July 31 We leave California today, flying to Alabama via Los Vegas. The last couple of days have just been maintenance days getting ready to go home. I think I have been here too long, there is so much more I want to see again before I leave, I could stay another month. We never made it up to the Mount Shasta/Susanville where I used to work in the woods, or the Redwood National Park which I have never seen, we didn't even go to San Franciso, thats a first. We leave SF at 2:15 pm and arrive in Birmingham at 11:10 pm. Gerri has been ready to come home for a week, I think she saw enough of the mountains, I could live there.
One thing we both remarked about many times: how many old Volkswagons there are on the roads here; they are everywhere. Old beetle and hippie vans of all sorts. When I used to drive my kids to Pensacola in the '70's we played a game called punch bug, where if you saw a Volkswagon beetle you got to punch your opponant, or we just counted them and the one who got to 25 first won. There were enough beetles around to make it interesting, but then they got scarce. You could still play those games here. And there are still Valley girls here, you pick up that accent even up in northern California. Everything here is casual, almost too casual, and it seems like most people are tatooed or pierced, with very unusual piercings I might ad and a lot of major body art. Californians are friendly, they always have been, there are a lot of southern influences here. "Y'all" is not uncommon, bluegrass is big, but you can't always get sweet tea. And cosmopolitan, the racial mix is incredible, people from everywhere. There is even a Fijian grocery store not far from Mom's and you can get any kind of food you want without travelling very far. Hispanics now make up over 50% of the population, to live here you should know some Spanish: both my sister, Mom, nieces and nephews are familiar with it. The Pacific Rim influence is important and growing. At UC Berkeley where I went to school, 50% of the student body is made up of Pacific Rim students. I like the diversity. See y'all back in Alabama. Ivory Coast, a great jazz band plays at the store Saturday night, I am looking forward to that...
July 29 We left Bishop early Monday and decided to take the Kit Carson Pass road over the mountains. This pass is the fourth of our trip and it is the northernmost one of our trip. Tioga was the furthest south then Sonora, Ebbets and Carson much farther north. Carson is an easy pass and is open much of the winter. It is a two lane road with drivable grades and even tractor-trailers use it. It crosses the backbone of the Sierra at about 8,500 feet elevation. To get there involved a two and a half hour trip north on 395 into Nevada. It was a very smoky trip for the first hour or so. There is a big forest fire just west of Yosemite near Mariposa, last I heard it was about 30,000 acres and the smoke plume was going east over the Sierras through Yosemite, Lee Vining, down to Bishop and points south. It was bad enough to make our eyes water and throats become scratchy.
We traveled north to lee Vining, Mono Lake , Bridgeport and followed the Carson river down into the Carson Valley. Much of the area along the Carson River had been burned recently, tens of thousands of acres. The trees were all dead except for some scattered indiviiduals and patches, but the grasses and sage was coming back. This area is high desert and so the burnt pines were mostly pinyon (scrubby) but some nice stands of Jeffery were burnt up also. We passed beautuful Topaz Lake, I hadn't been this way since my father died and I had to go to Reno to pick up Gerri 16 years ago. My niece Ashley Barker lives in Gardnerville, Nevada so we stopped to see them. We ate lunch at a really neat Mom and Pop sandwich shop and bakery at Minden right next to Gardnerville, Russell Merchantile and Bakery. Really good food. Then we picked up route 88 for Carson Pass. We came within 25 miles or so of Lake Tahoe, but didn't have time to stop. Had we turned east over Luther Pass instead of west for Carson we could have gone there. Its been several years since I have been to Tahoe, we used to go sking at Swaw Valley year and years ago.
Except for about a one mile or so steepish grade, Carson is easy, I think Gerri was able to relax the whole way. The scenery is beautiful, high mountain peaks and scenic lakes and lush forests. I think it is 71 miles from Garderville, Nevada to Jackson California in the Gold Country foothills where we turn back to Modesto. A slow go on winding mountain roads with few passing lanes. I don't know the history of Carson Pass except that it was neamed for Kit Carson who came into California several times in the 1830's and '40's. He was a scout for Captain Fremont's famous discovery and mapping trip.
The pass itself is at about 8,500 and has grand views back into the Nevada Great Basin and forward into the California mountains. Like all the pass roads, after the high pass (the named one) on the east side is crossed you descend into beautiful mountain meadows and lakes, and climb back up over other minor passes usually back up to 8,000 feet at least once prior to coming down to 1500 feet at Jackson. On the Kit Carson Pass road at about 8,000 feet on the west side of the pass, there is a rock covered grave and historical marker remembering a young woman from a wagon train who died there during their crossing in the 1850's. We reached Jackson and drove another 50 miles of crooked, winding, foothills roads until we reached Sonora and then down to the Central Valley and Modesto. It was a nine and a half hour trip and we were mighty happy to be home. We did reach one of our goals of crossing the Sierra through four passes. There are three more I want to do next trip.
July 28 Sue took Gerri and I up to Rock Creek, a small mountain creek which is located not too far from her house, cascading down through a deep rocky canyon east out of the Sierras. It is National Forest land. Many people from southern California come here to picnic, camp, fish, hike, and backpack it is a gateway to the Inyo wilderness accessed by two hiking passes, Morgan and Mono, which are both well over 10,000 feet in elevation. The canyon itself is probably 5 or so miles long, climbing up to a beautiful headwall (kind of like a box canyon) made up of steep formidable mountain peaks. You can't drive all the way up. We parked a mile or so above Rock Creek Lake at the end of the road and hiked up a fairly steep trail to within signt of the headwall and the pass trails. The wildflowers were gorgeous, it was a clear beautiful day, warm weather, couldn't have been any better. I took plenty of pictures, but they never come out as spectacular as the real thing.
July 27 We started back through the Sierra Nevada mountains today, heading to Bishop where my sister lives on the east side of the mountains. This time we decided to go over Sonora Pass, elevation 9600 feet plus, to avoid the crowds in Yosemite National Park. Sonora is another beautiful pass with a fairly steep, narrow road, not as steep as Ebbets yesterday however. Again it was a beautiful drive through the mixed conifer forests of the west side mountains up into the ski country, dotted with ski areas, alpine meadows and lakes, high peaks and picturesque little towns, such as Pinecrest, Alpine, Bear Valley. Farther up it turns into wilderness area, the Kit Carson Wilderness is there. Before going up the steep pass summit road we stopped in Kennedy meadow to take a break. It is a high mountain meadow, at 8,000 feet or so nestled in a small valley surrounded by 12,000 foot mountains with the upper Stanislaus River (really a small creek this high up)flowing through it. Very large Jeffery pines dot the area. The climb up is steep (over 25% grade) overlooking deep canyons and tall peaks. There were only a few brief times we felt like we were dangerously close to steep drop offs unlike Ebbets pass yesterday. Near the summit is a beautiful alpne meadow filled with purple lupine and red indian paintbrush dotted with a stunted lodgepole pine forest. The pass itself is over 9,600 in elevation. The road was completed in 1862. It was used prior to that by pack mule trains carrying supplies from Sonora in the Mother Lode foothills to the rich silver fields in Nevada such as Carson City and Bodie (now a ghost town). As soon a we crossed over the pass the world changed. Gone were the lush meadows and towering forests replaced by sagebrush high desert with cottonwoods and jeffery pines lingering in the wetter areas near creeks. Pinyon Pine a dry pine, stunted, but with edible seeds takes over lower down. The Sierras are so high they wring out all of the water vapor from the heavily laden clouds coming in from the Pacific Ocean so that the west side of the mountains are lush, heavily forested, but the east side is dry. The area between the Sierra and the Rockies is called the Great Basin and is high desert complete with salt lakes, very arid, dry and uninhabitable. A very formidable wilderness for the wagon trains coming across from St Louis in the 1830's on.
