Say Goodbye to Yosemite...

North America » United States » California » Visalia
October 22nd 2006

Published: October 26th 2006

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After the challenges of yesterday, the plan for today should be recover and do nothing… However, it is not to be, as we need to move on if we are to make some commitments later in the month. So the plan is sleep in a little, publish the Blog, tie up a few loose ends in Yosemite and move on towards our next destination…

Statistics

Starting Destination: Midpines, California
Ending Destination: Vidalia, California
Ending Destination GPS: N: 36° 19.577’ W: 119° 20.700’
Miles Driven: 248
Distance Walked: 3.1 miles
Seen - Carl’s Favorite Tee Shirt Slogan: Support your local Search and Rescue… Get Lost!

Investigating…

We accomplished the first two items on our list without any difficulties; then moved on towards Yosemite. We stopped along the way to investigate several things we had seen on other trips - the Suspension Bridge over the Merced River into campgrounds for the State Park, the track on the other side of the river that looked like a road (we decided it was the old railway line), the more precarious suspension transportation system someone had rigged up over the river (aka a flying fox), the engineering behind the two new temporary bridges for the road re-route, and several information boards along the road… It is amazing what information these signs impart - that we were looking at the oldest rocks in the Yosemite region, and the history of people who first settled in the area. However satisfying it was to have our questions resolved, we decided that sometimes it is just better to speculate!!

Yosemite - Just a Few More Things to see in the Valley

We finally made it to the park! However, we were still in investigation “mode,” we stopped to… Look more closely at some of the boulders in the river—did you know that some of the granite has bigger pieces of another older rock type entrained within it? Take a picture of the “Height Check” rock, a big boulder that rests over the road—there is a height restriction on the road due to the entry arch (other boulders that create an archway that cars need to pass through to get into the park), thus this rock has not been removed. Check out some informational signs that we had missed—and in the process view the stone bridge. Admire the color—we continue to be amazed at all the fall colors we have seen on our trip, in Yosemite the color is predominantly yellow, but the color is not just “yellow” when the sun shines directly on the leaves! Look for more climbers on El Capitan—we found 2 or 3 more sets, oops that was only 2, we mistook some rocks for climbers!! By this stage we were almost all the way into the valley - so we took some time to check around about the tip to Maria’s hiking pole… she had lost it on the trip up to Half Dome. Amazingly, someone had found it, picked it up hoping to find the person who lost it, set it down somewhere along the trail then found the person who lost it—Maria! He said he would collect it on his way down and then leave it at the registration desk - well we checked them all and no point! Our last item of business was Bridalveil Falls… we negotiated the one way roads, stopped in the parking lot and walked out to the Falls along the nice new asphalt path , which certainly made the walk easier. Again we wondered just how much water must come down the falls in the spring, it looked good, but with all the extra water it must be spectacular!!

Yosemite, a Different View

We stopped briefly at the tunnel viewpoint to see how the photos would turn out with different lighting and then it was on to Glacier Point. Glacier Point is one of those views of Yosemite that everyone recognizes… We certainly did when we got there after the 16 mile trek - thankfully the road was paved as it got a little hairy in places negotiating the turns, the trees and the other drivers. From Glacier Point you can look right down into the Valley - the view we imagined we would have had if we had reached the top of Half Dome! You are really not all that far from the end of the Valley just a few thousand feet higher! We enjoyed the view, but we really liked the view of the area we had hiked the day before—we found the path, the waterfalls, the notch we climbed through and the approach to the rock through the trees… It was a little surreal to see most of the route laid out in front of you like a picture!!

Fire…

One of the things that the National Park Service has been very careful to do is to explain the costs and benefits of fire within the National Parks. Everyone would like to be able to come to the park and see a pristine view, but this is not really realistic… So we have seen informational signs, leaflets and glossy brochures about the affects of fire - how it is part of the evolutionary cycle and needed by the ecosystem. It is one thing to read all about it, another to see it up-close-and-personal!! Along the route to the South Entrance to the Park we saw lots of fire related items—the area of the park that had been totally burnt in the 1970’s and was re-growing, signs indicating that the fire you see in the distance is a controlled burn (and do not report), piles of undergrowth that had been cleared ready to be burnt, these same piles after burning, and fire crews cleaning up after a burn, and the actual fires - still smoldering!

Our last stop in the park was Mariposa Grove, where there were some big Sequoia Trees - when we stopped in the parking lot to investigate the trails we found some of them were closed due to controlled burns, and then we noticed the smell in the air, the charred ground, the lack of undergrowth and the smoke… But the trail we wanted to take was open, so we set off! It was getting dark so we didn’t take the whole trail, but we did manage to see and learn some interesting things.

Did you know? The Sequoias can grow so big and tall, but their roots only penetrate up-to 18 inches into the soil. The wood is fragile and brittle so that when the trees fall they shatter - this posed a problem for loggers, who had to cut the trees down in sections. Trees tend to grow in groups as new trees are most often generated from the roots of existing trees - thus you can find trees that look like Siamese Twins or even Triplets! That the tree can still survive, even when the trunk has been carved out for wagons to travel through - this was done to one of the trees in the grove during the 1800’s and the tree is still alive today!

By the time we had learnt all this it was really getting too dark to take photo’s, but it wasn’t too dark to see flames… Yes, flames! The “controlled” burn was obviously still burning and we couldn’t see anyone around who was doing the controlling!!

Where is Squaw Valley? - Finding a Bed for the Night!

After all our investigations it was time to find somewhere to stay… We wanted to be relatively close to our next destination - Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks… So we headed south towards Fresno, passing along the way what by now seems the obligatory hotels and other sundry businesses that congregate as close as they can outside the park entrance. Our thought process was that we would find a hotel on the other side of Fresno so we didn’t have to negotiate traffic in the morning - this was a good plan, except that we couldn’t find any accommodation… So we looked at the map and there seemed to be a few small towns along the way - surely they would have accommodation. We kept on driving, the road started going up, the lights started getting dimmer and the little towns were practically non-existent… One of the towns on the map was Squaw Valley - we looked at each other and said, wasn’t that where the Olympics were some time in the 1960’s? Surely there will be accommodation there! But when we got there, all we saw was a gas station, pizza restaurant, the library, a small motel and the fire station… Where was the rest of the town? It was too dark to tell, so we investigated the Motel—no vacancy and then detoured to the nearest large town… Over 20 miles away!

Carl’s Travel Trivia

Yesterday’s Answer:
Today’s Question: Identify another word that uses all of the vowels - like Sequoia, bonus points to the person who finds the word with the least number of letters!!

Say Goodbye to Yosemite...