USA National Parks – 2

28 Oct continued.

We had quite a long drive to Bryce Canyon National Park, and because we had taken unplanned time in Antelope Canyon, we were only left with a couple of hours before sunset at Bryce. We drove straight to Bryce lookout point and were presented with an amazing view. Bev & Andrew had been there many years ago, but not so Elly and me.
How can I describe it? Imagine looking down into an amphitheater with about 270 degrees of scope, and inside the amphitheater are what looks like about 10,000 gigantic chess pieces, or perhaps enormous Terra Cotta Warriors, all standing next to each other, with gaps between groups, allowing pathways between them.
While we absorbed this, some rain behind the Canyon was producing a rainbow, and for a short time, a double rainbow. Elly was beside herself!

Rainbow over Bryce

We moved to two other lookout points, Inspiration Point and Sunset point. Both had similar views but with different perspectives. Unfortunately the sunset was a fizzes.
The size of these “chess pieces” was deceptive – from the first, and highest (8,300 ft) view point, you could see that they were large, but from the other, lower points, the enormity of them became apparent.

We stayed there until about 20 minutes after sunset and then had a local dinner before our hour drive to our hotel

29 Oct

A short drive from our hotel this morning took us to Zion National Park, East entrance, where we found yet another type of rock formation surrounding us. This was in the form of a “Checkerboard” pattern of erosion lines crisscrossing the hills on either side of us, with occasional striated horizontal rock as well. Some wild longhorn sheep were climbing up to a ridge in the distance.

Because the Visitors Centre was at the South entrance we continued to that one, only to find the parking was totally full. What was this?? This was supposed to be off season, and we couldn’t get in.
Fortunately the system was up to it; if we drove out of the Park into the neighbouring town of Springdale, you could find parking there, and use the shuttle bus into the Park. We actually snuck in to a parking spot within walking distance of the entrance. Even with all the crowds, the Springdale shuttle bus service was to finish the next day.
Once inside the Park there was a shuttle bus running into the canyon, which was a hop on hop off system which had nine stops. We did the first section then walked to the next pick up point. This was a gentle stroll with canyon walls beginning to soar on either side. We did some hop offs and walks, working our way up to the last point ( No. 9). The walks were magnificent, with towering cliffs either side up to, by my estimate about 400 metres above us, with the Virgin River alongside the pathways, and masses of deciduous trees all in full autumn splendour. A photographer’s dream, and Elly’s photos will show it better than my words.

30 Oct

This morning, in the breakfast room at the Travelodge hotel, we spotted a guy with a ” First Annual Kalashnikov Championship” T- shirt. Will there be enough survivors to have a Second Annual Championship? Only in America!
Quite a long drive scheduled to take us to Furnace Creek and then to Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley, quoted as the Hottest, Driest, Lowest and wildest place in the US. As we approached Death Valley it became obvious that there were strong wind gusts out there. We took a turning on a side road leading to Dante’s View, which became a climbing winding narrow road up to a car park overlooking Death Valley and the mountains on either side.
When we climbed out of the car we were nearly blown off our feet with a wind that I would guess was gusting to around 40 knots (around 70 km/ hr). These were sustained gust and may have been stronger. At one stage Elly couldn’t actually open her door, and another time the door felt as though it was going to come off.

Dantes View

We walked further out on a narrow path on a ridge, holding on to each other to avoid being blown off. Elly’s camera and tripod should be awarded bravery medals.

The view was spectacular, looking down on the salt pans of Death Valley, and across to the mountains beyond which had their peaks buried in cloud. The stark beauty of the place was magnificent, combined with the excitement of knowing you could be blown to your death at any time!

From Dante’s View we continued on to Zabrisky Point, which had a wide, paved walkway up to the lookout point. Once again we were “blown away” by the view. Rolling bald rock hills on either side with walking trails amongst them, which we didn’t take due to time constraints. Bev saved somebody’s hat, which slammed into her on its way into Death Valley, and was returned to its grateful owner.