We got to Highway 395, the main artery on the east side of the Sierra, which parallels them and runs from Oregon and points north to San Diego near the Mexican border. We had a little over 100 miles to drive from that point to reach my sisters. The visibility was good, no smoke today and we took pictures. We stopped at the Mono Lake overlook. Mono Lake is a large salt lake, they harvest Sierra shrimp there, which in the geologic past was connected to the Great Salt Lake in Utah, as were all the salt lakes and salt flats in the Great Basin. In the 1880 on into the 20th century, great herds of sheep and cattle were allowed to graze on these high desert lands and the fragile ecosystems were devastated, perhaps beyond repair. Over 100 years later, ecologists are trying to restore some of them, especially around Mono Lake, with some sucess. Some of the native species such as pronghorn antelope and bighorn sheep are beginning to make a small comeback.
We stopped in Lee Vining, just above Mono Lake on the Tioga Pass Road, to see my brother in law Rob and headed on to Bishop to my siser's place. Last ime we came this way the smoke from forest fires were so bad you could hardly see the mountains, today it was clear. So far we have gone over three Sierra Passes, my goal was to do four. Sue had supper ready and we relaxed on her porch and watched a beautiful desert sunset.
July 26 Yesterday Gerri and I rented a car and headed for the mountains on a day trip. Kristy and her crew had all left on Thursday, Mom was exhausted and none of us wanted to do anything yesterday so we made a maintenance day out of it. Mom was too tired again today, she didn't want to go with us, but had a beauty appointment so we couldn't take her car. We were able to rent on for $16 with unlimited milage so that's what we did, it was one of those Chevy's that looks something like a PT Cruiser.
We got a late start so by the time we got to Sonora in the gold country it was time for lunch and then we decided to do some junkin'. Sonora has some neat stores. It, of course, is a historic 1849 gold town, but is fast becoming a tourist place. I found several old albums (I collect old folk music LP's, I seldom pay of $3, I got one good Nittly Gritty Dirt Band (Uncle Charlie) and one called Santa Cruz Mountains featuring local folk singers/singer songwriter from the Big Sur Area which was a folk singer hippie hangout back in the 60's. Note:the large Big Sur fire which had burned over 125,000 acres this year is finally mostly contained. Also found a Celtic Harp album, New Christy Minstrels Albumn and a good 12 String Guitar album featuring various 12 string virtuosa such as Glen Campbell and Pete Seeger.
Then we headed up to Angels Camp. On the way we went through a little settlement of maybe 5 houses called Carson Hill where the biggest gold nugget ever found in California was discovered back in the gold rush days, 190 pounds. All the little towns here have interesting histories. Most people probably know Angels Camp as the town the Hells angels took over during one wild weekend in the '60's and were then driven out by law enforcement backed up by the CHP. It is also an historic '49er town whose claim to fame is a story written about it by Mark Twain called The Calavaras Frog Jumping Contest. The Frog Jumping Contest is still an annual event held in May. When I was in High School in the '50's our Explorer troop used to come to Angles Camp every year to camp out, fish for trout, and catch a frog to enter into the contest. Frogs from all over the world participate, its a big deal, and one year we won 5th place. How it works is that the bewildered frog is placed on a low stage in the middle with the audience all around, his handler then stomps as loud and hard as he can on the stage, right behind the frog to frighten him and make him jump and then they measure and the sum of the first three hops to determine the distance jumped. There is no art to it just blind luck. We did some 'junkin in Angels Camp and headed up to the mountains.
My original intention was to make a day trip in the mountains, going over three passes, Ebbits, Monitor and Sonora. This is a long trip from Modesto since you would end up in Nevada when you came out of the mountains on the east side. One of my nices, Ashley Barker, my sister Sue's daughter lives in Gardnerville, Nev and teaches school near Markleeville just over Ebbets Pass, in California on the Nevada line. However, we got such a late start, I had trouble renting a car in Modesto without a California drivers license and with our junkin' side trips, we decided just to go over Ebbets Pass.
This way across the Sierra through to Ebbets Pass, now Highway 4, was actually discovered by Jedediah Smith, a fur trapper and scout, reputed to be the first American to cross the mountains into California, via Ebbets Pass, in about 1827. The original road was first built into this country the 1850's as an emigrant trail for covered wagons and was actually considered as an early route for the transcontinental railroad, but which was actually built farther north near Donner Pass. This road didn't go over the actual Ebbets Pass, it was too steep, but detoured north from Hermit Meadow to Kit Carson Pass, the next pass to the north. The road over the pass was built later, I think in the 1870's, during the silver boom in Nevada to link the California gold fields with the Virginia City area of Nevada where the boom was taking place. When you travel through the Sierra Mountains it is hard to believe that wagon trains actually crossed though these passes, they are all very steep, rocky and forbidding. In many places, before they built roads they they had to hoist wagons and horses in slings and pullys up the steep cliffs and rock faces to make the crossing. Most of these passes had one main pass like Ebbets or Carson or Sonora, over the easternmost ridge of the Sierra, called the backbone or spine, where the mountains may easily reach 12-14,000 feet, then descend into a valley meadow and almost immediately they climb up to one or more secondary passes, slighly lower in elevation until they reached the foothills 50-60 miles later.
The Ebbets Road has two such passes, The California Grade Summit Pass at over 8,000 feet, and then it drops into Hermit Meadow at 7,000 and then back up over Ebbets at over 8,700 east then down into the Great Basin of Nevada. Angels Camp, our starting point, is probably at about 1500 feet elevation and so it is a good climb to Ebbet Pass over a 50 miles stretch of beautiful mixed conifer forests. Many of the Jeffery Pines farther up were over 6 feet in diameter. There was a procession of logging trucks going through Sonora with big pine and incense cedar logs, sometimes 10 or less logs per load they were so big. We took some pictures for Michael our logger son. The forests we passed below 7,000 feet were not old virgin forests, these had been logged through in the past, but were still very nice. The US Forest Service had recently thinned them out to protect from fire danger, this is a fairly new forest initiative created by the Bush Administration that many felt was just another way to rape the forest for corporate interests. But I was surprised as an old forester how good a job they did. They left a good mix of ages and species and did not thin too heavily.
We got to the Ebbets Pass Summit at about 6:00 pm, we made a lot of stops for pictures, there are some beautiful alpine lakes and mountain vistas on the way. And it was very slow driving, some of the way is over very narrow almost one lane roads (these in the very steep places are the original roads), very steep (27% grades), with little to no shoulder or guard rails between the car and the hundreds of feet of shear cliff dropping off into the canyons below. Gerri was fairly terrified, I was to busy driving to think about it. At one point there were two cows in the middle of the one lane steep road. This country is grazed, that is one of the multiple uses allowed by the Forest Service. The cows are trucked up in the spring from foothill ranches to graze the lush grasses in the alpine medows, and trucked back down before winter. They are allowed to roam free. These had cowbells around their necks. When I was a kid they actually drove the cows up and back to the summer ranges in the high mountains in the middle of the roads. We would have to follow the drive until the cowboys manuvered them out of the way so we could pass. That probably stopped in the early '50's. It was a great trip. We drove over the east side of the Pass to a little lake took some pictures and returned to Mom's. We got a taco (fish, yum)at Del Taco, I like Del Taco better than Taco Bell and got back to Modesto at about 9:30 pm, another great day (any day in the mountains is a great day).
