Friday 3 May 2002:
Pioneer, California
Across the Central Valley, up the foothills, thru Volcano, on to Pioneer, starting this vacation with another family visit, Sharon & Fred are out from New Jersey looking for land, we all flitter & chitter & chatter, the usual. A weekend like this... but no pizza. Not this time, anyway. Soon...
Monday 6 May 2002:
Silver Lake, California
My first marmot sighting! [pause] That marmot back there was just hunched over at the roadside, gnawing on something, probably roadkill, didn't pay us any mind. We went on past Silver Lake, which looked like it's still frozen over... passed the avalanche zone, there's a good reason that there's no stopping [allowed] there, a CalTrans crew was out pushing rocks off the road... pulled into the Kirkwood Inn and a wonderful lunch - the inn is decorated log-cabin-style, with indian rugs and antler lights hanging on the wall, and willow furniture with indian-rug seat-cushions. Just beyond that is Caples Lake, still frozen over but the shoreline's thawing, it's *trying* to be spring up here, but it's hard at this elevation... and we just went thru Carson Pass and now we're on the dry side, boy does this have a different aspect...
When we saw the marmot we were at about 8000 feet, we had just passed the 8000 foot sign. Carson Pass I think tops out at 8600 or 8900 [actually just under 8600]. Now we're going thru beautiful Hope Valley, 7000 feet, a long gorgeous place. We headed up Hope Valley a couple years ago, up to the Blue Lakes, probably be doing that again before too long. It's great here but you can sure tell it's a lot dryer than over on the other side. Some water on the ground, but it looks like high desert with a lotta trees... Up ahead: snow.
Tuesday 7 May 2002:
Lee Vining Canyon, California
Yesterday we resupplied in Reno and Carson City, headed towards Yerington and ended up camping on the Carson River a few miles west of Ft. Churchill, very lovely place except for the traffic raising dust in the morning. So we left, headed south thru Yerington cruised around checking out this quaint western town. We thought about stopping at Wilson Canyon where the West Fork Walker River cuts thru the Copper Hills but it was a bit too dessicated. And from there down to Bridgeport, then above town to Twin Lakes, but that locale was chilly and a bit too crowded.
We hit the road again and went south over Conway Summit (over 8100 ft), looking down on Mono Lake (under 6400 ft), splendid view, and down into Lee Vining, and we're now in a campground in Lee Vining Canyon below huge masses of snow around Tioga Pass. We'll probably be here for a couple of days. We parked right above Lee Vining Creek, lovely spot: trees, views, sun, babbling water, babbling me. Looking into the creek, we see a sandbar where seagulls come and contest for possession, a turf war.
I just finished reading FRAUDS, MYTHS AND MYSTERIES: Science And Pseudoscience In Archaeology which, as the title suggests, deals with among other things, the Shroud of Turin and dowsing and psychic archaeology and ATLANTIS. Having finished that, I'm now on LOST CONTINENTS: The Atlantis Theme In History, Science, And Literature. (I'm hoping to dig up more material on Atlantis, lost continents, lost civilizations, lost races, that whole schtick. I'll do a few more Web pages on those, or expand what I have.) Then I'll get back to Karen Anderson's THE BATTLE FOR GOD, which is a history of fundamentalism. In FRAUDS, MYTHS AND MYSTERIES the author suggests that like the Ghost Dance, New Ageism is a form of fundamentalism, revivalism, trying to deal with tensions that cause cultural destruction by looking back to an ideal Golden Age. Good luck. (Which suggests that I do a page on Golden Ages. The Golden Age Game, or Golden Ages For Morons.)