Further along was “Badwater”, which is in the salt plains of Death Valley, so named because an early explorer couldn’t get his mule to drink the water there. There is no drainage out of Death Valley for the water which comes down from the mountains, so evaporation takes care of that, but leaves the salts and the minerals in the valley. Badwater is 280 feet below sea level, and if you look up at the rock wall behind you at the entrance, you can see a plaque away above, labelled ” Sea Level”

Below Sea Level

Between Badwater and Furnace Creek, we took a short diversion called “Artist’s Drive” which wound through narrow gaps between surrounding rock walls of different textures and hues. A really beautiful little side trail.

We stopped at the Furnace Creek visitor centre and then proceeded on to Stovepipe Wells, or as our GPS calls it “Stov-eh-pippy” Wells!

We were faced with a slight problem, in that Andrew had booked accommodation for us the previous day, but had lost all email info of exactly where we were staying, so we were faced with the prospect of door knocking each place and asking if they had our reservation.
Fortunately it transpired that there was only one hotel in Stovepipe Wells , along with a Saloon ( Hooray, we are out of Utah!), a restaurant and a gift shop and a store. It was a really cute place.
The saloon was a character filled place with the usual football on one TV screen and baseball on the other.
After dinner, Elly tried to coerce me into wandering outside while she took photos of the stars, since Death Valley is one of the largest dark sky areas in the US. But I was stuffed and ready for bed and book reading, so she went out and picked up some strangers to do some star shots with her.

31 Oct

This was a long driving day, around 10 hours, through to Yosemite National Park. The countryside changed as we approached, away from the dry desert conditions of Death Valley, to beautiful green forests.

Pine forests approaching Yosemite

Cactus around Arizona

After passing through Yosemite Park entrance, driving for quite a distance through forest, and then through a long tunnel, we found ourselves confronted with a magnificent sight.

There in front of us were gigantic walls of granite, in the form of El Capitan ( of Apple OX system wallpaper fame) – for those of you who don’t own a Mac, don’t worry about it.

El Capitan was just one edifice, there was Half Dome, the Brothers, in fact as far as we could see there was just a mind boggling panorama of towering granite.

El Capitan

After absorbing that, and in failing light we drove on towards our lodge, the Yosemite Valley Lodge. As we passed El Capitan we could see winking lights coming from half way up the sheer rock face, and we found out later that climbers were up there and camping for the night, on a sheer rock wall!

We were completely confounded by detour signs on the way in, due to a rockfall and some road works, and found ourselves doing a loop a couple of times before frustration set in and we drove down a road that appeared to be a No Entry, but it worked, just as well otherwise we would still be there going round and round.

There are really only two lodges inside the park, ours and The Majestic, which is very olde world upper class, where you have to wear a tie for dinner, Bev and I checked out the lounge area and stopped for a drink. Our Lodge was vast, with a central reception area combined with a food court, a restaurant, and a lounge.

The accommodation consisted of 13 buildings each containing up to 30 rooms. These buildings were spread out over quite a large area, interspersed with car parks which were mostly full, although we did manage to snare one not too far away.

There were also many outlying camp grounds and caravan parks, along with more car parks for the less fortunate. A shuttle bus connected all the accommodation areas, points of interest and the Visitor Centre.

01 Nov

Up at a reasonable hour for breakfast (not included), we decided to take a ride on the shuttle bus to get our bearings, and to decide what we might want to see. That was worth doing as it gave us the opportunity to take in the magnificence of this place.

Alive with full autumn colours and surrounded by glorious towering granite walls which seemed to glow when when the sun caught them.

We decided that our first visit was to be the Yosemite Falls. There is an upper and a lower version of the same falls, we decided on the lower. These falls had been dry up until a few weeks before, but some recent rain restored them, including some from the previous night. We have been incredibly lucky with the weather so far, with just a couple of light showers on this morning, which gave us the advantage of seeing the rock walls with some ragged cloud clinging to the peaks, before seeing them in their raw beauty on the next day which was forecast to be sunny.