July 24 We decided to head east from Modesto to the west There was a lot of smoke in the Valley when we started, still a lot of fires raging to the north, but as we passed above 1500-2000 feet it began to disipate and it turned into a beautiful day. Temperatures were in the middle 90's in the foothills and 80's in the mountains. side of the valley where the Inner Coast Range Mountains start. The Coast Range is different from the Sierras on the east side of the Valley, not as high 6,000 feet at the highest compared to 14,000 in the Sierra, and is influenced by maritime air from the Pacific,unlike the Sierra. Also much of it lies within the fog belt with fog rolling in and out on a regular basis. I went to High School on the Penninsula below San Franciso which is in the Outer Coast Range, and remember the fog well. The Coast Range is divided into two ranges throughout much of central California, the Inner Coast Range and the Outer Cosrst Range with various valleys lying in between them. The Outer Coast Range encompasses the fog belt and is where the Redwoods grow, although fog at times comes all the way in to the Inner Range.
We were going to Livemore, a sprawling town in the picturesqe Livermore Valley, separated from the Bay Area by a range of Inner Coast range hills. When I was young the Livermore Valley was ranching country, but now it is a bedroom community for the Bay Area. But there are a good number of wineries there and in the eastern part of the Valley the Livermore Valley Planning Commission has reserved significant acres, thousands of acres actually, to remain perpetually in agriculture. California is ahead of the rest of the US in this. This land can never be developed, and is now mostly in high value vineyards, horse farms and some cattle operations. Even though there is much urban sprawl, there is still this aesthetic component that makes this area special.
The drive from Modesto takes maybe an hour. As we left the Valley heading east we took the Coral Hollow Road one of the few remaining passes through the inner range where the roads haven't be leveled and widened. The hills were golden, covered with grass and dotted with oak trees with cottonwoods in the mostly dry branches. The road followed Coral Hollow Creek along the creek bottom until it climbed up to the pass and dropped down into the Livermore Valley. Along the way we passed an earthquake fault that follows the western edge of the Central Valley where the mountains start. the only reason I know it about it was when I was in college we took a geology field trip there and were shown the telltale earthquake marks on the rocks at the fault line. Otherwise it would be hard to tell. Also there is a California State Park there called a Small Vehicle Recreation Area (SVRA) which extends from the creek bottom up the steep hills to the top, several thousand acres I am sure. It cost $5 general admission and you can take your trail bikes and quads there and ride to your hearts content. The hills are scarred with trails, but it is better to give them an area to do it than having them ride illegally everywhere destroying the fragile ecosystems as they go. Also along Coral Hollow Creek is the University of California's Lawence Radiation Laboratory's Field Experiment Station. I don't know what all they do there, but when I was at Berkeley, Edward Teller, the Father of the Atomic Bomb, was working there doing research on sub atomic particles. so that should tell you something. I took a physics class from him in 1964.
We went to Livermore for two reasons:to eat at a really great pizza place and visit a winery. The City of Livermore probably has the best urban renewal that I have ever seen anywhere, the downtown area is beautiful and very inviting. Not like the old rustic cowtown I remember, I liked it too. The pizza place, Bruno's Italian Restaurant, is located on the main drag. My brother and I found it maybe 10 years ago and we all go back when ever we can. They make the best pizza's I have ever had. Kristy, Mark and the boys agreed and they are pizza affecionados. The half moon picture that I painted in the window frame that is hanging on the left back wall in our store was inspired there.
I had planned to go to the Concannon winery, but they didn't have tours so we went to the Wente Family Winery instead. It used to be called the Wente Brother's Winery. It is the oldest continuous family operated winery in California, now being run by 4th and 5th generation Wentes. They just celebrated their 125th anniversay. There was a California Historical Plaque at the entrance and right by the door before we entered the tasting room was a poster advertising the concerts they were holding there this summer. I was very surprised at the quality of entertainment that comes there to perform, this is not a big place, their concert area holds hundreds not thousands of customers. Last week Lenyrd Skinnard was there, Chigago, Willie Nelson, Clint Black and other superstars have or will be performing there this summer. The concert includes a gourmet meal, wine tasting, I imagine tickets are out of sight. We got there just in time to take the winery tour, we got to see it all, neat, and then to the wine tasting. For $10 you could taste 5 of their top quality wines, Kristie did that one, for $5 their estate wines, I did that one, and then you could taste 5 of their everyday wines for free, Mom, Gerri and Mark did that one. It was a lot of fun and we all shared what we were given, so we got to taste it all. We bought a couple of bottles of wine, two different Zinfandels (Zin is my favorite California wine). The kids even enjoyed it, no wine for them of course, but the history and the ambiance touched them. It was a great day.
July 23 Yesterday was the funeral for Rob Lyon, one of our regular customers who took his life last week. Rob was a good guy, very friendly, full of life, You always knew when he was in the store he engaged everyone. I don't know why he decided he had enough, just a real sad situation, he will be missed by many. Our condolences go out to his mother, stepsister and his many friends.
July 22 Thought I would go back and cover the Modesto Farmer's Market. It has been in existance for a long time, my Mom goes there a lot to buy fresh produce and things. Unlike the Festhalle Market Platz in Cullman the Modesto Farmers Market happens twice a week on Thursdays and Saturdays from 7-12. The City closes a block downtown in back of the library and that is where the farmers set up their booths. There are 20 or more booths selling fresh vegetable, produce, nuts, whatever in a variety we can't imagine in Cullman. There are Anglo farmers of Italian and Greek ancestry, Hispanic farmers, Laotion and other Asian farmers, so you can imagine the variety, it is a worldwide cornacopia featuring many exotic varieties of foods. Then there are the specialty booths selling coffee, cheescakes, kettle corn, exotic pastries, goat cheese, local honey, dried fruit and much more. Much of the produce and fruit and even pastries is certified organic. As in Cullman all the produce must be local, grown by the seller, and they are inspected to insure compliance.
In our store we sell Sciabica olive oil (pronounced Sha-beak-ah), the best I know of bar none, it is shipped from Modesto worldwide by the Sciabica family a third generation Sicilian family that brought olive trees with them when they came over. Mr Sciabica, now in his 90's was manning a booth selling his olive oil and his wife's olive oil cookbooks. I was glad to see him and talked to him for a while. Around his neck he was wearing a gold medal that his oil had recently won in a worldwide competition. He was very proud of it. I plan to go back Saturday and take a picture of him and his medal. I bought a small bottle of his orange olive oil to use in pancake batter, it is so good. I cooked orange buttrmilk pancakes this morning for the crew using it. He showed me his new lime olive oil, he was really proud of that, he is the best salseman for his pruducts for sure. I will have to buy some to sell at the store. We bought some good stuff at the market and when we got home Gerri made a blackberry pie from the great blackberries we bought.
July 21 Yesterday Kristy my daughter and her family went to Yosemite National Park which is not far from where my Mom lives in north central California. They lucked out and were able to get accomodations in Yosemite Valley, the most beautiful place on earth, at Camp Curry. They were able to rent a tent cabin. Camp Curry is a private business that caters to tourists and has been doing so in the Valley since the 1870's or so on the same site. They rent tent cabins, serve food and provide stage entertainment as well. It is quite an operation and very popular. We usually camped in the regular campground in tents or just sleeping bags, but i have stayed in Camp Curry. So I say that Kristy and her family lucked out getting accomodations there on a one day notice because 4 million people visit Yosemite every year and you may normally have to reserve a campsite anywhere in the Valley six months ahead of time.
