Author: amazingmrd

After I drove scenic road #1 for the day (northeast of Sparks, near Pyramid Lake) I dropped down south of Interstate 80 and tackled scenic road #2, Nevada Route 50, or at least a small part of it.  A friend of mine had told me about this road but I never knew exactly where it was.  Turns out that Highway 50 crosses the United States from West Sacramento, California to Ocean City, Maryland.  The portion which runs through central Nevada is called the “Loneliest Road in America”.

(Photo credit: Newsweek.com)

(Photo credit: doityourselfrv.vom)

I drove a small part of the road as far as Fallon, NV and decided that was enough.  I love to drive but I really didn’t want to drive over 300 miles across central Nevada for 5 1/2 hours and then turn around and do it again.  Plus I was anxious to get home and post today’s photos, and update the status on the wildfire I spotted this morning.

Fallon itself is a cute little town.  Here are some shots taken on their Maine Street (yes, the ‘e’ is included at no additional cost to you!):

This sign painted on the side of a building caught my eye:

Note that the painter took some editorial liberty and changed the ‘r’ in YOUR to lower case…

I looked at some photos online and found this one as well:

(Photo credit: icollector.com)

A little ways east of Fallon I found this place:

A friend suggested I run some hot laps with my Altima but this is a dirt track and I just had my car washed this morning, otherwise…..

 

Earlier this afternoon I posted a picture while parked by the side of the road.  When I left Sparks, Nevada about 9 o’clock this morning I was driving north to head towards a big lake northeast of town.  I saw something I wanted to stop and take a picture of and when I turned around to go back I noticed smoke rising from a mountainous area southwest of Reno.  Here is the picture I posted, plus one from the same time taken with the digital camera:

I took those photos at 943 this morning.  According to the local news, that fire started around 8 o’clock this morning and has been named the Evans Fire (it is in or near Evans Canyon).  Here are some more shots taken with the digital camera about 10 minutes later.  My guess is that this fire was at least 40 miles away as the crow flies, but then I’m not that familiar with the area.  It is probably more than that, and I don’t think it is all that close to Reno.

I went and did some other things throughout the day but when I headed home I was in town just off Interstate 80 next to the Nugget Casino and took this photo at 425pm local time.

It looked much better to me, but the InciWeb website I use to monitor wildfire status said that as of about an hour before I took that last photo it was at 60 acres and was only 5% contained.

I took this photo shortly after 930 this morning, looking back towards Reno.

This is now the Evans Fire (at or near Evans Canyon) Southwest of Reno, Nevada. A news report 2 hours ago had it at 20 acres and an hour ago at 35-80. I don’t know how official either of those reports are.

I am posting this with my phone while parked by the side of the road (Shawn) and will post better pictures taken with the digital camera later today when I get home.

UPDATE:  442pm Pacific Time – Corrected location to Evans Canyon, not Ranch.  Fire started approximately 8am local time.  As of an hour and 20 minutes ago, InciWeb website has it at 60 acres and only 5% contained.  I will be making a new post with additional photos shortly.

Oops – I initially titled this post Saturday update.  For me now, every day is Saturday!

I am now in Sparks, Nevada – just outside of Reno.  I am leaving shortly for two scenic drives which should only take a few hours.  The internet connection here is excellent and my photos are uploading very quickly.  I got caught up on sleep last night so when I get back to the house this afternoon I will post some of my picture backlog.

Monday I plan to go down and drive a lap around Lake Tahoe, which isn’t far from here.  Traffic may be heavy due to the upcoming July 4th holiday but hopefully I’ll get back in time to post even more before I head to San Rafael, just north of San Francisco, on Tuesday.  I’ll be there a whole week and have LOTS planned.

Friday I drove back to Yosemite National Park one last time, with the intention of seeing three things I hadn’t been to yet.  One was the Ahwahnee Hotel (which now has a different name due to legal issues) which is the largest hotel in the Yosemite Valley.  The main reason I wanted to see it was that the lobby and interior was the inspiration for the set constructed for the original movie “The Shining,” starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall.  When I visited the two hotels (one in Oregon and the other in Colorado) which had been used for exterior scenes last year I did some research before posting those photos to the blog and thought I had read that the Ahwahnee had burned, but it is quite intact.  Well, because of a later than expected start Friday, and noticeably more traffic in the Park, I decided not to go and may post pictures I can find online later.

The second thing I wanted to do was exit the Park on Route 140 and drive south, through the little town of El Portal and continue down to Mariposa.  Well, El Portal was not exactly what I had been led to believe it was (a quaint little mountain town) and I only drove about 12 miles south before deciding that the scenery was not unlike something I could see in the mountains of North Carolina, so I turned around and went back into the Park.

