and it does not seem to be too afraid of us.  The grouse posed long enough for us to take several pictures.  




Taft Point could not be far ahead.  The forest opened up, so that we could see a distant metal railing on the edge of the abyss.  Not too far.  But, we had to be careful.  We passed three amazing fissures before reaching the point.  All three were invisible until we wandered within six feet of them.  And, they went straight down to the valley floor. 

After avoiding a stumble into the fissures, and taking a million pictures, we scrambled up the granite slope to the railing on the edge of Taft Point.  

Here is a shot of Dianne squeezing dents into the metal railing as she looks down, straight down -- 3200 feet straight down.

I am not typically afraid of heights, but I had a tingly feeling as I gazed down, then out across the magnificent view which included the iconic El Capitan on the other side of the valley.  I also held the railing with an iron grip.  It was not a slanted cliff with maybe a few rocks along the way; it was straight down.  The trees looked like moss on the valley floor.

(Dianne again:  the cars on the valley roads looked like matchbox cars, and we couldn't even see the people from this high.)

Dianne here:  the rock formation above looks like a giant cairn, doesn't it?   To get a sense of how large it is, you can see it in the zoomed-out photo below.   I'm highjacking Roger's blog to add three of my favorite photos of this day:

Back to Roger....

We did not want to leave, but we wanted to get home before dark.  

Back into the woods....  

This lichen on some of the lower, dead branches of the pine trees was literally fluorescent green.  Looked like it might glow in the dark:

Almost stepped on Chip (or Dale).  This little fella held his ground in the middle of the trail as I walked by.  He then scared the bejesus out of Dianne as he darted past her left foot.  Dianne did one of the classic whoops that she does when she is startled.  She usually saves the whoops to make sure that I don't drive off the road :-)

Dianne again:  Don't you believe that smiley face above.  Roger has threatened to blindfold me when we're driving the motorhome so that I won't be so "helpful" from the passenger seat!

Dianne's pedometer indicated that altogether we walked close to 8 and a half miles this day.  Our muscles felt tired as we pulled into the campground just as the sun was setting.  What a great first trip into Yosemite National Park!

The Whippet (barn cat) Picture of the Day is actually an image of Big Chuck lounging in one of the many places where we do not want him to lounge.  Today - on our mail on the dining table.  He likes to sleep on those crinkly surfaces.

Yosemite - The Big Trees

 

Roger here...  Being the careful person (chicken) that I am, I decided that driving the motor home across the Sierras would not be a wise thing to do.  We could see the lights of Fresno at night from the east side of the mountains, and knew that the city was just on the other side of the mountains.   BUT, since the only feasible quick route to the west (The Tioga Pass through Yosemite) was closed earlier in the week due to snow, and probably a nail-biter anyway, I (we) decided to drive a couple hundred miles out of the way to arrive safely near the entrance to Yosemite in the small town of Coarsegold.  So, we drove all the way to the south end of the Sierra Nevada on gloriously uncrowded roads, headed west toward Bakersfield, and then headed north on a crowded, deteriorating, semi-truck-filled California freeway to Fresno.  


The scenery going into Bakersfield was outstanding -- bright yellow mountains (foothills?) covered with bright green trees, tall grass, and windmills.  It was disappointing to discover the smog in the San Joaquin Valley as we got closer to Bakersfield.  We thought it might be a wildfire; but, no, it was smog.  (Dianne here:  the smog surprised us, because we only expected to see it around L.A.)


After passing through Fresno, we exited the freeway (and the smog) and headed into the boonies.  We thought we would be on a good two-lane road and that the traffic would let up.  We were half right.  The two-lane road was in much better shape than the freeway, but the traffic was intense -- our first introduction to the infamous California drivers.  We were tail-gated for most of the last 20 miles, even though we were going the speed limit in a large box that does not stop easily.  There were several lanes to pull over to let people pass, but when I did, NO ONE would let me back onto the roadway.  Screw-em.  They would just have to tail-gate.  


When we got to the road for the campground, Sacajawea, our GPS, told me to go another quarter mile.  She was wrong.  She often is, but sometimes she is right.   I never know when she is right.  This time Dianne was right.  Frustrating.  I need to always tell myself. listen to Dianne, not Sacajawea -- unless, of course, Sacajawea is right.  


We turned around in a casino parking lot and finally made it to our destination, Escapees Park of the Sierras Co-op, only to find a gate that we did not have the code for.  After a few minutes of what do we do now, someone came through the gate from the other side, we quickly drove through, and found a paradise.  We'll talk more about this wonderful Escapee Park and its friendly residents in a later blog.  On to Yosemite.


We plan to make several trips into the park during our three-week stay, so there will be lots to see.  The park entrance is only twenty plus miles from our campsite, but much further time-wise.  We decided to divide our first visit into two parts:  the big trees, and the jaw-dropping high-altitude views.  Big Trees Today.

Leaving the motor home:  Camera - check.  Cell phone - check.  National Park Pass - check.  Full tank of gas - check.  Hiking belts with water - check.  Portable cooler with lunch - check.  Sweatshirts -- oh, we forgot those. 


