Yosemite

We left San Francisco this morning and traveled east toward Yosemite National Park. We used a variety of routes but mostly California 120 which starts in the middle of the Sacramento Valley and goes east across Yosemite. After leaving the cities (Oakland and Berkeley), we climbed up below sculptured hills which were dry and tan. We dipped down toward a dry brook which had green grass growing in its bed. The only green in a monochromatic world. We rode across the valley and saw a huge Holstein dairy farm. There must've been 500 heifers out in the fields. The cow barns were the largest I've ever seen and shaped just like those on the Audet farm in Vermont. Then groves and groves of almonds and walnuts, and even grapes. I saw a machine that appeared to be sweeping the ground under the trees. I later found out that to harvest these nuts, they shake the tree, use blowers to push all the fallen nuts into rows and then sweep them up. All done mechanically. As we left the Valley and started to climb some foothills and came upon the first California wind farm that we've seen. It was huge. There seemed to be two types of windmills. Those which looked like the ones in the Midwest with a single pole and large blades and the other which was supported on a three legged triangular shaped mast and had smaller blades. These had an interesting variation. It was a small rotor near the back of the head which looked very much like the rear rotor on a helicopter. Maybe has the same function which is to counter the rotational effect of the large blades. Who knows?

A little higher into the foothills we suddenly came on fields full of rocks. Like there had been an explosion and the rock from the explosion had scattered far and wide across the fields. I know that's about the opposite of what happened. These hills have eroded down to sedimentary rock which is harder than whatever was surrounding it so the rocks are showing above the dead dry grass. Some of the fields looked like headstones in a cemetery. I think the rock stands sometimes four to 6 feet high and the slabs of rock are about 6 inches thick and varying from two to 4 feet wide and stand in the fields just like in a cemetery. I think the rock is shale or slate. But the layers have been turned on their side so that instead of horizontal you are getting these vertical pieces sticking up above the surrounding ground. At one place was a long ridge of it, looking very much like a stone wall in New England.

I've decided that the one word that best describes the West is water. The lack of water creates a very dry climate where hardly anything grows. The land is brown and dry and barren. Then, the opposite extreme occurs. Too much water for the land to absorb falls on it in a short period of time and you get tremendous water erosion. The softer, weaker rock and ground is washed away leaving dramatic gullies and dry watercourses cut deep into the earth. Lastly, to make the land productive, huge amounts of irrigation have been introduced. No one knows the long-term effects of this irrigation. Are we tapping the aquifers and draining them? We do know that long-term irrigation deposits huge amounts of salts into the ground and makes it totally unproductive for long periods of time. Do we really know we're doing?

We spent a couple of days in Yosemite National Park. The Park is part of the Sierra Nevada chain which has been described to us as a 400-mile long block of uplifted granite. We went to Glacier Point which is 3100 feet above the Yosemite Valley. This valley was formed by the runoff from glacial melt. This is a totally new idea for me. I always knew that rivers cut through mountains but I never thought about those rivers being fed by melting glaciers. Glaciers also contributed to the shape of the mountains in the Sierra Nevada’s. The glaciers covered the tops of some mountains and their movement rounded the top of these mountains. Those mountains in the chain with pointed tops were above the glaciers. At present, there is a river flowing through the valley called the Merced River. Anyway, glacier point is a fantastic overlook. I’m sure I never looked straight down 3100 feet. I assure you, I held on tight! Peggy took the picture to prove I was there.

My favorite place in the park was glacier point but driving through the valley impressed me especially looking up at those rock formations I had looked across at from glacier point. Half Dome and other huge cliffs were perhaps more impressive from the bottom. Of course, El Capitan was overwhelming. There are plenty of pics of all of this. A thought occurred to me as I was looking at all that granite. When I visited the Rock of Ages quarry in Barre, Vermont, I learned that Barre is sitting on a granite dome that is some 10 by 30 miles and 10 miles deep. Imagine how much granite they could dig out of the Sierra Nevada’s.

We also visited the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. This grove is at the southern end of the Park, about 30 miles south of Yosemite Valley. I had seen the California coast redwoods earlier on this trip. It doesn’t seem possible, but these actually seemed bigger. They are said to be shorter, by about 30 feet, but they are clearly wider. Walking around the one called the grizzly giant made me realize just how huge they are. Of course, I had to have my picture taken inside the tunnel tree. At one point in history, there were two tunnel trees but one died due to the tunnel and this one is expected to follow.

The altitude in this area was so varied that I’m not sure I can explain it. We left the Central Valley of California and went to about 3000 feet in the RV. About 2000 of those feet were in one hill. We followed Route 120 out of the Valley and up this hill. We had planned to use Route 140 but mudslides closed the road. On 120 that hill was called New Priest Road. As we were leaving, we spotted Old Priest Road. Thank God they built the new one! Our route was longer but more gradual. The road clung to the mountain from which it was cut. The sheer drop to my right as we climbed (without guardrails, of course) scared the ___ out of me! Coming down was much easier (I was on the inside)! So, we camped at about 2800 feet, drove into the Park losing and regaining that altitude three times. The highest point we were at in the park was 6000 feet.

When we left Yosemite, we came back down to the Central Valley, called the San Joaquin Valley at about 100 feet of altitude. The valley is as flat as a pancake and you can see in every direction. The Sierra Nevada’s are all to the East of the Valley and feed three rivers into this area, the Merced, the Tuolumne, and the Chowchilla. Since about 1900, these rivers have been tapped by state organized irrigation projects to turn this dry valley into a productive paradise. The irrigation starts as cement canals leading water away from the rivers and out to a network of fields. From there, a variety of methods are used to spread the water on the fields. I saw huge dairy farms, the largest I’ve ever seen, with pole barn structures for the dairy cattle. These structures have no sides, a raised central section (I assume for ventilation) and two shed like rooves slanting down from the raised central section. The fields near the farm were corn (already cut down and I assume chopped but I saw no silos) and alfalfa, much of which had been cut and was laying in windrows. I assume it was going to be bailed, and not chopped as we would in New England. Keep in mind that all these fields, including the pasturage for the younger stock, were irrigated. I wonder how much irrigation can take place before the salts left from irrigation ruin the land.

We stayed three days here in Madera, which is just south of Stockton. Beautiful warm days and cool nights! We’re off to Moro Bay tomorrow. I will get to see the famous, or is it infamous, Hearst Castle!