Winding Down

Our boy is back from Texas for the holiday!

What a great way to start the weekend . . . grandson Ty and the ponies pulled in this morning after driving since yesterday from Odessa, Texas. He'll get a one and a half day rest and then it's back on the road Sunday, the 10th, to Las Vegas and the Ote Berry Junior Steer Wrestling World Championship and the National Finals Rodeo. We'll all be in Las Vegas by Monday, the 11th, to take in a week's worth of rodeoing, shopping at the Cowboy Christmas, visiting, eating, and just plain having lots of fun!

Week 48 is coming to an end which means there're a mere four weeks (actually three plus one day!) left in 2017. As is the mantra every year . . . how did it go by so fast! This last year, I must say, has been a mixed one for the world, this country, this state, and for days on Vine. I'll let the newscasters review everything except the happenings here on Vine as it is way too much to grasp. 

I've been able to keep up with my digital Project Life project and it has been a real joy; especially looking back to Week One. Having left you at Week 45, I will catch you up to the present with our trip to California and back for Thanksgiving and then last week spent at home with a head cold!

Ole' Bob Carr's place on You Bet Road, November 24, 2017.

We traveled to California on Wednesday, November 22nd, making good time across the Nevada desert and arriving at Dad's before sunset. The weather was mild and the property looked just like the park that it is. By Thursday morning, after a good night's sleep, we were ready to face the turkey and thank the good Lord for a bountiful, blessed life. While Dad and Clare went to Bierwagen's farm to retrieve the mail order Thanksgiving meal from cold storage, I took myself out for a walk to breathe in the musty autumn day and, of course, take photos.  Once the dinner was unpacked and organized for heating, we all took a walk and grabbed a few more photos, like this one of the three of us - old, older, and real old! Haha!

Clare, Hazel, Ole' Bob.

By about 2:00 p.m. the turkey was hot, the sides were prepared, the table was set, and the wine uncorked so we sat down and enjoyed every bite and sip. Although the preparation/heating process took a bit longer than I'd anticipated (probably because of the elevation it needed more time at higher temperature), the meal was delicious! The wine Dad had bought for the occasion was the perfect addition; it was so good, in fact, that Clare went Friday to buy two bottles to bring home.

Dad had the table set with autumn placemats that Mom Delta had made for Thanksgivings long ago.

The turkey was tender, the yams were sweet, the mashed potatoes fluffy, the green beans were buttery good, and the dressing was spiced just right. We waited until the sun went down to slice into the pumpkin pie which was also very tasty.

The lovely white wine - crisp and not-too-sweet.

Friday's plan was to drive over to Reno and have a visit with cousin Kathne, her husband Mike, and their daughter Molly. After a short visit at the St. Paul Lutheran Cemetery in Chicago Park we were on our way over the Pass. The traffic, surprisingly, was not too bad, considering that it was the day after Thanksgiving, a Friday, and Boreal Ridge Ski Resort was open (as I imagine resorts like Squaw Valley were too). We pulled into Reno and the Dowd's place shortly after noon, visited with Kak, were introduced to Riley Joseph, the fat cat (see photo below), and when Mike returned we drove to the Stonehouse Cafe for lunch - no leftover T-day! - where we met up with Molly. Spent about two hours laughing, reminiscing, and thoroughly enjoying a lovely meal together. Kathne is our only cousin on the Carr side, being our Dad's brother Silas's only child. It was a tiny Carr-family reunion of sorts!

Riley Jo - the fat, black cat.

Hazel Carr Allred, Bob Carr, Molly Park, Kathne Carr Dowd.

Uncle Bob Carr was the star of the day and we all had a grand time. We said our goodbye's and headed back to You Bet Road. Kathne had come across some old photo albums and boxes of photos and memorabilia from her mom and dad and wanted very much to go through them with Dad; we didn't really have time but Kathne and I have made plans to meet up in a couple months and browse them before she discards them all. Here is one photo that caught my curiosity that appears to be a rare picture of Carr ancestors. 

Charlotte - Could this be Caroline and Job Carr with Grandfather A.B. Carr and his brother?

There was no date and other identification; however, the photo card is marked "Smith [the photographer I presume], Harvard, Neb." I'm hoping that when we sift through her photos again, we will find more relating to the Carr's. 

Saturday, the 25th, Clare and I bid Daddy Bob farewell and set back out for Reno and home. We stopped at the Sands Casino to meet up with friends for breakfast at the Mel's Diner and then got back on the road for home, making a couple stops for fuel and stretching and arriving home about 6:30 p.m. (MST). I craned my head around to capture this spectacular sunset over the Bonneville Salt Flats outside Wendover. 