 When we left the campsite at 8:30 in the morning, it was 65 degrees and climbing fast in the hot sun (forecast 95 degrees in Coarsegold).  When we got to the Mariposa Sequoia Grove inside the park (after climbing a few thousand feet), it was 49 DEGREES.  We can't see the trees unless we hike to them.  Do we tough it out in shorts and t-shirts?  Do we buy VERY EXPENSIVE sweatshirts in the gift shop?  The sun is out.  Let's just go.  Good decision, because the trail, as all trails in the west, was straight up.  Pretty soon, we were sweating in the 49-degree weather.

I have seen Sequoias before, but I forgot how massive (almost scary) they are.  I am sure that leaning against the trees will help them stay upright for a few hundred more years.

Dianne, pretty in pink, is on her way to walk through one.

A nice man with a British accent took our picture in front of the largest tree, the Grizzly Giant. It is impossible to understand the whole picture by just looking at the base of the tree - or at the top.

So Dianne made a short video (from top to bottom and bottom to top) of a pair of trees fused for hundreds of years named The Faithful Couple.  (It's really short, but it's impossible to take still photos of an entire tree! -- D.)

(Dianne here:  Tourism is alive and well in Europe and Asia.  Roger and I were in the minority with our American accents).

The Whippet Picture of the Day is entitled  "Jasper Naps after Doing the Dishes!"  He seemed to really get into licking the paper plate that once held a steak.  He also seemed to like paper!

Driving the Long, Long Trailer Mountain Road - Mt. Whitney

Hi all, Dianne again.


If you are not a fan of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (Is that even possible??), this blog won't interest you, unless you want to see some spectacular mountain scenery.


Roger and I grew up watching I Love Lucy, back in the '50s.  When we bought our little Sunline Trailer, I bought the movie poster shown above on Ebay, and framed it to hang on the wall.  (Our little trailer seemed huge to us at first.)  When we bought our motor home, of course we moved the poster there to a prominent place.

When the DVD version of the Lucy/Desi classic came out, of course I purchased one to take along with us.


  Once we learned that the famous mountain road scene from our favorite Lucy & Desi movie was filmed right here in view of our camp site at Tuttle Creek, we just had to explore!

We actually can see the road cut on Whitney Portal Road from our camp site.  It truly does switch back and forth, right on the edge of the mountain.  I'd never attempt it in our motor home!  We were even a little bit nervous doing it in our little Matrix.  Our thought was that we'd just go up a little bit, then turn back.

We kind of felt like this:




Poor little Matrix chugged along like the Little Engine that Could (I think I can...I think I can....)

Now and then we'd stop at pull-outs to photo the amazing scenery.  It was so pretty that we decided to just keep going to the 8000 ft. elevation Whitney Portal.  Whitney Portal is the base camp for those hardy souls who take on the 14,497 foot summit.

The scenery changed from desert to alpine.  At one stop we saw a Clark's Nutcracker, a high-mountain bird, eating pine nuts.  (No photo -- I was too busy with my nose in my western bird book, trying to i.d. it).

In the movie, the mountain road scene occurs near the end.  It's supposed to be their Rocky Mountain crossing.  What Desi doesn't know is that Lucy has collected (and hidden) large, heavy rocks in the trailer, complicating their mountain crossing.  Here's a shot of Desi throwing her rocks and jars of homemade jam out the door when the suspension breaks and he finds out what she did.


The movie is hilarious, whether you are an RV'er or not.  It takes on a whole new meaning if you've ever towed a trailer, fifth wheel, or driven a large motor home.  I first saw it for sale on Amazon.com, but I'm sure you can buy it in a lot of retail stores by now.  Here's a link to Amazon, if you are interested.  (I don't push products enough to get anything from it, so don't buy it unless you want it; this is just FYI only).

Once we were safely back home, I popped our DVD into our portable DVD player to see for ourselves if Lucy & Desi's Rocky Mountain road was actually Whitney Portal Road, as we'd learned at the Lone Pine museum.  I fast-forwarded to the end of the movie, and, sure enough, Roger and I could easily recognize Mt. Whitney and the scenery we'd just experienced.

Here's a still photo I took off our DVD screen.  Notice the mountain backdrop, with the snow-covered flat area and the jagged teeth of Mt. Whitney to its right.

Now, notice the same backdrop in this photo I took during our drive.  Yes, indeed-y, the mountain is still there!

When Lucy looks down and gets bug-eyed at the steep drop-off, here's what she sees (our photos of the same view from the movie):

Here's another view:

After much low-gear maneuvering and sighs of relief, we made it safely back down the mountain.


We bought our Matrix instead of a jeep thinking of gas mileage (it gets around 35 mpg) and light weight to tow.  Our frame of reference was roads east of the Mississippi.  We're learning that out west a high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle with a powerful engine would be more appropriate. 

