Living Our Dream

Yosemite Part I: Yosemite Valley

We were anxious to get to Yosemite National Park, so we took off bright and early on the morning of our first full day staying in Park of the Sierras in Coarsegold. Park of the Sierras is located in the foothills of the Sierras, and, as we said, is about 30 miles from the south entrance of the park. Much of the drive is on steep, winding roads, so it took about 45 minutes to get to the park entrance.

Once inside the park, the roads get narrower, steeper, and even more winding. Yosemite Valley is the main attraction in Yosemite National Park, and it took another 45 minutes to get from the south entrance to the valley.

When driving in from the south entrance, there is a long tunnel. At the other end of the tunnel was Tunnel View overlook where we were greeted with the view below. That's El Capitan (El Cap for short) on the left, Half Dome in the far distance in the center, and Bridalveil Falls on the right.

No matter which of the three entrances to the park you use, be sure to drive to the Tunnel View overlook located at the eastern end of the tunnel along the road to the south entrance. The view is worth it.

Yosemite National Park isn't the easiest place to get around. Many of the roads in the park are steep, narrow, and winding. The park is vast - nearly 12,000 square miles, and 95% of it is designated as wilderness area.

Most visitors want to go to Yosemite Valley, which can make the valley fairly congested - especially in the summer and during holiday weekends. This is one reason we wanted to go to Yosemite early in the season. The other reason is many of the waterfalls in Yosemite dry up in late summer and fall.

The Merced River runs down the middle of the valley. While the roads in the valley are flat, there are one-way sections that make getting around a little confusing at first. There is a road on the south side of the river that is mostly one way up the valley (east), and there is a road on the north side of the river that is mostly one way down the valley (west). There are several bridges crossing the river, but adding to the confusion was the fact that one central crossing was closed for construction while we were there. To add even further to the confusion, there were periodic lane closings for road work and line painting at various times during our visit as well. This is probably all due to the fact we were there fairly early in the season and the park was rushing to try to get as much maintenance work done as possible before the Memorial Day weekend.

We went to the park that first day and mostly did reconnoitering. We stopped at the visitor center, picked up a trail map, saw the video about Yosemite, and looked at the exhibits on the geology and history of Yosemite. We stopped in the trading post and bought some hummus and crackers for a snack. The trading post is located close to several of the park's campgrounds, so they had a pretty good (but expensive) selection of food items. Margery liked the s'more kits they had for sale.

We also stopped at Indian Village near the visitor center. The photo below is a bark house, a type of shelter built from the bark of a sequoia tree over a pole frame. These shelters were common in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

 

The next photo is the ceremonial roundhouse. This would have served similar functions as the kivas we have seen that were built by the puebloans and cliff dwellers. This roundhouse is actually used by the local Indian community for ceremonial purposes, so we weren't allowed inside.

Not much is known about the earliest inhabitants of Yosemite, but there is evidence of human activity dating back at least 8,000 years. Yosemite Valley came to be known as Ahwahnee (meaning "place of a gaping mouth" - probably referring to the shape of the valley) and the people who lived there 700 or 800 years ago called themselves the Ahwahneechee (people who live in Ahwahnee). The Miwok Indians, who lived in the surrounding area and who feared the Ahwahneechee, called the Ahwahneechee Yo-sem-ity, meaning either "they are killers" or "full-grown grizzly bear" - pretty fearsome either way.

There were early European visitors and explorers to the area, but there wasn't much interaction with the Indians. It wasn't until the discovery of gold in California that the Ahwahneechee were attacked and driven from their homes. In the late 1850s, tourism began to develop in the Yosemite area. By the early 1900s, Yosemite Valley had become a resort with golf courses, tennis courts, museums, and inns. Many Native Americans returned to work in the resort.

Yosemite Valley, and most of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, is made up primarily of granite. When the mountains were raised up, rivers cut valleys into the granite. Later, during the Ice Age (there were at least three ice events in Yosemite), glaciers cut the Yosemite Valley deeper and smoothed the sides. When the glaciers retreated, hanging valleys, which are the source of the waterfalls today, were left along the sides of the main valleys.

The moraine left by the retreating glacier formed a dam at the end of the valley and created a deep lake. Sediment that collected at the bottom of the lake formed the flat valley floor that exists today.

After learning a little about the history and geology of Yosemite, we began our tour of the valley. Going into the valley, you travel eastward on the south side of the Merced River. One of the first landmarks you come to is Bridalveil Falls. We parked and walked the trail to the base of the 620-foot falls. Even from fairly far away, we could feel droplets of moisture hitting our skin, and we saw people coming back from the falls who looked pretty wet.

