Dear Colby,
Well Emily and I were not successful at summiting Whitney
yesterday. The storm that turned us around on the mountain is also detouring
our drive from Lone Pine to Yosemite. It dumped enough to close pretty much all
the northern passes through the Sierras. Think an I-70 closure. It turned our
3.5 hour drive into a boring 6 hour drive.
This shouldn’t have been a surprise to us considering we
woke up to a drizzling snowing mess. Wanting to get off the mountain as quick
as possible, we chose to delay breakfast until the visitor center in Lone Pine,
which is at the bottom of the valley. We hoped it would be dry. It wasn’t.
Putting away the tent was a struggle. Both our hands were wet and numb, making
cramming the soaking wet fly into the bag nearly impossible. We drove down off
the mountain with the heat blasting.
At the visitor center, we returned our pretty much clean
bear canister. It checked out. There we learned all passes were closed and we would
have to drive down to Bakersfield, south of the storm and the Sierras. We also
learned that the gas station in Lone Pine was our only option at $4.39/gallon
cash. Many stations here have a dumb policy of charging $0.10 less/gallon for
cash transactions. I get that credit card fees are high, but it isn’t like I’m
only buying $3 worth of gas. Enough about that.
Emily and I hastily made tea and an omelet on the picnic
table in the entrance to the visitor center since it was somewhat sheltered
from the wind. It was not sheltered form the confounded stares of tourists. At
this point we were too cold and hungry to care. We put $20 in at the much
overpriced Chevron, where to her delight, Emily discovered free coffee. I chose
not to mention this was covered by the mark up.
As we drove south to go north, Emily remarked about a plane
towing a glider. It was actually a B-2 in formation, but I was glad she pointed
it out. We had heard many flyovers in the past few days so it was nice to see
the planes. On the drive into Bakersfield we encountered heavy rain and a
plethora of Joshua trees and windmills. The Mormon settlers thought that the
Yucca looked like the Biblical Joshua guiding his flock. Can you see it?
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| Joshua trees |
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| A wind farm |
We topped off the tank in Bakersfield. I discovered “movies
in your mind” a sort of audio book for truckers, with somewhat risqué covers on
the boxes. We didn’t purchase any.
As we finally drove north with the Sierras to the east, the sky cleared.
We passed numerous orchards growing grapes, cherries, oranges, and many other
fruits. Sierra Gold almonds were quite popular. We passed the massive Halo
Clementine boxing plant. Quite regularly, we saw signs concerning the lack of
water, both billboards saying “No water = no jobs” and large dust devils.
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| A dust devil |
Once outside of Fresno, the road narrowed and began to wind
as we headed towards Yosemite. Emily really wanted to rent jet skis on Bass
Lake, but we had Giant Sequoias to see. With the road becoming more winding,
Emily took over driving duties to minimize carsickness. A few unwanted drops of
rain hit the windshield before we stopped to take a picture by the sign.
Our first stop inside the park was the Mariposa Grove of
Giant Sequoias. We were definitely in Yosemite, the parking lot was a zoo! It
was funny to hear tourists complain about the altitude of 5000’ when we had
just returned from about twice that high. One man determined the age of a giant
downed tree to be about 200 years old after counting 57 rings and getting to
well less than a quarter of the radius. We stopped to take pictures by the
Grizzly Giant, the largest Sequoia in the park and jumping pictures within the
California tunnel tree. We chose to take a slightly longer loop back and
managed to avoid the crowds.
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| In the sequoia grove |
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| Two grizzly giants |
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| Jumping in a tree! |
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| Tree hugger... |
As we drove into the campground, we were warned specifically
about speeding and bear proof food storage along with fire safety and hammock
use. Emily took the speeding warning to heart and we poked to the campsite. We
decided to attempt a campfire. I’m not sure this was worth the effort of fanning
the fire to burn a few damp sticks. Emily used the hammer to remove the charred
bark from a large stump. Once dry, this burned quite well. If only we had a
hatchet. We managed a few s’mores, so I’d still call it a success.
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| Aidan... |
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| The campsite! |
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| Making dinner. YUM! |
I hope things are going well for you. We will have to go on
some weekend adventures in Colorado while I hunt for jobs. Hopefully I find
one, but not too quickly.
Take care,
Aidan
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