The reflection on the wet Salt Flats really was impressive.

It was a truly wonderful trip - short but loaded with goodness. 

I'll sign off for now and get back with the last two weeks either later this evening or tomorrow. Time to get dinner ready!

A Day in Yosemite - Part II

Whew! Got through Election Day and now, hopefully, we can move on (to New Zealand or Canada! Haha!).

Anyway, today I am hoping to finish out the narrative and photos of our Yosemite tour and our journey back to ordinary days on Vine . . .

I asked Clare what he thought was the most outstanding thing of our day in Yosemite and he, quite rightfully, said that it was the amazing El Capitan. Not too long after we turned off from Tioga Road into Yosemite Valley, this granite monolith came into sight; is it enough to say that we "couldn't believe our eyes?" And all we had to do was turn 180 degrees west to gaze at the beauty of Bridalveil Falls.

Three thousand feet from base to summit, this is most definitely a breathtaking sight.

At this time of year the 617 foot falls are light and swaying; still gorgeous.

To the south and west of Bridalveil Falls we could see the Cathedral Rocks/Spires which, with the autumn color and dark green evergreen framing them, made for a lovely photo opportunity too.

Wonderful contrasts.

We got back on one-way Southside Drive heading east into Yosemite Valley.

Another shot of El Capitan. 

The forest, right up to the shoulder, was brilliant and the redwoods towered over all. I started getting a crick in my neck gazing out the front window!

Since it had rained, the road was wet, as was the forest floor. We had the windows rolled down to take in the incredible autumn, woodsy scent . . . intoxicating!

All along the drive we caught glimpses of the Merced River (River of Our Lady of Mercy) which begins high in the Eastern Sierra Nevadas and flows into the San Joaquin River. It is fed, of course by the various falls in the Yosemite Valley and in places, is rough and tumbling; in others, smooth.

Before looping back around to Northside Drive and the return journey over Tioga Pass, we stopped at least four more times to gaze up at the mighty Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls and Half Dome, east of the road and towering at 8,836 feet. 

The falls look tiny but they are most certainly not!

Zoomed in just a bit.

Half Dome, named for its distinct shape.

Sadly, so many of the trees - Ponderosa mainly - have been attacked by pine beetles. The infestation has not been helped by the many drought years California has experienced.

Another view of the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls. 

From this meadow it was possible to hike to the Falls; being the old folks we are, we didn't take advantage of that opportunity!

We continued our drive into the Valley and eventually to the Visitor Center then a bit further southwest towards Curry Village. Stopped at Stoneman Bridge on the Merced and I took these photos:

Black oak branches.

Half Dome in the background.

Another shot of the colorful leaves and Merced River.

Following are photos taken at various places on the Loop Road and then back onto Southside Drive as we headed back to Tioga Road.

At the parking area of Curry Village (closed for the season); One of the many shuttles traversing the Valley and Half Dome looming in the background.

Half Dome. Note the variety of trees in the foreground - Incense Cedar, Black Oak, Ponderosa Pine, and Sequoia.

Yosemite Valley Chapel.

This 1,470 square foot chapel, built in 1879 and placed at this location (trailhead of Four Mile Trail) in 1901, serves the public for worship and has become popular for weddings. Glacier Point is visible in the background.

Directly across the road from the Chapel is the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls. There were three ladies (two here in the right corner) painting and sketching the Falls. The view here is definitely inspiring.

A peek through the trees at the wonderful Falls.

Clare took this photo of El Capitan not far off the road at El Capitan Bridge. "Awesome" just does not describe the feeling one has looking at this.

Needless to say, there are many more photos than can be shown here! It is a grand feeling to have seen this remarkable place. This quote from John Muir, conservationist, pretty much sums it up:

“It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter.”

“Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society. Nowhere will you find more company of a soothing peace-be-still kind. Your animal fellow beings, so seldom regarded in civilization, and every rock-brow and mountain, stream, and lake, and every plant soon come to be regarded as brothers; even one learns to like the storms and clouds and tireless winds. This one noble park is big enough and rich enough for a whole life of study and aesthetic enjoyment. It is good for everybody, no matter how benumbed with care, encrusted with a mail of business habits like a tree with bark. None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree. 
– John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, (1938) 

We continued on our drive back over Tioga Pass and back into Lee Vining, stopping at Olmstead Point, Tenaya Lake and the Tioga Pass Entrance. Those stops will be recorded in Part III of our journey. 

Until next time.

Quick Update

Referring back to this post about our family's vacations to Bridgeport, California in the 1950's . . . my eldest sister sent this photo that she took on one of those vacations in 1957. Her motivation for taking the photo, she says, was not so much the Bambi deer but the chap bottle feeding it!