 We love our little Matrix, though, and it was such a champ on our mountain trek today that I'm including a photo of it.  Many car commercials are shot in the Alabama Hills, so I decided little Matrix deserved a photo op of its own.

No, you're not seeing double.  My whippet photo of the day is actually a whippets + greyhounds photo of the day.  We spent one night back at Boulder Creek RV Resort after dry camping at Mt. Whitney, to empty our tanks, get a good shower, etc.   While there, I saw a woman walking two greyhounds out the window, so of course I ran out to meet them.  Roger brought out the "boys," and I took a couple photos of the four dogs together.  


We've now moved to the Escapee's Co-op, Park of the Sierras, outside Coarsegold, CA.  Tomorrow we will take our first trip into Yosemite National Park.  We'll be here for three weeks and will update on our Yosemite adventures soon!

Movie Road Tour & Dry Camping at Mt. Whitney

Hi all, Dianne here.  Well, I must be a cheap date, because my favorite four days of this trip so far was spent in a $5-per-night BLM (Bureau of Land Management) campground.  Gotta say, though:  It might have only been $5 per night, but we had a million dollar view!

Who needs eletricity (tv/internet) with this view from the patio!  We haven't "boondocked" like this before, other than an occasional overnight.  Since we're new at this, we were very stingy with our lights.  So stingy, in fact, that I think we could have gone several more days.

We stayed at Tuttle Creek BLM campground, which is really just outside Lone Pine and the Boulder Creek RV Resort where we'd been for the prior three nights.  Tuttle Creek Campground is between the Alabama Hills Roger wrote about, and the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  It's a great place, except for the ridiculous speed bumps on the paved portion of the long lane leading back to it.  I followed Roger as he drove the motor home in and out, going less than one mile per hour, and I swear it looked like the motor home would tip over at each bump!

We got settled in and made a quick trip back into Lone Pine for firewood for three nights.  We had the best fire pit ever!   Since we're in the high desert, there's also no problem with damp firewood.  Boy, does it burn!  We kept a bucket of water handy "just in case," and made sure to douse the embers each night.


I tried really hard to get a photo of the large flock of California quail that periodically paraded through our camp site.  No luck:  they run too fast!

Charlie the cat alerted me to some other wildlife, though.  Charlie loved his perch in the desert!

Saturday we did a driving tour along Movie Road in the Alabama Hills, visiting several film sites.  Ask any kid who grew up in the 1950s, and I'll bet we watched the same TV shows after school and on Saturday mornings:  The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, the Cisco Kid, Zorro, and of course Bonanza in prime time.  Cowboys were "in" in the 1950s.  The Alabama Hills therefore looked very familiar to us, because hundreds of TV episodes and western movies were filmed there.  

One example is the iconic opening sequence of The Lone Ranger galloping along to the William Tell Overture.


During the Movie Road tour, we took a short hike to Natural Arch.  Roger already showed some photos from that hike in our last blog.

Natural Arch is a popular trail, which ends at the arch itself.  It's a perfect spot to photograph the mountain range framed by Natural Arch.

After touring the Alabama Hills, we took a ride up Whitney Portal Road.  RVer's note:  This is where the famous mountain road scene from Lucy & Desi's The Long, Long Trailer was filmed!  This drive deserves a blog all its own, so be sure to check back in a day or so for that one.

Perfect sunny skies and warm days.  Steak for dinner on the picnic table, while watching the sun set behind the Sierras.  A blazing campfire with a glass of wine and chocolate...in my mind, it just doesn't get any better than this!

When darkness came, I got out the new star wheel I'd purchased at the Ghost Ranch gift store in Abiquiu, NM.  Charlie the cat wants to point out the constellation "Leo."  (He is always such a big help).


 It was fun trying to i.d. the constellations; however, it was difficult because there are so many stars visible in the sky in this clear mountain air.  We could clearly see the Milky Way, too, and some satellites circling overhead.

Then Sunday morning we strapped on our hiking belts and followed a (very) primitive road that led from the campground to the mountains behind.  The topography here is deceiving:  What looks flat is often uphill.


We slogged along, uphill all the way, in the soft, sandy road track.  It was like walking on an uphill beach.  Once again, my old friend "altitude" was making me huff and puff.  Roger seems to be immune; must be the Swiss DNA on the Hoppes side of his family.

Along the way we could hear the rushing waters of Tuttle Creek.  We couldn't see it, because it was in such a deep trench filled with green trees that the tree tops were even with the trail!


After two miles (according to my pedometer), the mountains didn't seem much closer, so we turned back.  The two-mile trek back to the motor home was a snap -- it was all downhill.


Then, back to our outdoor recliners to do some reading (Roger) and Sudoku (me), while watching the light patterns change on "our" mountains.  Then, another outdoor dinner, another camp fire, and more bright stars overhead.


This whippet "photo of the day" is entitled:  "You can lead a dog to water, but you can't make him drink!"

Notice Chaplin shutting his eyes and ignoring the water that we offered him after hiking uphill for two miles in the desert.  He refuses to take a drink unless it's his own idea.  He's an eccentric dog, but we love him!