 

As we approached the base of the falls, the wind shifted and we suddenly knew why so many people were wet. Wow, the water was cold! You can see the mist filling the air in the photo below.

 

The next photo is Bridalveil Creek as it flows from the base of the falls toward the Merced River.

From Bridalveil Falls, we continued our tour of Yosemite Valley. Our next post will have information about more of the things we saw.

Grand Canyon to Yosemite

We left the Grand Canyon and drove south to Williams, AZ, then turned west on I-40. We scheduled our usual four-hour drive, which took us to Desert View RV Resort in Needles, CA. Desert View is a very nice campground. They have regular and long back-in sites as well as regular and long pull-throughs. We only stayed one night so we got a long pull-through so we wouldn't have to unhook the toad. The photo below shows our site at Desert View RV.

The landscaping at Desert View is beautiful. The row of palm trees along the front of the campground has lights on them at night. The photo below is the flower of an exotic-looking shrub that was growing on several of the corner sites.

The entrance driveway is lined with large, white oleander and the sites have pink oleander between them for added privacy. The next photo is a close-up of one of the oleander flowers at our site. The delicate flowers and the waxy, green foliage look great.

 

Desert View is a winter snowbird campground, although winters aren't as warm as some of the more popular snowbird roosts. It is close to Lake Havasu and Parker, AZ, and Laughlin, NV, which are also snowbird locations.

There is plenty of gravel on the roads and the sites, and the gravel is fresh and clean. There are paved patios. Desert view has full hook-ups and Wi-fi. We were glad they also had 50 amp electric because it was 104 degrees when we arrived.

We left Needles the next morning and continued on I-40 to a campground called A Country RV Park in Bakersfield, CA. A Country RV has full hook-ups including cable and Wi-fi. The next photo shows our site.

We were again happy to have 50 amp electric even though it was only 100 degrees in Bakersfield. The site spacing isn't bad for a private campground. Most sites are pull-throughs, but there are some back-ins around the perimeter. The wide internal roads are paved. Some sites are also paved, but some are fine gravel. We had a paved site. Some sites, like ours, had gravel between, and some sites had grass.

Again, having a pull-through meant we didn't have to unhook because we left the next morning for the Escapees Park of the Sierras in Coursegold, CA, about 30 miles from the south entrance to Yosemite National Park. We normally don't travel two days in a row, but we wanted to get to Yosemite so we would have time to get most of our sightseeing in before the busy Memorial Day weekend.

We followed California Route 99 for almost 100 miles from Bakersfield to Fresno. For almost the entire distance, the center median was planted with pink, red, and white oleander. It helped make for a pleasant drive.

One reason oleander is planted along highways is that it is very drought tolerant. The other reason is deer will not eat it because it is highly toxic.

We arrived at Park of the Sierras, an Escapees co-op park, around lunch time. In the Escapees co-op parks, co-op members who are not using their site can put it into the rental pool for use by other Escapees members who are visiting the area. The photo below shows our site at Park of the Sierras.

We knew Park of the Sierras had a lot of trees and that getting satellite reception would be a challenge. They showed us the two available sites they thought might give us the best chance, and we picked the one that had the fewest trees.

The location here in California was a lot farther south and west than we are used to, and Paul mis-judged where the satellite would be. When we tried to get our dish to lock onto a signal, Paul realized there was one tall tree on the site next to us that was in the way. However, after repositioning the motor home several times, we finally ended up with good satellite reception.

Park of the Sierras is very quiet. It has full hook-ups plus cable. Wi-fi is available at the office, but they are in the process of making it available throughout the park. The sites are gravel, and most have paved patios. Many of the co-op members have done extensive landscaping.

 

One plant we saw a lot of was a small shrub with gray-green leaves and smooth, reddish-brown bark. They were all around our site, all over the campground, and we later saw them all over Yosemite. Paul did some research and found out they are called manzanita, which means "little apple" in Spanish. The photo below shows a manzanita shrub.

 

Paul particularly liked the smooth, red bark shown in the closeup below.

 

There are about 60 species of manzanita ranging from low-growing varieties to a variety that grows up to 20 feet tall. The shrubs grow in western North America all the way from southern Canada to northern Mexico. The berries, which are shown in the photo below, can be soaked in water to make a tea, or they can be dried and ground into a coarse meal.