Wednesday 8 May 2002:
Lee Vining Canyon, California
11:00 in the morning, still camped at Lee Vining Creek (7000 ft). The creek's flowing by, it was a bit nippy last night, probably below freezing. There's ice on twigs hanging off of branches over the creek. Up above, there's that big snowy mass. I look at the map, I see it's Mt. Dana (over 13000 ft) and just to its right is Tioga Pass (just under 10000 ft), I can't quite see the pass from here. We'll have to go into town today or tomorrow to mail something. Possibly on the way back we might drive a little further up the pass road. The road will be closed at or near the Yosemite park boundary, but we might go up another couple thousand feet in elevation, see what real winter looks like. Then head back here and try to clear out noses some more. Oh yeah, the state song of Nevada is {long deep snort}.
The creek runs right along the north face of a huge lateral moraine coming down from Mt. Dana, showing more of the glacial aspect of the area. It's a pinyon-juniper woodland and black sage scrub environment, but that's obvious from any ecological map.
In my readings of Lost Continents and Lost Civilizations, I'm accumulating quite a list of study items. In my Lost Continents web pages, I'll probably want to have a separate Resource page of links to metasearches on these subjects. Be sure to include links to Amazon, to search pages that look for Lemuria, Atlantis books etc... Noting the the links, or the connexions I should say, between survivalism, NewAgeism, Atlantean theories, and fundamentalism, suggests that I also do a Fundamentalism For Morons page. Note: Also do a page on How To Be A NewAge Practitioner.
[adjacent campground details deleted]
Saturday 11 May 2002:
near Kernville California
Now we're camped a few miles up the Kern River valley from Kernville, above Lake Isabella. Yesterday -- oh, it was a long drive yesterday, that was Friday morning.
We left Lee Vining Canyon, ate a satisfying breakfast in town at Nicely's -- biscuits and gravy and Denver omelet -- then drove out on the south side of Mono Lake to Benton. We talked with a CalTrans traffic controller while crews were resurfacing the road, talked with him for a bit about the great trans-Sierra region. He spoke of having worked underground in mines in Butte, Montana. "A real tough town!" he sez.
Then we cruised south down Highway 6, down the Chalfant Valley, looked around Bishop checking out campgrounds, none of'em looked quite right. We resupplied in Bishop, headed south, none of the campgrounds down Highway 395 looked any good, mostly because there was a huge dust storm blowing Owen's Lake, blowing dust, chemicals, sand, sludge everywhere. It was awful.
We came all the way down to Highway 178, and up over Walker Pass -- the Walker Pass campground was great but full. So we ended up coming over here to Kern River canyon, stopped at an improved campground for last night. Looked around Kernville today -- there was an old car show, lots of very spiffy street rods. We came up the canyon a ways, to an informal campground at probably about 3200, 3300 feet elevation here, we're just parked in a wide spot overlooking the river, and we'll stay here for a few days until we run out of something. Yum.
Sunday 12 May 2002, Mother's Day:
near Fairview California
Now we're a few miles further up the Kern River valley/gorge north of Lake Isabella. It's about 10:00 in the morning, in this inner valley in an inner range from the coast, this is Southern Sierras, and this of year it's getting dry, this has been a dry year. Around here are pines, live oak, various large shrubs, and good-sized herbs. The grasses are all dry, some of the shrubs and herbs are still in bloom, but this is a dry, vertical, rocky country. I imagine that this is pretty much what it'd be like at a similar elevation in many inner valleys of mountains, in many Mediterranean-climate countries -- this could be, what? Peru or Chile or Spain or Italy or the former Yugoslavia or Portugal, anywhere in an inner valley, with the rocks exposed, granitic...
The river down below was a constant roar through the night -- strong winds last night too, rocking us around even though we got out of the main path of the winds, down in the pass and along the lake -- VERY very windy. Up here it's much more moderate, but still had that effect last night. Scattered wisps of cloud overhead in an otherwise blue deep sky.
Last time we were here, was what? 4, 5 years ago, a little further down the valley, We were watching a great comet go across the sky every night. The views now are not as spectacular, I went to sleep too soon, didn't see the stars, hopefully I'll stay up tonight and we'll look at stars.
