Yosemite Falls

You will get wet.

The proclamation from the man in black polyester, wet from head to toe, fades from our heads as rapidly as his damp footprints dry behind him. It is in the 90’s but the trail along the Hetch Hetchy shore is fairly level, easy to walk, and his wetness is more than just perspiration.

We have just left the more shaded part of the trail and are now in the sunshine on a slight downward path along large exposed granite faces amidst small boulders bigger than ourselves. We continue along the trail and soon find a intermittent waterfall normally dry by this time of year. We join a few families splashing in the pools at the bottom of falls. The water is cool but not cold like we expect from snow melt. Cyndi waggles her toes in the water for a bit and then we continue along. You could get wet here but we don’t.

Falls are everywhere, springing out of the sides of mountains, rushing over the edges of cliffs, cascading down boulder filled valleys. The snow pack is very heavy this year, spring very late. The snow melt from the sudden heat is filling normally dry falls and streams. The Merced river, just starting to rise and already near flood stage, jumps and rooster tails downstream, the river white and roaring for fifteen miles out of Yosemite Valley.

In contrast, the Hetch Hetchy reservoir looks tranquil. Blue mountain lupines bloom along the trail in the company of yellows and purples. Smiling hikers pass us returning to their cars. You will get wet comes from a mother happy because her kids are happy, the kids just recently splashed and cooled in some water ahead of us, but the mother wishing she had brought harnesses as she watches her kids tumbling and scrambling everywhere. Somehow, I don’t know how, maybe magic, she herself is also everywhere, gathering the kids and returning them to momentary order only to see them quickly darting towards other distractions. We are getting hot and are tiring, glad we had stopped for a hearty and tasty lunch at the Cocina Michoacana.

Soon we are at Tueelala Falls and watch it fall 800’ before it cascades another several hundred feet to our level. Tueelala is also normally dry by this time of year but now the water is falling onto the stone footbridge and rushing down the trail on both sides. Hiking in wet shoes seems a bad idea, so I remove my shoes, roll up my pants and walk over the bridge through fast moving water nearly a foot deep and spray everywhere. The downhill cool breeze created by the waterfall feels great and we gasp and smile. We manage to stay reasonably dry.

We rest a bit and dry our feet. High above us the booms and cracks from the falls crashing along the cliff sound like rock slides. Two attractive young women approach and naturally I engage them in conversation. They tell us Wapama falls is about another half mile along the trail and it is beautiful. As they leave they toss over their shoulders You will get wet. I am disappointed they aren’t wet.

A bit further down the trail a recent rock slide half covering the trail is attended by several NPS staff. One woman -- sweating, tired, panting -- slowly lifts and drops a ten pound mall on a rock while standing in the sun. Two more sensible, older workers stand in the shade strategizing. Two younger men are hand rolling knee high granite blocks downhill. The rocks roll only a couple feet, then come to rest and the men push and grunt again. Downhill Sisyphus. Like Sisyphus, an amazingly beautiful place to toil and like Sisyphus, this work will never end.

Hetch Hetchy is part of Yosemite National Park and is every bit as beautiful as Yosemite Valley but unlike the Valley, lightly touristed. The Valley had NPS staff directing jammed traffic at several intersections; thirty minute waits for a space to open at parking lots; lines 20 deep at restrooms; uncontrolled tumbling children knocking down caned ancients. Yet everyone was happy, content to wait for their chance to stand in the spray of the falls. Old, young, even the blind were enjoying the cool, ionized air, roaring water, chirping birds and mixed pine and floral scents.

Moving again along the Hetch Hetchy trail, we can hear Wapama Falls but cannot see it. We head down switchbacks and pass a couple sets of hikers coming up. You will get wet is followed by Cover your camera. At the bottom of the switchbacks we see the spray. A rainbow is in the spray. We photograph the rainbow. I tuck my camera under my shirt. We go around the last corner.

And we get wet. Drenched. Instantly, completely, head to toe. The four bridges normally over Wapama falls are now inside of Wapama falls. Here the water is cold, the waterfall's breeze is now a wind, a cold wind. It is loud. It is beautiful, a bit scary and a lot exhilarating. We are shivering and laughing.

Photographing a waterfall from inside is difficult to do. Actually, it isn’t a good idea. The camera didn’t like it and refused to work for the rest of the day. But standing in the waterfall is fun, even though it can be enjoyed only for a few minutes at a time. I recommend it.

I ring out my shirt and we head back. Our water soaked clothes now keep us cool and because we are refreshed and it is getting late, we quickly and lightly walk the 2.5 miles back to the car cheerfully telling other hikers You will get wet.


