Category Archives: roadtrip

national park, roadtrip, snow, travel, USA

Yosemite

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We’d started to hear over the previous few days that due to the huge winter snowfall & the very late spring, the rivers in Yosemite National Park are running very high. Consequently, the waterfalls were supposed to be spectacular. As we drove towards the park, we noticed easily that the Merced River (this river flows out of the Yosemite Valley) was high & in many places nothing but a raging torrent.

Our first big stop in the park was after eventually getting a park to walk the short distance to Bridalveil Falls. Seeing quite a few people returning rather drenched, I grabbed my rainjacket out of the car & wandered up. From a distance, the fall looked like this – you can see part of the spray cloud at the bottom.

Not far up the short trail, the river started to overrun the trail – being recently melted snow this was pretty chilly through flip-flops/jandals. At the viewing point the spray was so intense I was quickly quite wet (glad I put my jacket on) & could only just see the top of the falls.

Yosemite Falls & a flooded meadow & boardwalk.

We rode the shuttle bus around a bit further & walked up to see more waterfalls – this time Vernall Falls. The Merced was still thundering down this narrow steep part – the noise was fantastic. The nice wide trail was paved, but steep in parts. The final staircase was another path to a sound drenching & the view was somewhat obscured by a dead tree trunk.

After lunching near Vernall Falls, we returned to the valley floor & did the nice easy Mirror Lake walk underneath Half Dome. The highlight of this was the bear cub that came wandering along on the way back. Rather it ran along & then bolted across the trail. Mama Bear was nowhere to be seen, so that was great news.

The shuttle still doesn’t cope well with the gongshow that is summer in Yosemite, but we eventually got to the bottom of Yosemite Falls (the fifth highest in the world).

That was pretty much our day in Yosemite Valley. I enjoyed my visit so much more this time – the tremendous volume of water flowing & the sound associated with it was incredible.

Packing up in Merced we again headed for Yosemite – this time to drive over Tioga Pass & then head north through Nevada to South Lake Tahoe (which is back in California, but only just). Our only real break from driving was walking to Tuolumne Grove (giant sequoias). The largest living things on earth (by volume), it goes without saying that these things are pretty big – they can get old too, up to three-thousand years. This is a hollowed out trunk of a long-ago dead one to give a sense of size.

Almost immediately after leaving the grove, we started to come across more & more snow. The views along the road were beautiful with snow still capping the high points – it was well gone last time I drove this road.

Still a little bit of snow at Tioga Pass (just under 10000ft/2900m):

Out of the park, we lost elevation a lot quicker than we’d gained it & were soon driving north through west Nevada. I was surprised to see the scenery gradually change into nice green pastoral land – I’d never expected to see black-faced sheep grazing in Nevada. I’m well pleased to be travelling roads I’ve never been on before.  With a big climb up & then down, we were at Lake Tahoe in no time.

engineering, roadtrip, travel, USA

Lick Observatory

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Since we’re well over the idea of big driving days, we let Kristy & Joel head off north towards Napa Valley. Our route towards Yosemite was much more direct. I’d spied a solitary road in the atlas that headed east from San Jose. It looked much better than sitting on the freeway so we headed up into the hills. Another great twisty road that just climbed & climbed, we eventually made it to Mt Hamilton & California University’s Lick Observatory. This was another one of those great discoveries on the side of the road we were traveling.

At the bequest of the man whose name the observatory bears (too rich, wanted something by which the world would remember him by), the best telescope in the world was built. He died before it was completed in 1888 – with a 36 inch lens, it was the largest refracting telescope in the world at the time & is still number three. It was handed over to California University upon completion & they have many more telescopes built up there.

There is also a 120 inch reflecting telescope built in the sixties – the lens took four years to bring up to standard by grinding & polishing. Leaving the boffins behind (actually I don’t think there were many there – most of the viewing is done remotely now) it was another fifty miles of driving down the twisty roads through trees that slowly gave way to ranches & then to grass covered hills – all very scenic.

As soon as we crossed under I-5 we were on the valley floor (a very wide one) & into intensive agriculture & horticulture land. It also got stinking hot – probably the first time this trip that the temperature for us has gone through 40ºC & 100ºF (we’ve been very fortunate). We had a couple of nights booked in Merced, as it far enough away from Yosemite to be well-priced & not booked out, but not too far away to prohibit a day trip there.

For the second half of the day’s driving I’d begun to feel the effects of a tank of nasty gas on the engine. Under-powered & stuttering, it was a little weird driving – but it turned even stranger the following day. Short of gas the previous day I’d somehow ended up at a gas station that only had 87-octane (yes, they sell such rubbish on this continent) – this must have been particularly bad, as I haven’t had a problem before. Back on my preferred 91 (the highest grade you can usually find), the car is back to normal. While I’m writing about boring car things: I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime before we reached San Diego I noticed that there are hardly any pick-ups or minivans on the roads here. Maybe it’s been a gradual decline since leaving Alberta, or maybe there was a step-change around Colorado or Arizona – but there’s many more cars & small SUVs around here. Gas is a little more expensive in California (particularly in the cities), but not exceptionally so.

city, friends, history, roadtrip, travel, USA, vehicles

Alcatraz

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Tuesday was another day on the waterfront in San Francisco. After a completely avoidable & regrettable communication breakdown, we met Kristy & Joel just in time to get on our booked 9.30 ferry to the Rock. Strangely, the Bay area had served up a consecutive fantastic day & it was a most pleasant short ferry ride out to Alcatraz. A very popular place to visit, I didn’t find it too crowded to get a good look around. It’s an odd island – such a beautiful setting in the gateway to the San Francisco bay with great views all around on such a day, plenty of flowers that you wouldn’t expect & a lot of birdlife (no predators). All this is contrasted markedly with it really just being a big, mostly desolate, rock with a huge old crumbling relic of a prison sitting on top.