They had a good time, they visited Glacier Point, a granite outcrop 3,000 feet above the Valley floor which grants a wonderful view of the High Sierra back country and a superb view of Half Dome one of the dominant rock outcroping in the Valley if not in the world. If you have ever seen a picture of Yosemite National Park it has probably had Half Dome in it. They walked to Vernal Fall, a spectacular waterfall near Camp Curry, and climbed the Mist Trail which goes right up the side of the fall, several hundred feet and is almost always clothed in the mist generated by the drop of the water to the rocks below. I have done that climb several times and it is spectacular.
Today was the first day we were able to meet my sister Sue and exchange cars, she had doctor appointments in Southern California late last week, she is recovering from cancer. When we were at her house in Bishop, on the east side of the Sierra, last week the waterpump went out on my Mom's car and we had to drive Sue VW bug back over the mountains (we reached 9,945 feet elevation at Tioga Pass in Yosemite) to Mom's house. Of course I didn't mind that. But both Mom and Sue wanted their own cars back. So we decided to meet part way which put us in Yosemite, but not in the Valley part where Sue and Mark and family had spent the previous day and night, but in the High Country near Tenaya Lake. We had Kristy and them meet us near the north entry way to the Park, at Crane Flat, and drove to Tenaya Lake to meet Sue and exchange cars. I described this leg of the trip in my blog last week, so I won't repeat it here. When I met Kristy and Mark at Crane Flat the first thing I asked was how did they enjoy the Valley and Mark's first word was awsome. Mark is a man of few words so this said it all.
We met Sue at Tenaya lake and ate a picnic lunch, sat under those beautiful old growth Lodgepole Pines next to the Lake looking at 12-13,000 foot mountains all around us. I wonder how I ever left that country. Tenaya Lake is a glacial lake formed during the ice age, most of Yosemites classic features were formed by glaciers sculpting the massive granite mountains into wonderful domes, cliffs, and lakes: the likes of which exist no whrere else in the world. The kids went swimming in the frigid water while we ate and talked. We were at 8,000 feet and the thin air was bothering Mom, she had a hard time catching her breath, so we had to leave and get her to a lower elevation. My sister Sue had a campground rented for two days just up the road at Twolumne Meadows , elevation 8600 feet, just her, and was going on a wilderness hike tomorrow by herself. She is very self reliant and has lived and hiked in these woods most of her life. In fact she is living my life, the life I always thought I would live. But you never know where life will lead you, but it does usually is a great and exciting adventure wherever you end up.
So we headed home passing from 9,000 feet back to sea level in about 75 miles. I stopped to take some, I hope, great tree pictures. I am fascinated by the gnarled ancient trees that live on the rocky outcrops and mountain tops of the Sierras, especially the junipers. My early experiences in these mountains probably is why one of my hobbies is bonsai trees. I have been growing (and Killing) bonsai for nearly 50 years. So far on this trip we have been to the High Country twice and I hope we can sneak in two more trips. We'll see.
July 20 I wish I could give an update regarding the three concerts we have had at the store this month while I was gone. Larry Woelhart, Mike Thomas and Roy Crawford with Scott Miller all performed. From the accounts I got from Julie, Erin and Josh everything went well and we had good houses for all the concerts. I am sorry I missed them as these are some of my favorite groups. I hope they will all come back.
July 20 My daughter Kristy, her husband Mark and three kids, Ryan 9, Tanner 6 and Sadie 2 flew in Tuesday from Pensacola. They stayed in the Modesto area for a couple of days visiting Mom and on Friday we went to the Gold Country. Everybody knows that there was a Gold Rush in California in 1849, without which this might still be a Mexican Territory. Many of the events of that day occurred not too far from here in the foothills of the Sierra, where many became millionaires and many others didn't. In fact when my Irish ancestors came over in the 1840's to escape the potato famine, my great grandfather came to California with gold fever, but didn't strike it rich. Instead he became an onion farmer. There is no family history about those days, but he came over with 6 brothers and very little is known about their whereabouts since. We were up in Sonora a few years ago, one of the gold camps not far from where Mom lives now, originally settled by miners from Mexico hence the name,and we found a grave in the old cemetery for a John Carroll Keefe, which is my father name, who died in 1849, no cause given. Undoubtedly he is an unrecorded member of our clan, since that is a name I think has been handed down in the family.
We decided to go to the Gold Country to let the kids pan for gold in one of the creeks there. When I was a kid we used to go panning and actually found color on many occassions, color being the term used for the gold flakes that appeared at the bottom of the gold pan after shaking and swirling out the lighter material. The gold was found in vast quantities in California creeks in the 1840's, billions of dollars worth (in Jamestown, one of many mining towns in the area, where we went gold panning they estimate the total gold recovered there to be 9 billion dollars worth). Miners eventually realized that all the gold in the creeks originally came from rich veins of gold in the quartz rock uphill that had eroded over millions of years. So the search was on for the Mother Lode, the mother of all gold veins, where all the California gold originally came from. So this area of California in the western Sierra foothills is also called the Mother Lode Country. They never found a Mother Lode, but did find many rich veins of gold in the quartz deposits and there still are active gold mines in the area, there is one outside of Sonora. When we were kids my brother and I would go into the Sonora foothills and find small, old abandoned mines and go in them to find quartz to break apart with our rock hammers seaching for gold, but we never found any. All those old mines have been closed now and sealed off.
We drove to Jamestown, a State Park and restored miners town from the 1850's not far from Sonora. It is really neat. We got there in time for the 11:00 tour and learned alot about the history there. We roamed through the old town for a while, there is even a coffee house, Brown's Coffee and Tea House, where we enjoyed coffee and sasparilla, an old timey soda from the gold rush days that tastes something like root beer. They make it in Jamestown and it is supposed to replicate the authentic drink. In how many old cowboy movies did the hero walk into the bar where everybody else was drinking straight whiskey and order a sasparilla? The gold panning area is just outside the town and consists of two lines of wooden flumes with a layer of dirt on the bottom and running water flowing through it. I have two gold pans, but they are in Alabama, so we would have had to buy or rent some, not cheap and nowadays it is more difficult to find open streams to pan in anyway unlike when I was a kid (lawyers have ruined much), so we decided to let the kids pan in the fake stream. It was a little bit of a scam, but the kids wouldn't have enjoyed it any better had it been Sutter's Creek where gold was first discovered in 1848, they had a ball.
For $8.00 you got a gold pan filled with dirt and a lesson from an old codger who looked like he could have been in the original gold rush. But he was a great actor and he taught the kids how to pan and while he was there they panned the first load of dirt that came with the pan and lo and behold (I'm sorry you are supposed to say "eureka" when you find gold) there were several good sized gold flakes at the bottom of the pan. Of course that inspired them. He showed them how to lift the gold flakes from the pan and put them in the small tube they were given to take home and they were good to go. Of course they never did pan out that much color again from the dirt at the bottom of the flume, the dirt we bought with the pan had been "seeded" with gold flakes (they guaranteed that you would find gold, and everyone does), but they did find some more gold and some garnets and torquoise pieces that were in flume dirt. They panned for more than an hour. I even did some panning, it was great fun.
On the way back we stopped at a coffee house in Sonora, I have been to 14 coffee house so far on this trip. So far we fare very well in comparison with the best (and I am trying to be honest).
