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Hetch Hetchy panorama
7/10/2011
It's been a week of marches, some fun, some less fun. Some beautifully scenic, some on city streets. Mostly though we've just been trekking all over the place. We've been across California and back again, and walked all the way to Contra Costa County. Lets let the pictures do the talking.
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We started off the week with a visit to the holy of holies, but because it was July 4th, it was closed. What kind of religious experience are we supposed to have when the place we most desire to go to is closed?
The bitmapped 'One' sculpture was a nice touch, but it does not make up for the fruitlessness of our pilgrimage.
Alas, the doors are locked, and nobody even took in the paper. Definitely closed.
We'll be back another day hopefully to explore the bounty contained within.
In the meantime, it was off to Lawrence Hall of Science to build as high as we could with their unlimited supply of keppla blocks. My tower to taller than me (that's over 5' 9" and I was standing on a chair on the table to put on the finishing touches before knocking the whole thing down.
I decided to build low and mighty. Then I set up domino blocks on the steps and made them tumble down.
Wednesday we went to Yosemite, but first we stopped at Hetch Hetchy
According to a kind of boring documentary, Hetch Hetchy was a valley just as beautiful as Yosemite, but somebody got the brilliant idea to flood it and use it as a reservoir for San Francisco. Sounds like a "hey guys, watch this" moment. Darwin says you're not supposed to mess with nature like this.
Good thing we don't have to hike to Yosemite Valley from here. 47.5 miles on foot is a bit too far.
Actually the trail was closed at Wapama falls because the water was washing over the bridge.
We did make it into Yosemite Valley, and there were the regular falls, like Yosemite falls behind us, and falls from everywhere where they aren't supposed to be in the middle of summer. They had some kind of tremendous snow pack and the water is coming out of everywhere.
We went up to Mirror lake because it is right below half dome.
We still don't see why anybody would want to climb that thing, but to each his own.
There's wild animals in this place, but we thankfully didn't see any bears.
Next day we set a goal of getting to the top of Nevada falls. It's just 3.4 miles via the Mist Trail, but it's 2000 feet higher than where we are standing. Oh boy.
We made it to the bridge below Vernal falls pretty easily, and set out up the mist trail.
We got completely 100% soaked on the mist trail, but that actually helped because it kept us kind of cool as we continued up the trail. Here we are just below Nevada falls.
2 tenths of a mile to go--woo hoo!
Here we are standing on top of our destination--hail the conquering heroes!
Back at the bridge below Vernal falls we were definitely pooped. Just one more mile to the valley floor and ice cream treats for the mighty hikers--that's us.
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