Monday 13 May 2002:
morning, near Peppermint California
Now we're high above the valley, the North Fork Kern River, atop Dome Rock, elevation 7221 feet. From up here we can look 'way into the High Sierras, with snow-covered peaks damn near everywhere. Big knobby rocks all around. We're atop a big exfoliated granite boulder, with sequoias and arborvitae (incense) cedars and firs and manzanita, and all sortsa good shrubs and brush and pines and stuff all around. Whoof! Have to get back here for more of this!
So we drove up here from our camp near Fairview; turned past the Sherman Pass road up to Kennedy Meadows and Highway 395 -- closed due to snow. We kept going, went past Johnsondale. Ah, out here, we could stay here as long as we want, if we just had water, cola, and rum. And paper towels. Other than that, we're provisioned forever!
[later] Coming north out of the mountains on Highway 190 towards Porterville, going down the Middle Fork Tule River -- very steep road, VERY beautiful. Lots of waterfalls. Lots of rocks! Lots of wonderful flowering plants and shrubs and trees. A VERY steep road, very twisty road, very glad we're going in THIS direction, heading from south to north, rather than otherwise -- it'd be a REAL humper climbing up this grade, which, from Porterville, that's below 1000 feet, and the top, Ponderosa, where we stopped for coffee and paper towels, is over 7000 feet. And it does this in a not-very-great distance. I thought the west slope of the Sierras was supposded to be the GENTLE slope! Ha!
[later] So, we drove down into the Central Valley, got into smog... we didn't have to go to L.A., L.A. came to us... [It turns out that there were massive forest fires down southwards.] We went through Porterville and Lindsay into Exeter. We stopped downtown at Vallarta, an absolutely wonderful Mexican restaurant -- gotta go back, gotta go back! As we're driving out, ah, the smog is BAD, very bad... we got on Highway 245, heading up towards Kings Canyon -- we're going up that way now.
Switching the radio around, and the road is a little backroad byway, going through fields and twisting up through hills, and we're listening to the Mexican music on the radio, a public radio network all over the West coast, all accordian music on the radio, all accordians all the time. The cahuntos're playing great stuff, everything from chansons to the usual Tejana stuff. And we're wondering, what country are we in? Y'know, are we in Portugal or Spain Mexico or California, where? And we get further up in the hills here, where we are now, at maybe 3000 feet, and it almost looks like we're back in the ridges around Occidental in Sonoma County. What a wonderful drive! ...Correction: back there, we were at 4000 feet.
[later] Further notes on Exeter: A pleasant little town. I mean, if you had to live in the Central Valley, that's probably as good a place as any. A quiet town, hsppy, murals all over the place, clean, well-kept-up houses, tree-lined streets. At the Vallarta, an absolutely fabulous cheap meal, a waitress asked us at the end if we liked Spanish food and we said yes. And she said, O well I like English! And she was Hispanic!
[later] So now we're in a campground near Grant Grove, the joint area, we're booked in for a couple of nights here, we'll stomp around and look at the trees, relax, and see about going down into Kings Canyon itself in a couple days. At least, that's the current fantasy.
Tuesday 14 May 2002:
Yucca Point, Kings Canyon, California
Ah, so last night we stayed up there in Grant Grove, at the Azalea Campground. This morning we stomped around this zone, circumnavigated the immense General Grant Tree. Now we're heading down into King's Canyon itself, and this IS pretty gnarly, WOW! A big canyon, this is what Hetch Hetchy looked like before they dammed it. Right now here at Yucca Point, we're above the confluence of the South & Middle Forks, Kings River, and there's other falling water around in this dry scrubby mountainous country. Off to the east are the High Sierras, snow-covered majesty on the horizon. Too bad we only have today to see this. The air up here has been so bad, we're gonna cut out tomorrow morning early, we'll have to come back sometime after a storm when we can breathe around here, and spend quite a bit of time.
Oh, I'm gonna hold the mic up for a moment and see if I can get some of the river sounds...