 

The Escapees park in Coarsegold has one of the most unique layouts we have seen in a campground. It is built on a hillside, and the roads twist and turn up, down, and around the hills. It reminded us of the roads and residential neighborhoods in our old hometown of Pittsburgh. The photo below shows a typical park road. The terrain looks flat in the photo, but it was uphill.

 

Our plan while in Coarsegold was to visit Yosemite National Park, which is located about 30 miles up the road. We investigated staying in the national park, but Yosemite has no hook-ups in any of their 13 campgrounds. They say they have numerous sites for RVs up to 35 feet, but there are only 12 sites in two campgrounds suitable for RVs up to 40 feet long (our motor home is 37 feet). Part of the problem is site length and part of the problem is having enough room to swing to back in.

On top of all that, reservations can be made up to five months in advance and most reservable sites for April through September are gone within minutes of when they first become available. Therefore, we decided to stay at the Escapees park and make the rather long drive each of the several days we would be going into the national park. We'll tell you all about our visits to Yosemite in the next few posts.

Grand Canyon Part III: Desert View

When we visited the Grand Canyon back in 2007, we drove the car up from Flagstaff where we were staying to visit the canyon for a second day. We drove along the rim to the east of Grand Canyon Village and stopped at some of the overlooks. This trip, since we had more time, we drove east all the way to Desert View, which is near the east entrance to the park.

Desert View is located about 27 miles from Grand Canyon Village, and if you have the time, it is well worth the drive. The main part of the Grand Canyon within the national park runs roughly east to west. At Desert View, the canyon takes a turn toward the northeast. This bend in the canyon provides for expansive views. The photo below is looking northeast. You can see the Colorado River just to the left of the center of the photo.

 

The next photo is looking west. They were conducting a controlled burn of dead branches and debris down toward the southern entrance that day, and you can see the smoke drifting out over the canyon.

 

The real gem at Desert View is the Watchtower.

The Watchtower is another building at the canyon designed for the Fred Harvey Company by architect Mary Colter . The Watchtower was designed as a gift shop and rest stop for tourists. The tower, which is designed to mimic an ancient Indian watchtower, was opened in 1933.

There is a gift shop off to the side of the tower on the first floor. From the second floor of the tower, you can step out to an observation deck over the gift shop.

The most impressive part of the tower is the interior. The interior of the tower is open with circular balconies. There are narrow staircases going up to each higher level. The photo below is looking up the central opening with its surrounding balconies.

 

The interior of the tower is decorated with images painted by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie depicting Hopi mythology. In the photo below, Paul is sitting in front of one of those images.

Murals and other images painted on the walls and balconies by artist Fred Greer are copies of prehistoric pictographs and petroglyphs. Margery is standing by some of these images in the next photo. The small windows keep the interior of the tower rather dark to give it a cave-like appearance.

After we left the Watchtower, we drove about three miles from Desert View back toward Grand Canyon Village and stopped at Tusayan Ruin, which is a pueblo from about 800 years ago. We happened to arrive just as a ranger-led tour started. The rangers really know their subjects and are very interesting to listen to. She talked about some of the artifacts in the small museum, then led the group outside to the pueblo where she described what life was like for the pueblo dwellers. The photo below shows the partially reconstructed and stabilized walls of the pueblo.

 

The pueblo was "U" shaped with the sleeping rooms at the base of the "U" and smaller food storage rooms on the two legs of the "U." The photo below shows a scale model of the pueblo that was in the Canyon View Information Center.

Like other pueblos we have seen, entry was through openings in the roof. This would have helped keep animals and wind out of the pueblo. Activities such as grinding corn, weaving baskets, preparing game, and cooking would have taken place on the roof or in the courtyard enclosed by the "U."

The circular structure at the left corner is the kiva, or ceremonial chamber. A larger kiva (in the background to the upper right in the above photo) was constructed a little later. The next photo shows the base of the later kiva.

 

The kivas we have seen at other ruins have been completely or mostly underground. Here, there is only about 18 inches of soil before you hit solid rock, so the kiva was constructed mostly above ground. The ring of stones in the center was for the fire. There was a semi-circular bench around the perimeter on the near side on which ceremonial vessels were placed. The two posts indicate where two of the four roof support posts would have been. The original posts were taller. Logs and branches would have been leaned up against the perimeter of the roof and then the whole thing would have been covered with mud.

While we were listening to the ranger at the pueblo, we also learned  the yellow-green, twiggy balls in the juniper trees were a variety of mistletoe.