Item 3 – I then turned left and exited the Park on the road I had been using most of the week and drove a short distance where I turned right on the road to Hetch Hetchy, a 16-mile road which ends at the reservoir.  About 2/3 of the way up that road I entered the Park again (my mother would say “make up your mind, are you in or out??”) and was rewarded with some magnificent scenery.  While the forest along much of the road up to Hetch Hetchy had burned years ago the reservoir area itself was worth the trip.

The reservoir was created by the construction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam, named for the engineer who designed it and supervised it’s construction, and sadly died just 12 days before the public dedication. After the devastating earthquake in 1906 which destroyed the water system in San Francisco (along with much of the city) a plan was devised, after heated debate with conservationists who wanted to preserve the natural beauty of the valley, to construct this dam and create a reservoir to provide water to the San Francisco Bay area.

It took 20 years to design and build a series of pipes and tunnels to transport water from here, west to San Francisco – a distance of 167 miles.  The system was designed to transport the water completely by the force of gravity, and no pumps are utilized!

Some of the water is released downstream by a series of gates, located to the right of the dam as seen in the photo above.

This, then, creates a series of small waterfalls on the “dry” side of the dam.

Though the bulk of the water released through the dam is by way of a large jet of water which crashes against a rock wall before falling into what is now the Touloumne River, headed for the coast.

The dam itself creates the huge Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.

And although it is hard to spot in the photo above there are normally two waterfalls a little left of the center of the photo above (only one the day I was there).  The one which is flowing is the Wapama Fall, down near the water’s surface.

Earlier in the year, when there is more snowmelt, there is a much higher fall, the Tueeulala, which drops from the top of the high point just left of Wapama Fall, but there was no water falling from there on Friday.

After walking across the dam I went through a short tunnel…

… and got to see another perspective of the reservoir.

This was a great way to finish my time on Yosemite.

 

No photo.

Today (Saturday) is a travel day when I leave where I have been staying all week in Sonora, California and head up towards Reno, Nevada.  Although Reno is northeast of Sonora I am actually driving north on the continuation of Route 49 and will turn east when I get further north than Reno and loop back.  Route 49 is the “Gold Rush Trail”.

Sonora is in the heart of Gold Rush country.  Gold was discovered in this area back in 1849 and triggered a huge influx of people who hoped to literally strike it rich.  In fact, many of the businesses in the Sonora area include the term “Mother Lode” in their name.  The area is rich (pun intended) in gold mining history.  The people who came to this area became known as “49ers” (because of the discovery year) and the Trail was designated as California Route 49.  I now know why the San Francisco 49ers football team is called that, and why gold is part of their team’s color scheme.

Today I will be heading north of Sonora through the towns of Angels Camp, San Andreas (don’t ever try to blame anything on the people who live there, as they’ll say it’s never their fault.  Get it??  San Andreas??  Fault??) and Jackson, which I have been through already, and continue on through Plymouth, Placerville, Auburn and Nevada City before arching over to the east to where the road ends in little Vinton.  I will then double back a short ways and take another scenic road south to the dreaded interstate west of Reno and head east into Nevada.

Although I have plans to do several things while I’m up in that area for three days I will hopefully have some time (and a faster internet connection) to try and get caught up on some picture posting.

Last Sunday, my first full day in this area, I decided to forego returning to Yosemite National Park because it was so crazy the day before (the 3rd Saturday in June) and instead drove on two of the beautiful scenic roads north of where I am staying in Sonora.  There are actually three such roads, Routes 88, 4 and 108, each about 80 miles in length.  I would drive all three at least twice during the coming week, and will post pictures of some of the beautiful things I saw in subsequent posts.

This post focuses on one destination which is located along Route 4, just north of the little town of Arnold, California.  Although I had just been to see some Giant Sequoias a week ago when I was staying in Visalia, this Park was still impressive.

This is what’s left of the Discovery Tree, a Giant Sequoia which fell in 1853 – and took 3 weeks to cut up and remove (with the technology available at that time).  The cut surface, where the man is standing, is so big it once served as a dance floor!

Here is a portion of the trunk.  If you look closely you’ll see a young child on the far right.

And believe it or not, this is all the bigger a cone of a Giant Sequoia is:

According to the information in the Visitor Center, these cones only grow to be 1.5 to 3 inches in length.  Unlike most pine cones, these are “closed” and require intense heat from a fire to open and release the seeds inside.

