Mysterious, Cozy, Opulent, Holy

Hooray for adventuring and seeing new sites and new places.  I had some comp time and decided to use it before my season ended in Yosemite.  I started my journey in San Jose at the Winchester Mystery House.  Mrs. Winchester was the definition of eccentric.  She started with an unfinished eight room farm house and continued to build, 24 hours a day, until the day she died.

The house has doors that open to brick walls, stairs that go up to the ceiling, and a whole complicated maze of rooms and halls.  She simply added on to what she had, then added on to that, then added on to that.  Absolutely fascinating. 

A door that leads to nowhere.

The gardens and grounds were immaculate and I especially enjoyed all the rose bushes.

I left San Jose and traveled south to Pinnacles National Park.  It had been cloudy and rainy all day.  I was able to get my tent set up and eat dinner before it started to really rain.  Thankfully, the interior of my tent stayed dry all night and I was warm and cozy.

As usual, I did not have near enough time to hike and see everything I wanted to see.  The park is beautiful and a place I will definitely return to.

My next stop was Heart Castle in San Simeon on the coast.  It was so exciting, traveling west, to come to the top of a hill and see the Pacific Ocean shimmering below.  Enough people who come to Scotty's Castle in Death Valley ask about Hearst Castle and I thought it high time I check it out.

What an opulent place.  Over the top.  To the point of being ridiculous.

The indoor swimming pool.

The whole complex is high on a hill over looking the Pacific.

Hearst had more money than he knew what to do with.  One of his hobbies was collecting animals for his zoo.  The picture below has a small herd of zebras, remnants of that zoo.

Ah, the beautiful Pacific coastline.

I stayed my second night in Fresno and early the next morning attended the Fresno Temple. 

As most of my trips seem, it was fast and furious.  I got back to Yosemite in time to pack up my room, work my last few days, and check out.  I'll be spending my winter once more in Death Valley.  Fellow adventurers always welcome.

Winner 2014

For the third year in a row I participated in the National Novel Writing Month.  It was, as always, a crazy ride.   Here's to 50184 words in 30 days!

Fall in Yosemite

I was fortunate to watch the fall colors start to peak out in the valley in October.  It was lovely.  Each time I drove in I would wish I had my camera.  I finally went up on one of my weekends to take photos of the fall colors, but it was a bit past the prime for the the valley.  It had also rained recently and there were more colorful leaves on the ground than on the trees.  I was still able to get a picture.  This is the Merced River looking east, on the west end of the valley.

I ended up getting some better photos right around my neighborhood.  I loved watching this tree, just up the street from my house, turn pink.  Lovely.

When I left, this tree was bright red and orange.  This is near the soccer fields and the elementary school.  I wish I'd gotten one last photo of this tree in all its brilliance.

My pink tree again.  The street sign is for my street.  Coming home, I would always see this tree before turning towards my house.

No fall colors here, but this is the view of the mountains outside my house.

I am so thankful that I was able to call this beautiful place home for the last six months.

Attempted Last Hike

My time in Yosemite is quickly drawing to an end.  My schedule the last month and a half has been completely filled with a project dealing with approach trails for El Capitan.  There were no established trails to reach the base of the wall but instead of prolific system of braided social trails.  A project was done two years ago to determine use and with that information, restoration and trail crews covered up the existing system and created a single approach trail, respectively.  What we did this year was repeat that survey to determine the effectiveness of the restoration and trail work.  Now that all the field data has been gathered, I'm back to a normal schedule (getting days off again!) and in the office getting all the data entered.

I had Veteran's Day off and decided I needed to take one last hike in the park.  I've been wanting to hike a dome called Clouds Rest all season and decided it was now or never.

The day was beautiful.  Couldn't have asked for better weather.  The views from the trail were awesome.

I love the mixture of granite and conifer.  Lovely.  (And yes, those white patches in the foreground are snow.)

Words of encouragement: I believe that you can make it! Love.

Even with those words of encouragement, I couldn't make it.  I was about four miles in when I hit snow for real.  I hiked a little on it, but with the warming/freezing cycles that area had been experiencing the last week, there were places it was very, very slippery.  After a few slipping close calls, I decided I didn't need a broken leg and reluctantly turned around.

Perhaps Clouds Rest is meant to be conquered next summer.  Always looking for a hiking buddy, anyone else interested?

Please Stand By

My life for the past month and a half has been consumed by this rock.  It is El Capitan.

Please be patient with me and my lack of posts until this project is over.

Family Visit

My parents were able to come out to visit for an extended weekend.  Since they flew into Oakland and rented a car, I took the train to the airport to meet them so we weren't driving two cars back to the park.  The train ride was quite the experience; I was rather taken with it and will be repeating it again shortly.

 

Our first stop was the Oakland Temple.  My parents were married here 37 years ago.  What a wonderful experience to listen to their stories and see them remember places from when they lived in the Bay Area.

Monday we headed into the park for an all day exploring/hiking/site-seeing expedition extraordinaire.

I've been here a little over four months now and finally got my picture at the entrance sign.

We headed up to the Tuolumne area.  On the way we stopped at Olmstead Point and got a good view of Half Dome.

A quick stop to admire Tenaya Lake.

Since we were in Yosemite, it was requisite that we hike a dome.  We hiked to the top of Pothole Dome and enjoyed the view of Tuloumne Meadow, the Tuolumne River, Cathedral Peak, and all the lovely scenery.  My dad was especially intrigued by the granite.

We then hiked part of the way to Glen Aulin.  The weather was perfect, the scenery beautiful, and the company wonderful.