From the pueblo, we headed back toward the west and stopped at several of the overlooks along the way. At Grandview Point, Paul hiked a short way down Grandview Trail. Grandview Trail was originally constructed by miners and follows an ancient Indian route down to Horseshoe Mesa where the Grandview Mine, also known as the Last Chance Mine, was operated by Pete Berry from 1892 to 1901. The trial is quite steep and narrow. The photo below was taken from Grandview trail.

 

Pete Berry also operated a hotel at Grandview that had the reputation of being the best accommodations at the canyon. However, in 1901, the railroad arrived at a spot 11 miles to the west and travelers no longer wanted to take the bone-jarring stagecoach ride to Grandview. The El Tovar Hotel was built at the rim of the canyon near the rail terminus by the Fred Harvey Company and opened in 1905.

We had a great visit to the Grand Canyon. We had time to do a lot more than we did on our first visit, and we really enjoyed being able to hike along the rim and down into the canyon. From the Grand Canyon, we continued on our way west toward California.

Grand Canyon Part II: Hermit's Rest

After our hike down Bright Angel Trail, we boarded the shuttle to Hermit's rest. Along the way, you can get off at any of the numerous stops to explore the overlooks, and then catch another passing shuttle (shuttles run every 10 to 15 minutes) to continue your journey.

The road along the rim to the west of Grand Canyon Village is closed to private vehicles, and only commercial tour buses or the free park shuttle bus are allowed. Near Grand Canyon Village you can board a free park shuttle bus going along the rim to the west.

When we visited the Grand Canyon with Lora and J. Michael two years ago, we took a short, narrated bus tour along this rim road. The bus tour was available as an option when we bought our train tickets. However, the bus tour didn't go all the way to Hermit's rest, and it only stopped at a few overlooks. Since we were staying longer on this visit, we wanted to be sure to see Hermit's Rest. We also chose to get off the shuttle at most of the stops along the way.

In the photo below, Paul is using the binoculars at one of the stops to look for the Grand Canyon Lodge over on the North Rim, which is about 10 miles away. If you know where to look, you can just barely make it out. We learned where it was located on the bus tour we took during our visit in 2007.

The next photos show some of the beautiful views from the overlooks.





 

Margery usually looks away if Paul gets close to the edge, but she somehow managed to take the next picture even though Paul was only a few feet from the drop off.

Powell Point is one of the overlooks along the road to Hermit's Rest. Here, you can look down over the edge (there's a railing, so you can safely lean over far enough) and see the remnants of the Orphan Mine. In 1893, a prospector found copper and opened the mine. Difficulty getting the ore up to the rim forced the mine to close after a short time. In 1951, uranium was discovered at the site, and the Orphan Mine became America's richest source of uranium - even though the mine was within the national park. By 1969, the high-grade ore was mined out and operations ceased. The Park Service gained control of the mine in 1988. The photo below shows a shed (left) and the rusty remnants of the tower (just below center to the right) for the tramway used to bring ore to the surface.

 

The photo below is yet another beautiful view from one of the overlooks on the way to Hermit's Rest. You can see a short stretch of the Colorado River near the center of the photo.

 

At the end of the shuttle route is Hermit's Rest. Designed by architect Mary Colter and built in 1914 as a rest stop for tourists in coaches operated by the Fred Harvey Company, the building now contains a snack bar and gift shop.

 

The next photo shows the fireplace and some of the furniture inside Hermit's Rest designed by Mary Colter.

Architect Mary Coulter was born in Pittsburgh and is well-known for pioneering in the aesthetics of an architecture appropriate to a natural setting. Hired by Fred Harvey, the various buildings at the Grand Canyon including Hermit's Rest, Hopi House, Desert View Watch Tower, and Lookout Studio are excellent examples of some of her work.

Fred Harvey Company got its start by opening high-quality eating houses for railroad passengers. He contracted with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad to build eating houses all along their routes. The eating establishments grew into hotels. When the AT&SF Railroad built its Grand Canyon Railway line to the South Rim in the early 1900s, Fred Harvey also got the contract to build hotels, inns, and rest stops at the Grand Canyon. Do you remember hearing about The Harvey Girls?

The name Hermit's Rest comes from a Canadian-born prospector by the name of Louis Boucher. In 1891, Boucher staked mining claims below the present-day site of Hermit's Rest and carved a trail down into the canyon. Although not a true hermit, Louis Boucher is the person for whom Hermit Trail and Hermit's Rest are named.

From Hermit's Rest, the shuttle bus only makes three stops on the return trip to Grand Canyon Village where we parked, and it only takes about half an hour to get back.