On the other hand (actually still in my left hand but you know what I mean – Eric) this is the cone of a Sugar Pine which can grow to 22 inches in length:

These were taken Monday and Wednesday mornings using my smartphone camera.

The “nose” of El Capitan faces south so the southwest exposure is shaded in the morning:

As I move further east along the one-way road leading in to the Valley I start to see more of the southeast exposure (to the right of the “nose” from this vantage point).  It was also hard to position myself to get clear shots looking through the trees.

You will see slightly closer, slightly fuller views of the southeast exposure in the early afternoon pictures in the next post.

These were all taken Wednesday afternoon using my smartphone camera.  I will be posting pictures taken with the digital camera later.

The “nose” of El Capitan faces south so pictures in the morning highlight the southeastern face of the formation.  These were taken in the afternoon, so the first two (taken around 2 o’clock) have both the southeast (right side of photo) and southwest (left side of photo) getting sunshine.

These next shots were taken around 230 pm so as the sun moves west across the sky the southeast exposure falls into shade.

Here is a three-shot panorama, top to bottom, of the southwest face which is now getting more direct sunlight:

And before leaving the Park for the day, here are the final two pictures, taken around 5 o’clock.

 

This post contains pictures taken Wednesday morning.  You may want to print a map of Yosemite Valley to follow along at home with the references I will be making in this post and the next one (Half Dome – Afternoon Pictures).  To print the map, Google “NPS Yosemite Map” then click on “Official Map for Yosemite Valley”.

But before I post Wednesday’s photos let me revisit the first picture I posted of Yosemite which I took from the Tunnel View vantage point.  This was taken Saturday afternoon around 230 but I want to use it to put distances in perspective.

In the photo above, Bridal Veil Fall (on the right) is only about 2 1/3 miles away as the crow flies.  El Capitan (on the left) is about 3 1/2 miles away and Half Dome (in the center) is a whopping 9 1/2 miles away – well beyond the Yosemite Valley.

I didn’t go deep enough into the Valley on Saturday to see Half Dome again.  On Monday, when I was riding the Shuttle Bus around the Valley, I learned that I could see Half Dome from the middle of the Sentinel Bridge, though I never returned there that day to get any pictures.  Well the next picture is from that bridge on Wednesday morning, around 1030.  The sun is still behind Half Dome so you can’t see it very well because of the fact I was shooting from sunlight into shadows, but at least it gives you a slightly closer look.  Half Dome is now about 4 miles away.  I will be posting pictures taken with the digital camera later.

These next two shots are taken from the area around Mirror Lake, which is the closest I ever got to Half Dome.  For me, Mirror Lake was a big disappointment.  On Monday I got off the bus at the Mirror Lake stop when the driver said it was an easy hike of about a mile with not much elevation change, which in my opinion was wrong and wrong.  It is actually about a mile and a quarter (and not being a hiker that added a half mile to the round trip) and it started off easy and relatively flat but became rocky and steeper, about 100 feet of elevation change and, again, for “not in very good shape” JohnBoy, now walking at 4,000 feet elevation, that was more than I was expecting.  Well, when I got up there I learned much to my dismay that I was on the wrong side of the damn lake to get the “mirror” effect of seeing Half Dome in the lake’s reflection!  There was no way to get to the other side other than to go way around (and I mean WAY around) on that trail, or go back down and walk back up on the other side.  I can’t believe they don’t tell you which way to go to see the reflection when you get off the bus.

This is a small lake I got to just before Mirror Lake.  Wednesday, having learned from my mistake on Monday, I walked up the PAVED ROAD on the west side of Tenaya Creek which ends with a short, level trail which put me on the correct side for seeing reflections.  Well, kinda sortof.

Here is a shot looking up at Half Dome from the little lake shown above (it had another name on the sign up there but I don’t remember what it was and can’t seem to find it online).  Mirror Lake itself is supposedly just beyond this one.  From the vantage point of the photo above Half Dome can now be seen by looking up and to the right.  It is still over a mile away and you are looking up (into the midday sun) from around 4,000 feet elevation near the lake toward the 8,836 foot peak.

Well, we (I had joined a group of fellow travelers for my walk up to the lake, and I told everyone getting off the bus to take the road, NOT the trail closest to the bus stop) started walking further back to see the reflection in the “real” Mirror Lake only to be told that the Park’s new credo is to let nature take it’s course and rather than maintaining the much touted Mirror Lake as a lake they are letting it drain and return to being a meadow through which Tenaya Creek will run, in effect, undammed.  So no reflection today for Mr. “I walked up here twice and I’m not doing it again” JohnBoy.

You’ll see more pictures of Half Dome, taken in the afternoon, in the next post.