July 15 The weather in the Central Valley has moderated. When we left to go to the mountains it was pushing 110 with humidities at 15-25%. The mountains were in the 70's and 80's with 90's in the high desert below about 5,000 feet. Today in the Valley it is in the middle 90's with a Delta Breeze. The San Joquien Delta is just north of us, it is where the rivers that flow out of the western Sierra (San Joquien, Twolmne, Stanislaus) converge to form the American River which then flows to the San Francisco Bay. The convergence is a broad wetland, marshy, full of wildfowl and fish. Much of it was filled in for developoment back when nobody knew any better, but it is protected now. In the summer a breeze originates there and blows south through the San Joquien Valley, its called the Delta Breeze, and makes an other wise hot, dry climate very bearable. We are waiting for my daughter Kristie, her husband Mark and three kids to arrive at Mom's today from Pensacola for a 9 day stay.
July 14 We started the day with a late brunch at Shatt's Bakery Company in Bishop. This is an amazing place. They make all kinds of fresh breads, pastrys, desserts you name it along with a great sandwhich, dessert and coffee bar. Their bread is stacked in unwrapped round loafs in racks, maybe 10 kinds, all fresh baked. Their signature bread is their Shepherds Bread and the Honi Squaw Bread. We bought several loaves and some pecan cookies which were a treat. I ate a turkey sandwhich on Shepherds Bread with avacodo, cheese, alfalfa sprouts, lettuce and tomato. Wonderful. But the great thing was that I had a choice between white and dark meat turkey. They had fresh oven baked turkeys right there and sliced the meat off of them. A really great place and a surprise to find something like that in Bishop. When I was young there were still Basque shepherds in the eastern Sierra and Great Basin through Nevada and Idaho, and probably throughout the west wherever sheep were grazed. The Basque people came from the Pyreneese Mountains between Spain and France and found a niche here in the late 1800's to the recent past. The Basque culture is a part of the rural mountain west and I wouldn't be surprised if Shatt's Bakery is tapped into it.
We said our goodbys outside of Shatt's and Gerri, Mom and I headed back over the Sierra to the Central Vally. I was driving Sue's VW bug as Mom's car lost a water pump going up into the mountains yesterday and won't be fixed until next week. On the way we stopped at the Tioga Fuel Mart to say goodby to Rob, Sue's husband, and ate lunch. Then over Tioga Pass at 9,945 feet elevation and through the Yosemite high country, always an inspiring place. It was fairly crowded with fisherman, rock climbers, hikers and sightseers. I took a lot of pictures but it was still smokey. Then down the western slope through the golden foothills of the Mother Lode Country and finally into the Central Valley. We were at Mom's house in Modesto by 5:30. I hope we can get back to the high country one more time before we leave.
July 13 My nephew Tim cooked breakfast, scrambled eggs with cheese, avacado, onion, garlic and salsa wrapped in a tortilla, really good. Then my sister Sue took us into town to a coffee house, The Black Sheep Espresso Bar which specializes in organic fair tade coffees as we do, and then up into the mountains west of Bishop as far a car could go. Mom was with us and at 89 she can't venture too far away form the car. There are three man made lakes there and a very small town called Aspendale. Quite scenic, but the smoky haze, although better than yesterday, was a killer for great pictures. But the wildflowers made up for that. We saw purple and white Shooting Stars, bright orange Tiger Lillies, gold, red and pink, even yellow Indian Paint Brush, red Penstimon, water Irises and many more. I bought a book and I'll share the names later after I learn them. But they were everywhere, in full bloom, it was wonderful.
That afternoon Sue, Tim, Gerri and I loaded up on two Quads (4 wheelers)and a Rhino (2 seated 4 wheeler)and headed out for the back country. Tim and I had the quads and Sue and Gerri rode in the Rhino. We rode about an hour and a half through sagebrush desert and some Quaking Aspen and Jeffery Pine forests and Sue and Gerri headed back to tend to some business with Mom. There were thunderheads building up over the mountains and we could here thunder rolling in the back country. Soon we even got a little rain, barely a drizzle by Alabama standards, but Tim called it a good rain. We hardly got wet. Then Tim and I rode for another 3 1/2 hours along old back country trails. The rules for 4 wheelers are strict and it looks like they are obeyed. There are trails you can ride, but you cannot stray off of them. We rode over 50 miles on our trek. I wouldn't have believed I could have done that, but my adrenalin was pumping hard and fast. We climbed up to 9,000 feet to a ridge overlooking Aspendale and looking into the High Country, the backbone of the Sierra Crest, peaks averaging from 12-14,000 feet high. On the other side of those peaks is 1,000,000 acres of wilderness. I haven't seen that wilderness since I last hiked there in the late 1960's, but I have very fond memories. The little rain cleared the atmosphere of much of the smoke and we could really see the mountains and valley. It was so great. We not only rode through meadows of wildflowers, in profuse bloom, but even the moss and lichens were covered with flowers. It was incredible. I couldn't take my camera due to the dust at the lower elevations, but Tim had a small one and took pictures for me. I hope I can share them on this website somehow. No matter what we do after this, this will be the highlight of the trip: alone in the back country, miles from the nearest people, wild land, we saw no one else the whole time, exploring forests, streams and even old mines. This whole country is dotted with the remenants of old mining camps, long gone. Tim thought that they were after Tungston, but not too much farther north is the Virginia City and Bodie Ghost Town area where siver was king in the 1860's. By the time we got back Sue, Gerri and Mom were about to call out the rescue folks. I was on such a high, not a Rocky Mountain High, but a High Sierra High, which is much better I assure you. I could live here. In fact this is where I thought I would spend my career, but when the South beckoned I went. I only went for two years, but stayed a life time. I never regreted it, but today made me second guess the choices I made some 40 years ago. On the way back we stopped at a nice waterfall in a little hollow (canyon here?) where I fell in the creek. We stopped at a world class boulder climbing area to saw some petroglyphs, maybe I'll attempt climbing some other time. This was a trip back in time for me, when I was young and the Sierra's were my playground. Thanks Tim for taking me back and letting me relive a little of that. Sue had an echalada casserola cooking when we got back it was great. Another great day.
July 12 I have had mega problems getting my blog out due to major problems with internet access at both Mom's and my sister Sue's. I have tried this several times to no avail, but here I go again. My sister Sue lives in an oasis just outside of Bishop in the Owens Valley of California. The Owens Valley runs down the east side of the Sierra and is bordered on the east by the White Mountains, reaching over 14,000 feet and, of course the Sierra on the west with several 14,000 foot peaks in the area including Mt whitney the tallest mountain in the lower 48. From her house you can see the Whites and several Sierra Peaks including Mt Tom, over 13,000 and Mt Humphries in the same range and many other peaks which none of us could name. Her house is just below 5,000 feet.
Bishop is a small town of about 3500 people, at about 4,000 feet in elevation and is home to one of the two Paiute/Shoshone Indian Reservations in the area, the other is near Lee Vining 60 miles or so north. These were the indiginous peoples of the area and have in the past been very poverty stricken as are most of the indiginous tribes in the west. However now they now have a casino on theri land outside of Bishop featuring the lowest priced gas station in the area $4.63/gal which both do a lot of business. Hopefully they will manage their money well and, like the Creeks and Choctaws of Alabama and Mississippi, use the money for education, infastructure and health needs, things which in the long term will pay off well for them. Bishop is surrounded by high desert country, very dry, with sagebrush as the major vegetative type, trees typically come in at around 6-7000 feet in elevation, usually Jeffery Pine with Lodgepole coming in around 8,000. It is dry, probably less than 10 inches of rain annually, but it has a lot of water running through it due to runoff from the great mass of mountains that surround it which typically receive major amounts of snow yearly, 15 feet is not uncommon. The snowmelt recharges the many creeks that flow down from the mountains and empty into the Owens River in the midst of the Owens Valley. So there should be lush farms and pastures here like in other similar places in California, but there are not.