He is kind of cute, in a 1957 sort of way! (The chap - but the deer is quite cute too!)

Thank you, sis, for sending this; it certainly brought the memories back!

I am going out in the yard today to clear out the flower/vegetable beds, preparing for winter but will be back soon to bring you Part II of our day in Yosemite. 

Later . . .

A Day in Yosemite (is not enough!) Part I

Monday, October 24, we put on our woolies, stopped and had breakfast at Nicely's in Lee Vining and got an early start for Highway 120 and Tioga Pass into Yosemite. We hadn't gotten very far onto 120 when we were stopped by a CalTrans worker who told us that the Pass was closed until the snow that had accumulated overnight could be cleared; he predicted a couple hours wait. Well, undeterred, we decided to pull down a side road pointing to Big Bend Campground, part of the Inyo National Forest, 12 miles from the Park entrance. Had a walkabout a mile or so down that road and took a few photos, setting a precedent of clicking at every turn!

East side of Highway 120 starting up. The road was wet and it appeared to be snowing in the peaks ahead. This is just before we came up on the CalTrans crew.

(Just an aside, this is photo #99 - that I edited - for our trip to this point! No wonder this trip is turning into chapters!)

Although it was chilly and the wind was up a bit, we got out and pointed our phone cameras every which way to take in the colorful beauty all around. We spent about an half hour down on this road clicking and foraging and gaping.

Looking west; possibly Tioga Peak.

Looking autumnal (hair blowing up).

The quaking aspen and cottonwood still had gorgeous yellow leaves clinging, making for a wonderful foreground to the dark evergreen and snow-capped peaks in the distance.

Looking southwest; possibly Mount Dana

The Ponderosa pines are loaded this year, evidence of a good water year.

Clare retrieving souvenirs.

Just one more photo from the Big Bend Campground road.

It was beginning to clear to the west.

We drove back up to the highway and saw that the CalTrans trucks were gone and the traffic cones set to the side of the road; we made the assumption that it was clear over the Pass and started up. I had a hard time keeping quiet and not making Clare stop the car for a photo opportunity every five minutes . . . here are a few shots taken from the window.

Again, possibly Tioga Peak (the snow-covered peak).

The wind drifting the snow on these high, rocky peaks. 

Sheer granite cliff right off the roadside.

We did stop at a turnout near Ellery Lake, a manmade lake just a little ways from the Yosemite Park Entrance in the Inyo National Forest. 

Ellery Lake looking east; possibly back side of Tioga Peak.

We had started our journey at 8:30 a.m. and reached the Tioga Pass Entrance (east side of Yosemite National Park) at about 9:30. With our Senior Pass (there are benefits to being blue-hairs!), we collected our map and Yosemite Guide, October 5, 2016 to December 6, 2016 edition and passed through to the greatness that makes this this most-visited park in the United States.

The roadway as it looked just west of the entrance.

It took about an hour and a half to go over the Pass, with just a couple stops for photos, before reaching the junction of Tioga Road with Big Oak Flat Road which would take us into Yosemite Valley. One stop we made was in Tuolumne Meadows, a beautiful open valley where the Tuolumne River and its tributaries meander through; it is ringed all 'round by amazing peaks such as Lembert Dome, Mammoth Peak, Unicorn Peak, Cathedral Peak, Fairview and Medicroft Domes, and Pothole Dome. It is difficult to know which peaks/domes we saw as we turned 360 degrees; it was all spectacular.

Possibly Lembert Dome.

The Meadows.

Rango getting a drink from one of the tributaries.

A fabulous place to contemplate.

Possibly Ragged Peak way in the background.

The amazing immensity of it all.

We would stop at Tenaya Lake on the way back. We stopped at Olmstead Point (named after landscape architects Frederick Law Olmstead and Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. - a very interesting story) and I was able to capture a couple photos of the north side of Half Dome and Cloud's Rest. The wind made it a struggle to hold the phone still and so we decided that, if on the way back it was less windy, we'd stop there again.

Zoomed in to show Half Dome.

Half Dome in the center and Cloud's Rest to the left.

The trailhead at Olmstead Point is at 8,300 feet elevation, down from the 9,945 foot elevation at the Tioga Pass Entrance. All along the rest of the Tioga Road were roadside falls, towering pines, granite cliffs, and glimpses of Snow Creek, Yosemite Creek, Siesta Lake, and the South Fork of the Tuolumne River. Once we got to the junction of Big Oak Flat Road into Yosemite Valley, the temperature had increased to a pleasant 50-ish degrees, the skies were clearing to a bright sapphire blue, and the winds had calmed. The elevation at the junction, Crane Flat, is 6,200 feet, which explains why more moderate conditions were present. Down at this elevation, the quaking aspen and dogwood were in full autumn color and now we began seeing groves of the magnificent Sequoia redwood trees too. 