See more waterfalls pics here

Quick trip to Sacramento

I learned one thing on our short trip to Sacramento: Sacramenteros do not make eye contact.

No, that is not a fair description … let me be more precise: Sacramenteros avidly avoid eye contact as if they would crumble into a small pile of dust should they see themselves reflected in your eyes.

Red Light District

The downtown Sac employed are generally government workers ... beleaguered, furloughed, scapegoated in the endless budget battles ... and wear facial expressions that would be sobering at funerals. Sacramento’s many unemployed¹ are far beyond despair and hopelessness, sitting looking at the pavement between their feet, seemginly with minds as blank as possible, tomorrow as empty as yesterday, not panhandling, never laying down, only inactive. Slightly frightened and already wearied teenagers move slowly through the Westfield mall neither talking nor texting. The tidy streets seem withdrawn. Only entry level service staff show anything resembling enjoyment, albeit a joy distant and self-conscious.

It was hot. The streets had little traffic, few pedestrians and what stores were open closed by 4pm. Silent vaguely clumped commuters stood motionless waiting for their buses, looking like long time residents in a minor level of hell. Small knots of suits nattered down the walks and dismissed with minimal courtesy and maximum efficiency the hearty and insincere hallooos from solitary supplicating suits. Worn tourists with tired children stood bewildered at stop lights on the lightly trafficked streets waiting for something to happen. It just got hotter.

When we arrived we found all the hotel rooms between the capital and the Naked Lounge² had been assumed by a flock of congregating Methodists, so we ended up in an inexpensive “adequate value for the money” motel near Old Sacramento and on the edge of Sacramento’s small Chinatown. The motel was fine: it was quiet (except for the whistling trains that kept Cyndi awake all night); it was clean (except for the dirty corners in the tub and the bathroom and frankly every corner was dirty); it was safe (except for the bathroom wall heater that will set fire to the the room). Impressively, the tv had lots of Spanish channels, very little Fox and what I think was a community access geology channel.

Old Sac ... and New

Old Sacramento hugs the eastern bank of the Sacramento River and was basically where the city got started. Floods and fashion moved economic activity away from the river, turning Old Sacramento into a slum. About forty years ago the buildings were restored to look like they did during the Gold Rush and the area rehabilitated to be a historic tourist attraction. From my personal inspection of the historic area I determined that prospectors returning from the hills with their sacks of gold dust preferred to purchase infant t-shirts extolling the virtues of Nana (8 shops) or indulge their remaining sweet tooth with salt water taffy (7 stores and 18 flavors) or get a tattoo (5 shops). The stereotype that prospectors returned to drink and whore is completely wrong, as the alcohol prices in Old Sacramento make it impossible to get drunk even with a sackful of gold dust and the lobbyists have priced whores totally out of the reach of the individually rich.

Female Rail Wheel

The railroad museum in Old Sacramento was filled with well restored train engines, passenger cars and docents dressed as engineers and conductors. Some trains appeared feminine with brightly lipsticked wheels while others had strongly masculine steel coupling rods³. The trains were too large to photograph as a whole and as the wheels were at eye level, I decided to document the wheel variations. We enjoyed the museum.

We walked from the motel to the Capitol and passed block after block of empty store fronts to the north of the Capitol Mall and blocks and blocks of government buildings to the south. The CalPers building looked like a cross between a re-education center and a VA hospital, with disquieting greens and frosted glass walls so loved by HR departments⁴. The DOT building claimed architecture was one of their missions and while many California bridges and roads are beautifully designed, the DOT headquarters itself looks like post-Stanlist functionalism and somehow manages to make even the windows look like pre-cast concrete. The Stanford Mansion is California’s official welcoming center and it is a cute deteriorating little mansion. The nicest building housing a state office houses the state Controllers office, which seems wrong.

The capitol building itself is white, very white, with only a bit of gold leaf on the small dome atop the large dome. The Golden State has sold all its gold. The Capitol is in a very urban area surrounded by ample trees and sits next to a small, quiet, uninspired park. Even though it was built to look like the US capitol, no one would confuse the two.

While we were watching the capitol, the legislature passed a budget bill on the last day before the legislators would lose pay for not passing a timely budget bill. It was not a good bill, just one they passed to keep their paychecks and a bill the Governor vetoed⁵. Aroused news vans with their erected booms waited outside the capitol for the budget news that wasn’t really news. It was hot. The experienced reporters stayed inside their air conditioned vans and sent the junior reporters to do man-in-the-street interviews. The rare man in the street wasn’t very interested.