The history here is interesting. In the early 1900's (I think around 1915 or so) a man named Mulholland, who is famous in the annals of the water wars of the west, and who worked for the city of Los Angeles, a man of much vision, came up to the Owens Valley and bought up all the water rights for LA. He bought water rights for LA all over the west all the way to the Colorado River. The locals signed contracts and the large towns like Bishop receive water to function, but there is no water available for farming, industry or other uses. An incedible story. If not for their vision nearly 100 years ago to obtain water, the city of LA could not have grown to where it is today. Obviously Mr Mullholand is revered by some and hated by others, but that's what happened. I mentioned that my sister lives in an oasis in the midst of this desert community that is Bishop. This area is just north of Death Valley which should say something about the climate here. Sue moved to Bishop three years ago from Mammoth, 45 miles north and at 8,000 feet in elevation, because they were tired of the snow. She still commutes there to work. They bought a house in an 80 acre neighborhood 4-5 miles outside of Bishop that is allowed 1,000,000 gallons of water a day, free, as part of that negotiation with LA so long ago. They water their expansive lawn three times a day, that is the only way you can have a lawn, flowers and garden here in this harsh climate, as do their neighbors on this 80 adcre oasis. Nobody seems to know why this is the case. It would be interesting to check the records and see who lived in the area then. It must have been some kind of political deal.
Sue showed us around Bishop, it is a nice town, right on Hiway 395, the main hiway up the east side of California. The town benefits from the ski tourist economy that has become Mammoth Mountain in the last 15 years and is a gateway for Yosemite National Park. Mammoth is the ski slope of choice for LA some 200 miles away and its population swells to 30,000 or more during the winter. Also this area is world famous for rock climbing, mountain climbing, trout fishing, hiking, camping and more. It is considered on of the 5 best place to retire for an active retirement there is so much to do here because of the proximity to the mountains. We got coffee at a local coffee house, The Looney Bean, and headed up to The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest high on White Mountain. The Bristlecone Pines are the oldest living things in the world, some being over 5,000 years old. I have been there twice before, but being a forester by profession, I can't turn down an opportunity to see these wonderful trees again.
We drove down the Owens River Valley to Big Pine and turned east to the Mountains. We crossed the Owens River, in the South it would be called a creek, and not a particularly big one. Then we headed up to 10,000 feet on an old one lane Forest Service Road. Because of the smoke from the northern California forest fires we couldn't even see the Owens Valley from there, much less the crest of the Sierra on the other side. From that vantage point we should have been able to see Mt Whitney, but not today much to our mutual dissapointment. The Bristlecone forest begins at 10,000 and continues along the crest of the White Mountains up to White Mountain at 14,000 feet, about 15 miles in length. We only had time to stop at one grove. I got some great pictures. The Bristlecones grow on a dolomitic soil which is very unfertile, but it competes well there. In fact there is very little competition from anything else, little else will grow here. But, in the sage meadows surrounding the forest there were a tremendous variety of wildflowers in full bloom. We hit the wildflower season perfectly all over the Sierras and White Mountains. We saw purple Lupines, red and orange Indian Paint Brush and many more beautiful flowers. One of the more interesting facts about the Bristlecones, among many interesting facts, is that those that grow in the better protected hollows grow straight and tall but don't live as long as their gnarled brothers eaking out a meager existance in extremely adverse conditions on mountain sides in thin soils exposed to snow, ice, and blizzard winds. An interesting paradox. When we got back to Bishop, my nephew Tim has arrived from Sant Barbara for a few days. My sisters son, raised in these mountains and an avid climber and hiker as well as surfer. My brother in law Rod was a surfer. We all went out to eat at a local Mexican restaurant, it was a good day.
July 11 We left Modesto around 1 pm heading over the Sierra Mountains to meet my sister in Lee Vining at the gourmet gas station my brother in law manages just below the Tioga Pass exit on the east side of Yosemite Nation Park. We gassed up at $4.46/gal stopped at a local farmers market and stocked up on fruit and vegatables. I am shocked everytime I go out of Modesto on the northeast side at how many new homes have been built and how much farm land has gone under concrete, this time was no different. But there are still thousands of acres of almonds, walnuts, peaches and grapes surrounding town on all four sides that it is still an incredible food basket. Once we got through Oakdale, about 10 miles or so outside of town on the east side,called the the Cowboy Capital of the US, more rodeo championships have been won by cowboys from this town than any other in the country, we were back in rural California. Outside of Oakdale which is on the Stanislaus River, which still has annual salmon runs which terminate several miles more upstream at Knights Ferry, we begin to move into the foothills of the Sierra. This is some of the land famed for the 1849 gold rush, it is still called the Mother Lode Country, and the old gold rush towns are still here: Angels Camp, Chineese Camp, Sonora, mostly tourist areas now. As we entered the foothills we traveked through a golden grassland, actually an oak savanna grass dotted with gnarled blue, black and live oak. Pasture land now, although I saw a new vineyard there, winemaking is moving into the western Sierra foothills. About 20 miles out of Modesto near Jamestown, we had to decide which pass to go over, Sonora, Monitor or Tioga. We decided on Tioga in Yosemite National Park as it was closer. Yosemite is 80 miles or so from Mom's house.
We started in Modesto at sea level and Tioga Pass is at 10,000 feet (actually 9950) so we had to climb 10,000 feet in a little over 50 miles. What is so great about this is that we move up through several forest ecosystems and watching the vegetation change is fascinating to me as an old forester. Having received my forestry training at Berkeley we studied these same varied ecosystems in great detail. As we moved through 2000 feet, the landscape was dominated by Digger Pine named after the Digger indians who inhabited this area and ate the pine nuts, and Blue Oak, then just below 3000 feet Ponderosa Pine comes in and then Incense Cedar, Douglas Fir and farther up Sugar Pine. White Fir is also a component of the ecosystem. This is the Mixed Conifer ecosystem of the western Sierra. Many trees over 200 ft tall and over 300 years old, with some pine up to 7 feet in diameter. A very valuable resource. Fire is its main enemy and fire scars are everywhere, including an old 80,000 acre fire which doesn't seem to have healed up much yet. But most of the old burns have new trees coming up. As we move through 6000 feet Red Fir begins to take over along with Jeffery Pine in both pure and mixed stand. These can be massive trees as well. Near 8,000 feet we begin to get pure stands of Lodgepole Pine, not as large but often straight as an arrow. Red fir is still there in pure stands as well. On the domes and rock outcrops above 8,000 feet we get various junipers and other pines such as foxtails, whitebark, limber and even western white pine. Many look very grotesque and picturesque in these harsh microclimates. At this elevation there are many rocky mountain tops in evidence and beautiful alpine meadows filled with wildflowers in full bloom now. We passed through Twolomne Meadows a major jumping off place in Yosemite for backpacking trips down the John Muir Trail and others. It is at about 8500 feet. When I was younger I made several incursions into the surrounding wilderness area from the Twolomne Meadows staging area, often for weeks at a time. An interesting side note: Twolomne Meadows is not as large now as it was 50 years ago due to the encrachment of trees. At some point, if it is to remain a meadow, fire will need to be reintroduced carefully into the ecoststem. From Twolomne we headed up another 1500 feet in a few miles to the Tioga Pass summit. From there it was a short steep downhill drive to Lee Vining where my sister and brother in law were waiting at The Tioga Gas Mart home of Tioga Toomy's Whoa Nelli Deli a gormet deli compete with New York chef (Toomy), an incredible place. When we got there a party was going on.