We traversed Yosemite Valley for about two hours stopping many times up to the visitor center and back. This part of our day, I think, deserves yet another post in order to do it justice! 

Stay tuned . . . 

Continuing . . . Journey to Lee Vining and Yosemite National Park

November already! I've decided to join in on another Instagram photo challenge, not that I need an excuse to take photos but it does provide a bit more direction. India Ross of @ofearthandstars has posted this list for #navigatingthroughnovember and today's prompt is "crisp." To me that is a lot of different things such as crispy, crunchy leaves underfoot, crisp, brisk sweater sort of feel outside, but, because I made this last night, Apple Crisp made with fresh, snappy apples (albeit from the market, not picked fresh from a tree), brown sugar and oats. Heavenly with a dab of whipped cream. See my Instagram feed for this deliciousness.

Yesterday, both of us went to the County Courthouse and cast our early votes for the Presidential election . . . so want this to be over with so we can move on! Blah, blah, blah!

Without further adieu I will get back to our road trip October 18 through 25 to Northern California. Day Six, October 23 saw us leaving Dayton, Nevada and driving Highway 50 to Carson City then onto Highway 395 along the southeast side of the Sierras and up into them at Topaz Lake. We stopped at Wa She Shu Casino & Travel Center just outside Gardnerville to fuel up. It was lucky for us that this place is brand new as of May 2016; built on reservation land by the Washoe Tribe in cooperation with the Poarch Creek Indians of Alabama, the name means "The People's Place." Lucky for us because we were hard pressed to find a fuel station that would accommodate our long rig and also have propane as we had used over a half tank and didn't want to not have adequate to run the furnace and fridge for the rest of our trip. Gardnerville and Minden are pretty towns and the surrounding country is rich farm and ranch land.

Rango waiting patiently to get on the road from Dayton.

The only photo I took in Dayton indicating a bit of its history.

Here are a couple photos taken along the highway outside Gardnerville, through Indian Hills and on to Topaz Lake and the California border.

The Sierras towering above the pretty farmland outside Gardnerville.

Approaching the pass to Topaz Lake.

Topaz Lake, a reservoir on the Nevada-California border. It was calm and reflective when we drove through at about 1:00 pm (PDT). Right around this bend was the Inspection Station on the border.

I caught the stateline sign on the fly again! There are very few places to pull over and get a proper photo but that's okay as we've seen a border sign before!

You can see that the shoulder is close; I was leaning way out of the window!

Once in California we were to stay in Mono County until leaving for home on the 25th when we would cross again into Nevada and the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

Highway 395 took us through Coleville and Walker and over the Devil's Gate Summit (elevation 7,519 feet) into Bridgeport. Back in the late 1950's our family vacationed in Bridgeport at a little resort that had cabins for rent - I confirmed this memory with Dad and he recalled it too - the owners had a pet deer that we remembered too. At any rate, I tried to spot the place but things are changed quite a bit, as well as I was younger, shorter, and much less observant of my surroundings as a child. Just outside Bridgeport is the ghost town of Bodie which I also remember visiting back in the day too. We thought that we might be able to go there on our way back home but by the time we set out Tuesday morning, the winds were very strong over the Conway Summit on Highway 395 so we took an alternate route easterly to Hawthorne, Nevada. 

Twenty-one miles from Bridgeport lay our destination of Lee Vining where we'd set up residence for two nights at the Mono Vista RV Park. Right before the town, though, spread the brilliant blue saline soda Mono Lake and I snapped a few photos as we drove. This one really captures the vastness of the country I thought.

Such an amazing sight from the higher elevation of the highway.

I wish that we had taken some time to go into the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Preserve to get a better view of the natural limestone spires (tufa), wetlands and bird habitats. It was interesting to see, though, even at a distance, the spires and knobs formed by the interaction of freshwater springs and alkaline lake water (because there is no outlet, the lake is very alkali). We were able to get views of the lake on its northeast side when we drove home Tuesday via Cal SR167.

Once we got to the RV park in Lee Vining, we set up house, took Rango for a walk, and settled in for the evening, planning our jaunt the next day, Monday, into Yosemite.

Shoes off and ready for a nap.

The pretty cottonwood leaves and our RVing neighbors through the door.

 I'm thinking that I will begin a new post tomorrow documenting our trip Monday over Tioga Pass and into Yosemite National Park. It will be photo-heavy as between the two of us we couldn't stop snapping - forewarned!

Bye for today. Happy November 2016!