In the PM, Elly had booked a photography tour, which turned out to be a bit of a history lesson based on the life and times of an early photographer named Ansell Adams, who was a pioneer in photography in the Yosemite area – also a bit of a drunk! He photographed in black and white and hence was not interested in sunrise or sunset, thus his priority for happy hour was not compromised. Elly enjoyed it and was inspired by his work.

Sunset looking toward half dome rock

Andrew piked for the afternoon, so Bev and I booked in for a local tour with a park ranger, to talk about the geology and history of the place.

Now was this guy good?!!

His name was Shelton, an African American ( “We all come from Africa, except you guys left early, but I stayed.”) There were some children in the group, and he was excellent with them, and very inclusive. He was a showman, and would make a first class teacher or lecturer. He studied Geology, and English Literature and majored in poetry.

His enthusiasm and humour were contagious. “Don’t worry, trust me, I work for the Government.”

We were spellbound by this guy as he explained the multi million year process that made the area what it is today. He didn’t make me want to study geology, but, if I had, I would have wanted a teacher like that.

He commented that if the average person spotted a Bobcat sitting on a rock, he or she would get excited, and have the camera out taking photos of it, where as if a Geologist saw the same thing he would say, “Would somebody get that Bobcat off my rock!”

In the process of describing how the earth is continuously changing, and what we see around us (Plutonic Igneous rock – ie granite) which looks stable and unchanging, is, in fact in motion and evolving, he said that he was going to quote some English to us.

“Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote……….”

On and on he went, line after line, and most of us couldn’t understand what he was saying, except for one lady who started to quote with him. That was amazing, then she said to him, “Did you have Mrs Harris for year 12 English too?”

It turns out it is from the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which I am sure many of you know. But it was a brilliant example of a language in continuous evolution, just as the earth is evolving also.

Shelton said, ” I used to quote that to my father when he asked me what possible benefit could there be in getting a Degree in English.”

He also asked why would Geologists and Botanists refer to things in a dead language. “Because a dead language doesn’t change, and these professionals who may come from other countries with different languages can use the Latin and know what the other is talking about.”

Andrew found a couple of DVDs in the Visitors Centre bookstore, by Shelton, so we gather he is somewhat of a Guru in the area, and is certainly a class act.

Dinner in the lounge bar this evening with the World Series Baseball on the screens. Only a week until the elections!!

02 Nov
There is a walk here from one of the bus stops, to Mirror Lakes, so we decided that we would do that. It was a fairly short walk, about a mile each way, but it took us much longer than that, because the scenery was simply magnificent, and of course, Elly was stopping every twenty metres or thereabouts to photograph everything plus a bit!

Deer

The park followed the river Merced, ( Andrew says, “If I have two Merceds, would that make a Mercedes? – that is worse than my Dad jokes) which was flowing strongly due to the recent rains, and the surroundings were divine. Trees in full Autumn colour, different mosses, and sunlight filtering through the leaves. At the same time we had the towering rock faces above us. Every turn presented a different picture, and if you turned around, there would be another beautiful vision.

When we did reach the Mirror Lakes they were actually more like Mirror Puddles, but that didn’t matter, the walk was worth that small disappointment.

Mirror Lake which is not a lake

We decided to drive back to the spot where we came out of the tunnel on our arrival, to photograph El Capitan with the setting sun full on the face of the rock. Later, just before sunset, we drove to a closer, lower point and some people there pointed out the climbers, which we could just see through Elly’s 400 ml lens. These guys were about half way up the sheer rock face of El Capitan, and were actually setting up tents, so they could spend the night!! Not in my worst nightmare!

After dinner, Bev kept Elly company on a night star shoot with an astronomer/ story teller, who pointed out the various constellations, giving everyone an idea of the distances involved, and told stories about the mythology of the region.

Bev’s version.