[water noise] [wind noise] ...Well, river and wind, whatever... I should mention that even from higher up, like we're around 4000 feet here -- even from 5000 feet up, the river confluence a mile or more away, we can hear the water, we can see the water up the canyons and it is all white as far as you can see.
Maureen says the landscape is as gnarly as Peru -- hey, we can see all this and didn't even have to go to Cuzco! I say well no, it's all a little taller there. We'll have to go and compare, won't we? Maureen: "We'll do it a little bit at a time though, so I can get acclimated. No giant headaches!"
[later] Now we're near Road's End, near the end of the car-accessible canyon, and here it looks kinda like Yosemite with more rubble, less meadow, lotsa granite & huge trees everywhere &mdeash; Yosemite with fewer people and concessions and falls. But there're still some falls, we stopped at Grizzly Falls back there, and the Rough River Falls are ahead. We're seeing some more whitewater in the river along the valley floor here, and as we near the end of the road, we don't see as many hanging canyons off to the sides as at Yosemite. Of course, otherwise, structurally it's very similar!
Snowy mountains of the High Sierras off to the east. The trees are various long-needled pines and incense cedar, big red-barked pines, I guess those are Sugar Pines, yeah.
"NOTICE: Bears will break into cars containing food. Remove all food items from car if it is to be parked overnight. Do not leave valuables in your car ANY TIME!" Achtung!
[later] OK, we stomped up to Panorama Point, elevation 7520 feet, up above Grants Grove. We took a view off to the east over the Kings Canyons and Hume Lake and off to the High Sierra crest. Hah! Boy, it sure is spectacular out here. Maureen: "And you can see ranges of snow-capped peaks beyond what we could see from the canyon road, and look right out into the next ranges."
So it's been wonderful up here in King's Canyon Park, but the air blowing up from Fresno is just too bad. We're gonna head off, not down for the coast, but over to some more high country tomorrow. But we'll be back again by winter maybe, one end or the the other of winter.
Yeah, this is much more spectacular than we had imagined. I mean, all these years, we've just been going by -- "Oh yeah, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, yeah what's that? Yada yada..." And now we know... Maureen: "This is far out, and Yosemite is easier to get to, and Tahoe, then that's for us." Ah, it's the inaccesability here that keeps it from being jammed.
Friday 17 May 2002:
Little Jackass Camp, Madera County, California
Early Wednesday morning we decamped from Grants Grove and drove across the foothills (above Fresno & Madera) of the Kings & San Joaquin Rivers, then up the Sierra Vista Byway into the basin between Kings Canyon and Yosemite parks. We'd been in this region some years back and completed the entire loop, ending at Bass Lake (famed from biker runs); but this year, snowy roads stopped us before we reached the Beasore Basin, so we cut back to this tiny refuge high above Mammoth Pool. Yesterday & today are layabout periods, perched next to this perky creek under firs & incense cedars & an especially impressive sugar pine. Tomorrow we head down into 49er country again.
Keep working on a prospective paper (cf. the FUNDAMENTALS pamphlets): WHY TO AN OUTSIDER, XIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS APPEAR TO BE MORONS, LUNATICS, LIARS, HYPOCRITES AND THIEVES.
Meanwhile: trying to overcome terminal negativity - or am I? How long can this / I go on? When will the stresses / strains end? How?
"'Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries & for that reason to like best what they understand least." --Sir Isaac Newton
THE WHATEVER SUTRA: In the beginning was the word, or the void, or quantum energy fluctuations, or whatever. If there WAS a beginning.
And the gods or god or predetermined random processes or fate or whatever, separated whatever there was into light and dark, or matter and energy, or the seeable and the unseeable, or the knowable and the unknowable, or reality and fantasy, or whatever.
And processes were started or evolved or happened or whatever, that may or may not continue into the present day, and that may or may not be contributory to our current dilemma, the joys and pains that we experience now. If there IS a now.
And these or other processes may continue until something else happens. Or whatever.
