This is part 4 of the Yosemite story. After finishing up at Bodie, grabbing some caches on the way south, we took a road north of Mono Lake and drove into Nevada, mainly to say that we did and grab a cache in another county in Nevada. By the time we were done, it was getting late enough that we knew that we needed to find a campsite to spend the night, so we drove to Lee Vining to find a place to eat.
Ate dinner, might have had a beer with dinner, but I doubt it at that point, it was probably closer to Dr. Pepper or Tea, just to give us a caffeine rush to make it to the campsite, but I do know we both had chili, so we did get some beans that evening. I think we tried three campsites along the Tioga road leading into Yosemite from the east side before we found a place that had open sites. Interestingly, all three places we camped at on this trip had just opened the day we go there, so we got incredibly lucky.
The following morning, we broke camp and headed into Yosemite National Park, hoping to get there earlier enough to get Craig his hike through on the first day of his trip. Caching along the road netted us half a dozen or so caches just outside the park and then we hit the Tioga Pass entrance station and then drove down to the ranger station at Tuolumne Meadows. As we were passing the Tuolumne Meadows campground, I mentioned to Craig that it appeared as if the campground had sites, so we pulled in and inquired about camping. The campground had just opened up and we were about the 6th group to grab a site.
For the most part, everything seemed to go really well for us that day. Craig got his exemption and his permit for his hike and then we spent most of the rest of the day grabbing virtual geocaches along the road into Yosemite Valley. We also documented some benchmarks. Benchmarks are basically survey disks that you can also log at Geocaching.com. We found one at the entrance to the Wawona tunnel and another one in the back patio area of the Ahwahnee Hotel. Yosemite has some interesting benchmarks and I was eager to find one that I knew about up on Sentinel Dome, but that would have to wait until the next day.
Driving back to the campground, we spotted a bear, but didn't get very close to it and it had taken off by the time we could find a place to park and get closer to it. That was kind of disappointing, as Craig had seen it, but I had been driving and hadn't. At camp, we met a woman camping next to us from Fresno and we shared a campfire. Company was good and we slept well that night, which really worked out nicely for Craig as he had a big day the next day. Camping in Tuolumne Meadows was a bonus because we were camping at altitude, so he wouldn't have to adjust as much the next night.
The following day, we drove down to the valley and caught the shuttle bus back to Happy Isles where Craig would begin his 211 mile hike to the top of Mt. Whitney. I hiked with him up to the Vernal Fall bridge, then bid him farewell and watched him walk away. Part of me would have liked to have gone, but most of me knew that I was in no kind of shape to make that kind of hike. Perhaps in a couple of years down the road. I know I in much better shape already.
After that, I enjoyed the view of the waterfall, then started my hike down the trail and back into the valley. I came around a bend of a trail and there was a crowd of people standing at the side of the trail looking down to the Merced River. Figuring it was probably a deer down by the water, I started to make my way by, but something stopped me and told me to look. Yep. A mother and cub just hanging out down by the water side. Interestingly, Craig was required to carry all of his food in a "bear proof" canister and never saw a bear on his entire trek. Five minutes after I'd left him, I saw not one, but two bears. This was also the first time I'd seen a bear in Yosemite since 1969.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
To be continued...
As the title says, P. J.'s blog challenge for the month of June was Bridges. One of the bloggers who participates in this monthly challenge suggested that any of us who live in California hunt down one of the Bridges actors, Beau, or Jeff, or find Lloyd's grave and take a photo of that. Well, Lloyd was cremated and the resting place of his ashes are unknown according to Find a Grave.com, so I decided to go a different route.
1. The traditional bridge
About a week into my summer vacation I had planned to go geocaching with a couple of my friends. We ended up taking two cars mainly because one of the guys thought he might have to leave early, so we ended up meeting at a geocache entitled Bridging the Gap, where the Union Pacific Railroad tracks run under Highway 18 out in the Mojave desert.
This day was to be mostly car caching, driving from cache to cache with very little hiking involved, which ended up being a good things as the heat was getting to the point that we decided that even in the car, getting out all the time was strength sapping and we called it a day at around 1:00 in the afternoon. My friend's car, fortunately, stayed relatively cool in the shade of this bridge.