The place was packed, with tourists, Yosemite workers and local folks. We got there at 5:45 and a bluegrass/folk band (to my surprise complerte with clawhammer banjo, didn't expect that here and he was good), The Trespassers from over the mountain in El Portal near the east gateway to Yosemite, started playing at 6. The stage was outdoors with a highmountain backdrop. The store is at 7,000 feet and the mountains in the back rose to 12-13,000. While the band played a beautiful sunset took place. A really neat setting. We ate the fish tacos in Mango sauce, wow! and sat at a table on the grass listening to the band and talking to Sue and Rob and some of their friends. Of course Rob was busy running the place so we didn't see a whole lot of him. At one point there were at least 50 people in line for food with the chef and 3 helpers working as hard as they could. They sold over 600 meals that day. They sometimes gross in one day what we do in 2 1/2 months at the coffee house. I guess the old saw "location, location, location, stupid" is true. Later on many in the crowd of 2-300 started buckdancing and having fun on the grass "dance floor" in front of the band. The crowd was mostly young, but with a nice complement of other ages. After three "Mammoth Mountain" microbrew ambers (Gerri had the mango margaritas), she and I got up to dance. We stayed in front of the stage and buckdanced for at least an hour, it was really fun. We left at 9:30 for the hour drive down the mountains to my sister's house outside of Bishop. Her house is at 4000 feet. It was a really great day.
July 10 I need to correct an error that I had written earlier: I mentioned that there were 25 active fires in California now, but the real number is 325 according to the News last night. The smoke and haze are much worse today and we are under an unhealthy air alert. Of course the temperature being 110 doesn't help. Today we visited a couple more coffee houses in Modesto: the Lollipop Cafe and Cafe Genowa. Still haven't been to the Queen Bee, my favorite, but which is under new management. Both coffee houses were empty, we were the only customers, not a good sign. Lollipop has been open for two years and is operated by the owner, an older women of Sicilian birth, 50's I would guess, who has a helper come in for lunch. She is open 12 hours a day. She is the barrista and cook and serves breakfast and other stuff, a daunting job. She wondered how long it would be before she made a profit, she hoped three years, I tried not to dampen her enthusiam. It was a very small shop, catering to walk ins, with three other active coffee houses within a few blocks. This is the same area where two of the others I tried to visit yesterday had just closed. An awful lot of competition I would think. Genowa is in a strip mall,in a placed covered with strip malls, along a busy area north of downtown with no competition anywhere close. But it is hard to find. I know it has been there for two or three years. The lone barrista seemed very bored.
We also went to Yesterdays Books, a used bookstore, which is without doubt, the best bookstore I have ever found anyplace. They also sell online. We killed two hours there I know. You can find books there, and I have many times, that you can't find anyplace else. I got a great book on Wildflowers of the Smokey Mountains with many really great full color pictures for $4.00. Gerri got some great cookbooks. I got another on fishes of the United States with color photos, I have been looking for one like this for my water monitoring work, especially since I found the darter in Blevins creek that Auburn wants me to trap and photograph. Yesterdays is one of our highlights when we come to Modesto.
I started trimming Mom's persimmon tree at 6 pm and it was still 108 in the shade in her backyard, but the humidity was down to only 13% today. Not too bad if you drink enough water.
Later today we trek over the Sierras to visit Sue for two or three days in Bishop. We will meet them at the store in Lee Vining that Rob manages, they have a bluegrass band there this evening. Yesterday the owner, Rob's boss and good friend, was seriously burned over 90% of his body filling a propane tank for a tourist at the store. A freak, preventable accident. He was medivaced to a local hospital and will be transported to a burn unit probably in Davis as soon as possible. He suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns. They plan to keep the store open for now, it is a major tourist stop for people coming or going into Yosemite National Park the back way over Tioga Pass. The store is at the bottom of the grade. A very sad situation. So we probably won't see much of Rob as he will be the defacto owner now until Dennis recovers which by all accounts, will take a long time. I don't know how we will go, usually we go through Yosemite, but I would like to try a different way, maybe over Monitor and Ebbits Passes, but I don't think Mom wants to go that way, roads are too narrow and winding. Probably Gerri wouldn't like that part, but the scenery is breathtaking. I haven't been over these pass in decades and am chomping at the bit to do it, but we'll see. In the old days, when I was a kid, many of these passes were one lane roads and the rule was that the car coming uphill had the right of way and the car coming down had to back up until the car coming up could get around. You had to honk at every curve in case there was another car coming out of sight. We had to carry extra water for the radiator and to cool the gas lines, it was steep and we would almost always get vapor lock and have to cool the gas lines to make it over. If the car in front had mechanical trouble, or vapor lock or boiled over everyone had to wait until some resolution occurred, either it cooled down and could run or got towed off whci was a mjor job getting a tow truck to the site. Going over the mountain passes in the 40's and 50's was very slow work, you didn't do it unless it was necessary. But now there are new roads and it is a whole lot easier.
July 8 Tuesday (today) I rented a chain saw, a 20 inch blade Stilh, and cut down a tree in my Mom's back yard that she wanted to get rid of. After I was done I looked at her outdoor thermometer and it was 100 in the shade. It went to 109 today and is supposed to go to 110 tomorrow. I think it is funny that many of the people I have met have been complaining about how high the humidity is; I think it was in the 25% range today. That is high for here. To be fair, at 109 it does feel a little muggy, even if only at 25%, Gerri is having problems with it. Later I made a list of coffee houses in Modesto, there were 8 I think, and we decided to go to a few to check on prices and get some new ideas. The first two were out of business, which follows what I have been reading in our coffee magazines, not a good year for coffee houses. Last week Starbucks announced they were going to close 600 stores in the US, that is rather incedible seeing as only two years ago theri goal was to go from 12,000 stores to 20,000 stores. The one that we found open was Mocha Magic, I think it is a chain, it was small, the drinks were ok but not great, I wouldn't go back. Tomorrow we will visit some others namely The Queen Bee which I think is Modesto's premier coffee house. It has changed management since I was there last this past December. Gerri and I also did a lot of junkin' which we like.
July 8 I just finished writing an account of our trip for this blog and some information about the California wildfires, it took me over 1/2 hour and I lost it all when my Mom's internet crashed. I'm trying to solve the problem, but I think she has a hardware problem with her 2 Wire Gatway and we will probably have to replace it. So I will write a while and Submit hoping I won't lose much on this go round, so if things crash in the middle of a thought, or an obviously unedited comment you will know why.
We left Birmingham on Saturday morning early on SouthWest Airlines, I like to fly SouthWest, they are very friendly and seem to enjoy catering to regular people like us. We stopped in Houston and San Diego before landing in San Francisco. It was a good flight, smooth, ahead of time, all my baggage got there with us, what else can you ask for. While flying from San Diego to San Francisco along the Pacific Coast I saw several forest fires burning to the east, probably in the Tahachapi Pass area. The whole state was covered in smoke, it got worse the farther north we went. At one time there were over 150 fires burning, there are nearly 50 now, many only partially contained.