With its history of being an army fort guarding the bay, then an army prison, then a federal penitentiary before the site of an Indian occupation & finally becoming part of the National Park system, I was fascinated. Of course, the biggest focus of the island today is the former maximum security cell block – the audio tour (the first I’ve done this trip) voiced by former guards & inmates is really well done. The cells, except solitary confinement for some reason, were smaller than I expected. It seemed as though life there was for the most part rather routine & quiet, with good meals & hot showers (so prisoners wouldn’t get acclimatized to cold water & think a swim across the bay was a good idea). Still, with the city tantalizingly close it must have been torture. The 1946 riot & various escape attempts were well detailed, as was life on the island for the children of the wardens.

Back on the mainland, we enjoyed a nice long lunch of clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls on Fisherman’s Wharf catching up about roadtrips & life in Canmore. Leaving Joel & Kristy to explore Pier 39 we headed back to the historic ships that we didn’t get the chance to wander around on Saturday. The Eureka was a big old wooden-hulled (one of the largest left) ferry from the days before the big bridges around the Bay Area. It reminded me a lot of one I went on in San Diego two years ago – there was nice little collection of old vehicles on it too. I found the most interesting to be the Balclutha – a big old three-masted sailing ship that plied quite a few different routes over its long life – curiously it used to take a lot of Californian Douglis fir to Australia for the construction of the Broken Hill mines (there’s a tenuous link to my old job at Bluescope Steel there somewhere). There was a neat little old red tug tied up – reminded me of Little Golden Books for some reason. Leaving Joel & Kristy to explore the city a little more, we returned to the hotel to do a few errands before we met for dinner.

bikes, engineering, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

Golden Gate, China Camp & Pt Reyes

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As Marin County is considered by some to be the birthplace of modern mountain-biking I was keen to hit a ride in the area. But I couldn’t find any that really grabbed me as must-do, so I opted for a loop in China Camp State Park – near San Rafael. First that meant crossing the Golden Gate Bridge & stopping for Valerie to get a closer look & walk to the middle. I didn’t mind – it really is one of the most beautiful bridges in the world & possibly my favourite after Tower Bridge in London. I love its size, simplicity & elegance. This time we didn’t get to see it with the towers peaking up through a layer of Bay Area fog as it was a gloriously sunny day, with a nice breeze as you got out onto the bridge.

The China Camp area is so called as it was home to a large settlement of Chinese shrimpers at the end of the nineteenth century. There are still some remains of the buildings they used & some brief exhibits detailing the history of the fishing in the area. With just a light occasional breeze, as I set out on my ride it was the warmest I’d been for a while. But that wasn’t too much of a problem as the first half of the loop remained generally level as it traversed the bay just above the road. A big wide smooth trail, it was the least technical I had rode in a while & it was good fun with great views out towards the sun covered bay. At the far end of the loop, the trail hooked inland & climbed gently up to the ridge. Doing so, it became more thickly wooded (the odd stand of redwoods) & nice & cool in the trees. Wildlife sightings of note for the ride were a big family of turkeys, a large coyote & a grey squirrel (who got the fright of his life as I came around the corner). Along the ridge & back down to China Camp was pleasant, although the views were never as good as they should have been with all the trees in the way.

As Joel & Kristy were supposed to be driving down the coast we drove across to Olema to meet them. While we were waiting, we popped into the Pt Reyes National Seashore area to have a look. As I remember, the peninsula has been slowly moving up the coast of California on the back of the San Andreas fault. We walked around short loop learning about the fault & the 1906 San Fran earthquake & fire – at one place we saw where a fence had been split in two & the two halves were now running along parallel lines, but sixteen feet apart. It was a long & windy drive out to the Pt Reyes lighthouse (set low on the rocks to stay under the fog) past numerous old cattle ranches. At the point we had to walk a fair way in a howling gale to see the lighthouse from well above – a pretty desolate area, but we had the time to burn.

We ate in Olema waiting & then gave up waiting & headed back to San Fran – on the tortuous & slow Highway 1. As it is not far off Route 101 & there was little traffic at the late hour, it was a perfect opportunity to drive up Lombard St & then down the famous crooked part. I think just getting up to top was the biggest challenge – those are some steep streets. That in itself is not so bad as the car could (just) make it up in second gear, but at every intersection is a four-way stop. That meant a lot of very steep hill starts, & the handbrake on my car has a long grab before engaging just to make it interesting (“we’ll have a shilling on the side”). Back to the motel eventually exhausted from the driving, the ride & the worst hayfever I’ve had in who-knows-how-long.