For more on the Divine Mystery, see Before Sacraments: Rituals
Monday 20 May 2002, afternoon:
Santa Rosa, California
Back in the rental cave, back from the mountains. A stormy day, it started yesterday afternoon coming across the Central Valley -- but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Saturday morning we pulled out of Little Jackass Camp (at around 5000 feet), tried going to the other side of that basin up there, to go down to Bass Lake, but the roads were still closed with snow. But we had some beautiful high-country drives anyway. Ran into a couple 4-by-loads of kids who'd taken 3 hours to come 18 miles up thru the drifts... We returned down the Sierra Scenic Byway down to Bass Lake, then down to Highway 49 -- where we started seeing lots of bikers.
We got into Mariposa, looked thru the old town -- the Arts Council there has very nice work in their gallery. We poked around the antique and Indian arts stores but found nothing worth buying, a common occurance now. We caught the tail end of the 150th anniversary celebration in Coulterville, a bluegrass band playing on the corner, a crafts fair just tearing down, folks whooping it up all over town, country karaoke in the bar, yow.
We kept heading north on Highway 49 -- more and more bikers -- we'd thought about going to the Jumping Frog competition at Angels Camp, Calaveras County, but it was JAMMED there, and not just bikers, but LOTS of people were coming in for that. I think if we're ever going to do that we'll need to get there on a Friday, camp out at Frogtown for the weekend.
So we kept going. We decided that we had to go back up to Volcano and check the property again, make sure exactly where things are going to go. So we went Saturday night up towards Arnold to Calaveras Big Trees State Park, stayed and showered there. We had not time to look at the trees (supposed to be some fine sequoia groves there) -- we'll have to do that next time.
Sunday we drove across the grain of the Sierras, from Arnold to Avery to Sheep Ranch to Mountain Ranch to West Point to Pioneer to Volcano, to our final pace-out, then down the hill, where we got caught in big storms going across the Central Valley. What a tiring trip!
Monday afternoon:
Back In The Cave
Finally made it back to the rental cave in Santa Rosa. Started checking thru the 1020 or 1050 emails that came in while we were gone. One was from Sharon -- she and Fred bought that 72 acres off the end of Sugar Pine Drive. She said there's a summer waterfall and swimming hole there, so I guess we won't need a doughboy. Another email from a film student in Seattle who's doing a documentary on DB Cooper and came across my lyrics on the Web, might want to use them in the documentary. I gave him a call and an email, and I'll see what happens...
Ooh, a beautiful red MiniCooper, cherried out, just went by. Well this weekend besides seeing an awful lot of bikes, there were also an awful lot of fine old cars and car shows in various places: oldsters & roadsters & rods & mods, lotsa fine hardware!
So anyway, now we get a break for a day. Then tomorrow afternoon I get to put together another load, drive it up to Volcano on Wednesday, meet with the contractors, tell'em exactly where to slash 'n' burn, er, cut 'n' slash 'n' build. So hopefully they'll actually start the ground preparations next week. And the house, which is already being constructed at that factory near Sacramento, will have someplace to go when it's done. So we might actually be moving in a couple months. Moving again. Final move, hopefully.
So, what'd we get out of this little vacation? A couple weeks, lotsa driving, too much bad air -- we should've headed north instead of south in the Sierras. (Well let's see, from Grants Grove I got to call me Mum a week ago, the day after Mother's Day.) We didn't bring home nearly the usual load of souvenirs - I got a little dish with a world map, and a plastic armadillo, and we got a couple books including the MARIA: POTTER OF SAN ILDEFONSO book, and a first edition of CROSS CREEK. We did a fair amount of reading, put on 1700 miles or thereabouts altogether, and decided that it's getting to be about time to trade in the RV, get one with better features: a better layout; all the goodies installed; REAL door catches and wood, none of this Fleetwood crap. (NOTE: insert specifications here) Of course, this depends on those Hans Bol prints being worth something...
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