I spent several years after High School while I was in College, in the early 1960's, working for the US Forest Service in California fighting forest fires. Back then I was a member of an initial attack Regional Hot Shot crew stationed in the San Bernardino National Forest near Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear. There were seventeen of us on the crew plus a strawboss and a foreman, we worked directly for the Forest Supervisor. We were stationed at an old CCC Camp at Converse Flats, built in the Great Depression to house the laborers who built the roads, bridges and other infastructure that were necessary to help the Forest develop. Our crew was about half college students from all over California, the rest being mostly Indians from the nearby Morongo Reservation, a few Mexicans and others from the San Bernardino area. We had a bunkhouse with bunkbeds and a cook house with an Indian cook named John, he was really good. The Camp was out in the middle of nowhere in a pretty remote place surrounded by mixed conifer forests consisting of pondersosa pine, sugar pine, white fir, incense cedar and some red fir at higher elevations along with abundant wildlife. We were called the Converse Hot Shots. There was one other Regional Hot Shot Crew in the State, closer to San Bernardino, near Del Rosa, called the Del Rosa Hot Shots. Our two crews were the elect of hot shot crews and, as you can imagine, we were rivals.
During that time I was involved in probably 50-60 fires, mostly in southern California, but we went all over the State too. When we were called to a fire we loaded up into our big Army surplus crew truck with eight of us sitting on benches one on each side, no canvass top and no seat belts, and it might take us an hour or more to get to the fire. It was often a wild ride. When we got to the fire location, usually at the foot of a mountain, we unloaded with military precision. We circled the truck single file in two groups, one on each side and picked up our canteens which were stashed in racks on the side of the truck. We tied them around our waists, canteen over our butts, with nylon cord which we carried in our teeth as we got off the truck. Sounds strange but actually was very efficient. Once we had our canteens strapped on, the two lines circled around the truck back to the rear where the tool handlers were ready to hand us our tools. We each had an individual tool that we only used on fires, we did not use them on normal work jobs, they were special to us. Then we advanced to the edge of the burned area and began cutting and scrapping fire line down to bare mineral earth around the edge of the fire advancing uphill toward the head fire. Del Rosa usually went up the other side. Our job was to hook the fire and either put it out by getting our line in front of the head and cutting it off, or if it was too fast and hot, keeping the fire from spreading laterally, forcing the headfire uphill to the lines or backfires hopfully being put in by the mechanized crew at the ridge top where it was level enough for them to work. Usually on the bigger fires air tankers were dumping fire retardant chemicals directly over us on the flames. I was soaked by them many times. This enabled us to slowly work forwatd cutting it off. One of our foreman always acted as lookout, keeping an eye on the fire for our safety. They could blow up and do do strange things which were very dangerous in that southern California chapparel brush ften over 20 feet high and explosively flammable.
As an initial attack crew we were among those called first to respond. Normally fires started in the early to late afternoon. When we weren't on fires we had other projects to keep us busy such as cutting survey lines or cold fire lines on remote ridge tops and so forth, jobs which were designed to keep us in shape and acclimated to the weather and the work. Or maybe more importantly to perfect us and maintain us as the fine tuned forest fighting machine we were. If fires were expected to break out that day, for example if thunderstorms with dry lightning were predicted, then we were pulled off the job and sent to strategic locations to wait for something to develop. We normally got to fires in the late afternoon and usually worked all night cutting line until early afternoon the next day. Often they would drop us fresh canteens of water and box lunches two sandwiches, fruit and dessert) from helicopters. We were often flown out by helicopter if we had progressed into an inaccessible area we couldn't easily walk out of. We then went to fire camp for either release or to sleep four hours in preparation for another shift that night. If the fire had been contained, we were sent back to the Converse Ranger Station. We seldom had to mop up the fire, the dirty side of fire fighting. We usually got to eat at Fire Camp before we left and the food was always good, steaks and much more. They took care of us. If we were to stay, they issued us paper sleeping bags and we got to sack out on the ground under a shade tree until they were ready to send us back out. If we went back to our Camp we spent the next day doing maintenance, rehandling our tools, grinding out nicks in the blades and sharpening just right for the next fire. We took extreme pride and care of our tools.
We seldom had any time off. We worked at least 80 hours per week, often more, at straight time, no overtime pay for us. If we did have a day off I would go home with one of the guys. I've been to the Morongo Reservation and in the barrio of San Berardino with other crew members. By that time we were like family. The fires we fought were mainly the big ones or those in desolate places which we had to walk into or go by chopper. They ranged in size from hundreds of acres to probably the largest being 40,000 acres. That one was a project fire and they called in all resources available including convict crews and crews from other states. We worked with a Zuni Indian crew from Arizona one that one.
it was a neat job I could probably fill a book with my stories from that time. I feel for these guys and girls on the firelines now, it was 109 degrees here today in Modesto which probably translates to at least 150 on the lines. Back to the trip. We arrived in San Franciso a little after 2 pm and rented a car to get to Mom's in Modesto, about 100 miles east in the Great Central Valley (also called the San Juaquin Valley). The drive was beautiful, you could tell today why they call it "Golden California", the hills of the Inner Coast Range Mountains which we crossed were golden with the drying grasses, kind of in a savanna sprinkled with dark green California Live Oak trees. Also, now these hills are dotted with giant windmills creating power, it's a great sight to see. Many were turning.
When my folks moved to Modesto from the Bay Area in 1960, it was a town about the size of Cullman today and surrounded by one of the most productive and fertile agricultural regions on earth. The alluvial soils of the central valley are very deep and fertile and support a tremendous variety of crops as well as livestock. It is dry country, 20 inches of rain a year, and so it all must be irrigated. On the way in we crossed the Delta Mendota Canal which brings water from Shasta Lake in extreme northern California, 150 miles north of Modesto, all the way to LA, about 300 miles south. It is an open canal, maybe 50 feet wide, and is the lifeblood of the Central Valley. The population of Modesto today is approaching 250,000 people and the surrounding area is growing just as fast so needless to say, many of the almond (we say ammond) orchards, walnut groves, vineyards, peaches and the other products I remember from the early sixties are lost under asphault. What a shame. When I got home (my family home, my real home is Alabama) my sister Sue and her daughter Ashley were there. Sue lives in Bishop, across the 12-14,000 foot Sierra Nevada Mountains from Mom's place and Ashley lives near Lake Tahoe, both close to the Nevada line. They are both school teachers. Ashley's husband Vernon came Sunday, he is a rock climger now professional photographer. We watched some movies (The Bucket List which I highly recommend and Fool's Gold a real fun movie), drank some good California wine, ate some great California fruit and nuts (they are not personality changing), and talked about old times and made plans for the next week or so. A Great two days, they all left Monday.
July 1 I will be spending this month in California. We will be visiting family, my Mom, my sister Sue, and my daughter Kristy. Mom lives in Modesto, the car theft capital of the world, on the west side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains about 90 miles east of San Francisco. Sue lives in Bishop on the east side of the Sierra Nevadas not far from Death Valley. The Sierras are a 12-14,000 foot mountain range, a major barrier, along with the desert Great Basin, that kept California from being settled from the east for a long time. Kristy lives in Pensacola Florida and we will meet in California at Mom's place for a week or so. My Mom is 89, but I hope we can travel some while we are there. There are many places I want to go that I haven't been to since I left the Golden State in 1969. I was raised in the SF Bay area and also the So Cal desert, but when I was young we camped and hiked all over the state. Our family summer vacations were camping trips. I especially want to get into northeastern California near Susanville where I worked in 1964 and the Modoc Valley and Mt Lassen if possible. I also want to see Mt Shasta a 14,000 foot mountain I climbed in 1964. I will try to keep this blog up and running while we are there, especially if we go anyplace spectacular. California has a lot of spectacular places which I like to visit periodically, but Alabama is home and I am always ready to come back here.