The next day, while the Governor’s veto caused fingers to point in all directions, we took a pleasant drive through gold country where we found a couple great used bookstores (the form of gold we prefer), an excellent Mexican inspired restaurant in Placerville and a fruit stand with wonderful cherries and lousy smoothies. Sacramento was, all in all, a little interesting and a little disappointing and could be a nice place to live if you didn’t have to work there. But it was the cherries and books that made the trip.

Want more photos?

¹ Economists say Sacramento has structural unemployment and is unlikely to experience a normal recovery. It does have the 4th highest foreclosure rate in the country and those who lost their homes regularly form tent cities in the city parks and vacant lots. The tent cites are then shut down by the government, which confiscates the homeless’ meager belongings and stored food and leaves the belongings and food to rot and mold in the lots, causing health problems for the neighbors of the lots. Meanwhile charities feed these homeless day old, nutrition free sugar based bakery products. Christian groups attempting to help are vigorously attacked by Christian groups of other denominations. Benefit concerts are given that raise enough money to promote more benefit concerts.

God Bless America.

² Disappointing me and the more life affirming Methodists, the Naked Lounge was simply an upscale coffee shop with a salacious sign.

³ The museum had wonderful exhibits but little explanation. While I wrote this, I was trying to determine the correct name for train wheels (which is in fact as correct a name as any, though “rail wheels” would be better), I came across this train technology site, which had clear, simple information. This information would have made the museum more interesting to me and probably to at least some of the kids.

⁴ It is very difficult to make green an upsetting color and hats off to the HR genius that managed it. I’m not sure but I think this shade is to dissuade people from actually visiting the Personnel Department. Frosted glass walls are a favorite because they give the illusion of openness with none of the benefits of privacy and allow for HR people to spy undetected on each other.

⁵ Bless his heart.

May Visitors

Two sets of visitors in May brought an unexpected benefit: our preparations finally got the house clean. Unfortunately, after those visitors departed entropy re-visited us with a vengeance and chaos is again ruling the household.

Bixby Bridge on Coast Highway

Like a clean house, the visits were very refreshing and too short lived. My sister Jane and her husband Ralph arrived from London in early May and Cyndi’s sister, aunt and their husbands (Betty & Trent, Peggy & Jeff) arrived late May from the Louisville area. One of the highlights of both trips (at least for Cyndi and myself) was a ride down the coast highway along Big Sur. Winter brought a number of road wash outs and slides and the timing was perfect: the northern most closures were cleared a week before Jane and Ralph arrived and the southern most slide at Gordo closed Hwy 1 just before the first visit and re-opened just after the second visit.

If you think the Gordo slide timing was bad, then you haven’t driven the Furgeson-Naciemento Road across the Santa Lucia mountains to Fort Hunter Ligget. This is one of my most favorite drives but it is nearly impossible to convince a visitor to take that bypass unless Hwy 1 is closed. So the Gordo timing was great for me, if not the visitors: we got to see the prettiest part of the coast and the gut churning ride up and through the coast ranges.

Ralph and Jane at the Winery

Jane and Ralph got the Napa and City tours, with wineries and bakeries figuring heavily in the fun. Ralph seemed impressed that we seemingly knew every road and intersection and every barrista within a 150 mile radius, but I think the illusion was broken when we got lost in tiny little downtown San Luis Obispo. We always seem to get lost in downtowns. But after spending 10 hours a day for 3 days in a car listening to Cyndi and my stories about geology and history and culture and our kitties, I think Ralph and Jane were very happy to get on Amtrak and continue their trip down to San Diego sans the free tour guides.

Betty, Cyndi and Peggy

The Louisville gang visited Sequoia National Park on a quite snowy and sloppy Memorial Day. Along the way they got to experience Central Valley, the flattest place in the US and another place visitors typically shun. And I think they now understand why that particular shunning. We had to take two cars for this trip and each day a different “volunteer” got to ride with me in the Mini while Cyndi rode with the rest of the gang in a rental. Poor Betty had to ride with me across the Central Valley, where she learned more about geology and irrigation that she ever wanted. And Trent and Jeff learned how to change a tire on the rental while the rest of us watched them. We finally parted ways at Mission San Antonio at Hunter LIgget and while Cyndi and I returned home to re-enable chaos mode, the gang continued to Santa Barbara and LAX for some peace and quiet.

Thanks for visiting, folks. But next time come earlier so you can help us clean house.

More Pictures of

  Jane and Ralph's visit

  Betty, Trent, Peggy and Jeff's visit