I noticed that the Park Rangers offer a Starry skies program where they go out into an open meadow surrounded by the Yosemite giant rock formations and spend an hour in the dark relating different explanations of the night sky. I thought it would be interesting, Elly agreed and thought it would be a good opportunity to do some more night photography. So off we went.
Our ranger, Ashley, pointed out the different northern sky constellations and talked about ancient Greek beliefs and other stories. She related an American Indian legend about how the night sky was created. She had heard the story years ago from a naturalist in the park, who had heard it from a ranger around a campfire.
The story explained that at one time, before people lived on earth, the animals were fighting amongst themselves and so the Great Spirit decided to “punish the critters” by blanketing the earth in darkness. Chaos ensued. Various creatures including the bear – king of the land animals and the eagle – king of the air, tried to pull the dark blanket down, but failed. Finally the little hummingbird gathered all the creatures to work together to help her reach up to the blanket. She was then able to poke holes through to let the light in.
Although it is unknown if this story was created by any of the native tribes around Yosemite (the Ahwahneechee, Miwak etc) there are apparently variations of this story originating from many different American Indian tribes. Indeed it has similarities to many stories of native cultures around the world. It was lovely to be part of an ancient oral tradition of sharing stories.
Ashley also brought us to modern times with information from astrophysicists, including this quote from Carl Sagan: “I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.”
A beautiful setting, philosophy, Elly got to take some night photos and Andrew & Alan had a rest. All happy!!

Milky way over Yosemite falls

Elly arose early next morning before we departed to takethe last few sunrise photos.

03 Nov

This was the day to leave the magnificent Yosemite Valley and National Park. It was still quite a distance to the exit gate from where we were staying, and we stopped a few times to take in the view.

El Capitan

One of the stops was a walk down into an area which had the giant Sequoia trees growing. At the head of the walk was a mock up of the trunk of the base of a typical tree, representing events or eras throughout the life of this particular “tree” by the rings, showing the time lines such as the construction of the Roman Colosseum when the tree was very young.

massive sequoia tree

These trees can live for 3000 years and grow 300 ft high with 30 ft diameter. One old tree we passed, which looked as though it may have been struck by lightning, and was now well and truly dead, had an opening cut out at its base, such that a coach could be driven through it, and it was used as such in the days when Yosemite was accessible only via a dirt road passing that way. There was an old photo of a coach being driven through the opening many years ago.

To look up at the height of these trees was awe inspiring. They are so enormous that they dwarfed the giant pine trees that surrounded them, and just to think, and wonder what was going on in the world when these trees were young saplings.

After that hill climb back to the car we settled in for the drive to San Francisco.

04 Nov

We surfaced from our Comfort Inn right next to the freeway and the railway line this morning for a bit of breakfast and then headed into central San Francisco.
We began by parking the car in a free parking area – yes, free, and use the
Hop on, Hop off bus to give us some orientation, although this was amended to hop on only until the next stop, which was Union Square, and after wandering around, and then waiting for the next bus for 35mins, when it was only supposed to be 15 mins, we decided to stay on the bus for the whole round trip.

This we did, and had a good look at all the significant places, including crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. We all like San Francisco – it has interesting architecture, and is well laid out with a lovely harbour and is in some ways a little like Sydney.

Golden Bridge which is orange colour

San Francisco skyline

By this time the afternoon was moving along, so we found ourselves at Pier 39, surrounded by all the glitz and hype that is so typically American, but fun nevertheless. Some guy was flogging a 30 min sunset boat ride, and he convinced Elly that this would be a good thing to do, so we all ( and others) boarded what looked like a toy Tommy the Tug Boat, captained by a young chap of about 60, who had paid a lot of money to fit all those stripes on his jacket – certainly more than I ever managed.

The cruise was very pleasant as we passed resting Sea Lions basking on the expanse of platforms, barking at each other and us as we passed. They are there in numbers of about 800 in Summer, and dwindle down to zero in the Winter as they head South.

Seals at Fisherman’s wharf

We puttered around while the sun set, and then puttered back to the jetty.

Golden Bridge

Then dinner and off home to the hotel for a morning flight to Atlanta the next day.