The clouds really make the scene although I'm a little perplexed to what caused the streaks in the sky, but overall, I'm very pleased with how this image turned out. And in reality, I had visions of grandeur that I would end up near San Francisco sometime this month so I could go on a bridge shooting spree, but it was not to be. This would be my only traffic bridge that I would shoot during the month.
2. The musical bridge
I've shot this particular bridge many times over the years including one other time from a different perspective for P. J.'s weekly challenge on Flicker. Our family is very musical with all of us playing or singing at one time or another during our educational years. My daughter received her college degree in violin performance. My son played the piano and my other son played the viola and sang all four years of high school in his school's top choir. My wife plays the piano, flute, guitar and clarinet, although the latter two she hasn't picked up in several decades. I sing in our church choir on Sundays.
This is my son's old viola that he obviously doesn't play anymore since he discovered he enjoyed singing so much so it sits in its case, only coming out when I want to take another photo of it. The purpose of a bridge on stringed instruments is to keep the strings off of the finger board and to transmit the vibrations of the strings to the sound board.
3. Lucy
Named after Lucille Ball, Lucy has been our pet for about 10 years now. Lucy is a California Desert Tortoise, an endangered species. I have a permit which allows me to keep her in our back yard, the only legal way to do so with endangered species.
California Desert Tortoises have been losing their habitat mostly to development. As more and more people move to California, the encroachment on their territory becomes more severe and their range continues to shrink because of it. While out geocaching, I've run across empty tortoise shells but have never seen a live one in the "wild" so I count myself fortunate, that I get to see one almost every day in the summertime as she cruises around the yard in the early morning or late afternoon when it's not too hot out.
With more and more areas in the desert being turned over to wind farming or solar gathering, not to mention housing, development by humans continues to put more pressure on the native species of tortoises. Unfortunately, domesticated species, which is what Lucy falls into, cannot be reintroduced into the wild, because the domesticated ones tend to have respiratory problems they could pass on to the wild species.
As a caretaker of Lucy, I view myself as a bridge keeping the species alive. Should desert tortoises become extinct in the wild, I may be asked to give up Lucy so that she could become involved in a breeding program to help perpetuate the species. I would gladly do that.
4. The Claremont Colleges
I live in a college town. Actually, there are five colleges, a graduate school and a school of Theology within the city limits of Claremont, California. There are two buildings on the Pomona College campus named Bridges - Big Bridges and Little Bridges. Originally, I wanted a shot of Little Bridges, a converted chapel on campus because it's where my daughter performed in her orchestra when she was in junior high and high school, but the area was cordoned off due to construction, so I wandered over to Big Bridges.
Bridges Auditorium is a memorial donated by the parents of Mabel Shaw Bridges, a student at Pomona College who died at the age of 22 in 1907. Construction of the building cost $600,000 and was completed in 1932 with a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Arthur Rodzinski. I found this billboard window outside the entrance to the auditorium and the reflection of the grounds beyond the front entrance I thought was very inspiring.
Every time I walk by this area, I am reminded of my own college and how similar these two areas look, most likely because there are many coast redwood trees around the outside of this plaza. The coast redwood tree was the dominant tree on my college campus, Humboldt State University, located in northern California.
5. The bridge to adulthood
On June 13th, my youngest son graduated from high school. It was a gloriously warm afternoon and there was a slight breeze blowing as evidenced by his tassel flowing in the wind. This is actually one of the few shots I have of him with his tassel as he ended up losing it sometime after receiving his diploma and reuniting with us after the ceremony. He didn't seem to be too concerned about it, so I'm not concerned.
This fall he'll be moving out of our house and into the dorms at UC Riverside where he'll begin his college days as a physics major. Both of his older siblings chose schools in northern California and his stated preference was far away from mom and dad too, but in the end he chose a school that was close enough that he'll be able to come home on weekends if he so chooses, although I would expect him not to do so very often. With his older siblings both graduated from college, we'll soon be crossing over that bridge to the empty nest come September.
If you click on the link to P. J.'s page at the top you'll see how other bloggers interpreted the theme of bridges for this month. I'm looking forward to next month's challenge. Hopefully it will be something where I'll be able to use some of the shots I take while we're on our camping trip.