Next, we explored the Grand Canyon eastward to Desert View. Look for our next post.

Grand Canyon Part I: Bright Angel Trail

The morning after we visited Petrified Forest National Park, we took off to the west on I-40. Then we turned right in Flagstaff, and headed north to the Grand Canyon where we had reservations in Trailer Village Campground inside the park.

Trailer Village has full hook-ups including 50 amp electric. The sites and roads are gravel. As you can imagine, the campsites are well used so they are pretty dusty. We put out our patio mat to minimize tracking dirt into the motor home. The sites are also surprisingly wide for a national park. The photo below shows our site in Trailer Village.

 

The campground is pretty quiet, even during the day. At night, it is eerily quiet - there is no traffic noise and no trains.

Although we've investigated staying in national parks before, this is the first time we've ever actually done it. The campgrounds in most national parks are older and have only a few sites suitable for our 37 foot motor home. Additionally, most national parks have no hook-ups. You normally have to reserve a site in a national park well in advance, and the big-rig sites are very hard to get. In addition, many of the national parks have a lot of trees, which isn't good for our satellite internet. But Trailer Village doesn't have many trees and it has full hook-ups (including cable). Also, since we there were early in the season, we were able to get reservations only a few months in advance.

We went to Grand Canyon National Park back in 2007. We picked up our daughter, Lora, and our son-in-law, J. Michael, at the airport in Phoenix and drove to Flagstaff where we all stayed at the KOA. We, of course, stayed in the motor home, and Lora and J. Michael stayed in one of the KOA Kamper Kabins.

We took the train from Williams to the canyon, which we highly recommend. You can read about it it in our June 2007 Grand Canyon and Flagstaff Area post. Then we drove up from Flagstaff in the car to spend a second day at the canyon. Seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time was a real thrill and sharing it with Lora and J. Michael was a lot of fun.

This time, however, since we stayed right in the park and since we stayed longer, we had a more leisurely visit and could take more time to get to know the park a lot better. Also, since Margery's successful knee surgery, we were able to do a lot more walking, including hiking a short way down into the canyon.

By the time we got set up, it was mid-afternoon so we relaxed a while before dinner. Then we went to the canyon rim to see the sunset - something we couldn't easily do while staying in Flagstaff.

We decided to go to Yavapai Point, mostly because it was close to Trailer Village. Yavapai Point turned out to be an excellent choice because it has quite a bit of parking - many of the overlooks get pretty crowded around sunset. Also, because Yavapai Point juts out into the canyon, you can see the red light of the sunset shining on the rocks in the canyon looking to the east...



...and you can see the sun setting over the canyon looking to the west.

We also wanted to see a sunrise. However, Arizona does not observe daylight savings time. That coupled with the fact that we were there about a month before the Summer Solstice meant sunrise was a little after 5:00 AM, so we never made it for a sunrise.

The next morning (well after sunrise), we went to the Bright Angel Trailhead located near Grand Canyon Village. Bright Angel Trail is one of the more popular trails down into the canyon because it is not quite as steep as some of the other trails. It is also the trail used for mule rides down into the canyon. You can take a 7-hour round trip to Plateau Point 1,300 feet above the Colorado River. Plateau Point is the smooth, greenish patch toward the left in the photo below, and the wiggly tan line is the trail running out to the end.

You can also take an overnight mule trip to Phantom Ranch, which is at the bottom of the canyon and across the river. The telephoto shot below shows Phantom Ranch.

The scenery on the way down the trail was amazing. Walking into the canyon, even for only a short distance, made us feel like we were really experiencing the canyon. It was a lot better than standing at the top just looking over a railing.

 

The next photo is another view from Bright Angel Trail.

We could see a rider with pack mules ascending the trail in the distance. There are no roads to Phantom Ranch. Everything must be packed in on mules and trash must be packed out.



A little farther along, we could look down and see more mules and riders on the switch-backs way below us.

 

On down the trail, there is a tunnel through the rock.

 

On the other side of the tunnel, we saw more mules coming up the trail.

 

We went a little farther, then turned around and headed back up toward the rim. Shortly after we went back through the tunnel, another group of riders passed us. Mules have the right of way, and we had to stand aside and wait for them to pass. Fortunately, the trail was plenty wide in this area.

As we climbed back up the trail, we could see the pack mules that passed us earlier on the trail above us.

 

After we got back to the top, we hopped on the shuttle bus that goes out to Hermit's Rest. We'll tell you about that in our next post.