Tuesday morning we did a quick tour of Yosemite Valley.  We stopped at Tunnel view, went to the Visitor Center, and watched one of the park films.

It was fast and furious and we missed having Adam with us, but I feel so very blessed to have a wonderful relationship with my parents and that they have the means and the health to come visit.

Stock Trip

I got back from Tuolumne, had a two day weekend, went into the office Monday, had a very fast briefing, and was off again.  This time, monitoring stock behavior and evaluating stock campsites.  Six days, five nights, and approximately 60 miles just on the trail.  Awesome.

Our route inside the park, from Hetch Hetchy to Dorothy Lake and Dorothy Pass.

We started bright and early Tuesday morning, the 12th, at Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.  What a beautiful place.  The valley now under water was one of John Muir's favorites and I'm curious to see some historic photos.  Still an impressive site.

One of our first stops in Beehive Meadow.  Our team included Wes (archaeologist), Tim (trip leader, hydrologist), me (social scientist), and Joy (botanist) who is taking the picture.  Looking fresh and clean, if a bit sweaty, day one.

We hiked the first day to Lake Vernon.  A beautiful place up in the mountains.  There was a cabin we could use for food preparation and it was handy to have a table.  We still pitched our tents and slept out.

There was also one of these, a composting latrine.  After our stay here, I dug a lot of holes.

The reason for the trip.  Yosemite has a long tradition of using pack animals to carry loads into the wilderness areas.  The park is approximately 95% wilderness, and that's capital 'W', where there are different rules and regulations about what can and can't happen.  We were monitoring the behavior of the stock when they were turned loose at night, tracking their movement over night, and evaluating current stock campsites for resource impacts and looking for alternative sites if deemed necessary.

Here we are at our campsite at Lake Vernon.  Tim and I were trying desperately to get the blue tooth to work with our GPS units.  I have a signal booster on my back to improve accuracy of our GPS mapping, but we couldn't get it to work and ended up not using it at all during the trip.

One of the mules, Major, sporting his yellow GPS tracking device on his halter.  Janice is looking on, knowing she's going to get one next.

The next day we headed for Paradise Meadow.  We took a short cut up and over this crazy terrain in order to cut the hiking miles.  The view was awesome.

Almost to the top.  Come on little calf muscles, you can do it!

We spent Wednesday night in Paradise Meadow.  A great big open place with plenty of forage for the stock.  Here I am giving DC, my personal favorite, a scratch on the ears.

After Paradise, we hit a few sites along the trail.  One was Lake Wilma.  There was a cabin here to, but we didn't stay the night here.

Lake Wilma.  On some maps it's labeled Wilmer.

We pressed on to Tilden, our stop Thursday night.  We were running late and the sun was setting fast when we finally got to Tilden Lake.  Joy got this awesome shot of Tim, Wes, and me.

Lake Tilden is really long, almost three miles.  It is beautiful.  We had a great campsite close to the lake.

Sun setting over Tilden Lake

The next morning we set off following the stock hoof prints, trying to determine where they went during the night.  Since we'd gotten into camp so late, we didn't have time to do our usual hour of monitoring behavior, though the stock did have their units on overnight.  We stumbled upon this small hidden meadow and I instantly fell in love with it.

We wandered around in that area quite a bit.  Tim showcasing his mad radio skills.

Again, the reason for the trip.  We had a string of seven, 2 horses and 5 mules.  I became rather attached and miss them already.

Russ was our backcountry ranger and mule packer extraordinaire!

Stopped mid-day along the trail.  We have Harley, DC (my favorite), Copenhagen, Candice and Janice, Willie, and Major.  The two boys at the end of the string took turns carrying the most weight.  Those mules are tough.

Friday night found us in Grace Meadow.  It was a long meadow and really pretty.  It was a cold night and some gastric distress made for a poor night's sleep.  I was really tired as we tromped around the meadow the next day. Thankfully it was a short hike to our campsite.

When we found mushrooms, Joy was all about taking pictures.  This is day five, a slightly more dirty Kate, holding a bitter bolete mushroom.  Edible, but very bitter so I put it back.  I tried some new mushrooms during this trip.  All were quite tasty.

Saturday night was spent at Dorothy Lake.  Probably my most favorite place of the trip.  The lake was absolutely beautiful.

 A view from our campsite.

Sunday we did our last site inventories, bid Russ and the string goodbye (they were coming out at Tuolumne) and we hiked out.  It was a long day of hiking.  At the north end of Dorothy Lake we left Yosemite...

 ...and entered the Hoover Wilderness on US Forest Service land.

This was our hike from Dorothy Lake at the northern tip of Yosemite to Leavitt Meadows trail head just off California HW 108, or Sonora Pass.  These are seven minute topos.  Google maps pedometer estimates the trail from Dorothy Pass to Leavitt Meadows trail head is about 14 miles.  Our route is in green.

The views were spectacular though.

Near the end, there were two lakes, Roosevelt and Lane.  Beautiful.  It was very tempting to jump in, cool and rinse off a bit, but we still had a long way to go.

 We got a little lost looking for the vehicle.  One meadow to the west of Leavitt.  Still striking.

 Unknown meadow, 6:30pm, day six, ready to be done, but still smiling.

 Another beautiful site!  The van!  Here is Joy hitching a ride home.

It was almost midnight Sunday when I finally got to my house.  Regardless of the time, I took a nice long shower.  I slept the better part of the next two days.  It was a great trip with good people.  I'm thrilled I was able to be included in it.

I would love to introduce you to the Yosemite backcountry.  Let me know if you're interested and available and we'll see what we can do!