June 14, 2002 - Yosemite 2

Today it was Mariposa Grove day.  The Giant Sequoia tree day.  On the left is the Grizzly Giant Tree (me standing in front) and on the right the California Tunnel Tree, cut in l895 for stagecoaches.  Grizzly was named that because of a Mr. Dowd, a hired hunter for a group of miners, in l852.  When he went back to camp all excited telling the miners he'd found some "giant orange trees," they made unkind remarks about his mental stability and didn't believe a word he said.  So he wandered off "hunting" again and, after an appropriate amount of time, came bursting back into camp telling everybody he'd killed a huge grizzly bear and needed five men to help him carry the meat back.  So, that's how the rest of the camp got introduced to these monster trees.

  The "tunnel" trees were originally cut as tourist attractions (stagecoaches, horse-drawn carriages, & later cars could drive through them), and one of them eventually succumbed to the effect of the huge gap in its trunk by a heavy wind in 1976 or so.  We'll see it later.  Seems these trees are resistant to what kills most other trees--fires, bugs, old age, and disease.  Nobody can guess how old they'll grow to, but there are more than a few that are over 3,000 years old (Grizzly is estimated to be 2,700 years old, one of the oldest living Sequoias).  Not the oldest trees in the world, though; that honor belongs to the bristlecone pine, some of which are over 4,600 years old!  And the base diameter of the Montezuma Cypress of Mexico holds the record with diameters exceeding 50 feet (the largest known Giant Sequoia is just over 40 feet).  But, in total volume (height and diameter), the Giant Sequoias are the largest living things known to humans.  After about 800 years, they've reached their attainable height (top out at over 300 feet), and then just add bulk until something like an extra heavy snowfall or windstorm knocks them over.  They have very shallow root systems, seldom going deeper than 6 feet, but are spread out considerably (about 150 feet in all directions for a stable platform).  The trees around the parking lot and some of the easily accessible places have fences around them, in the hopes that people won't continually tromp around the trunk, thus damaging the root system.

Barb is sure impressed with big trees.  Both here and on the Northern California coast (coastal redwoods).  Eastern girl, don't you know.  For a Calif. boy, these are still big, impressive trees, but we're used to big trees, right?  Still, we take pictures as you can't ever quite get over how very big they really are.  I'm staring up at the Columbia Tree, and then there's Barb on the boardwalk to the museum.  Nice grove of Sequoias, too.

The fellow who gets credit for having this area set aside by President Lincoln (Galen Clark) was a miner who got really sick.  His doctor told him he had from 6 months to a year to live.  He came here to die, which he did at the ripe old age of 97.  He built this "cabin" which is now used as a museum.  Closed today.  Open for the season tomorrow.  Oh, well.  I found the construction interesting, however.  My son Doug has build many log homes, and I've seen them all over the country, but never one with the joinery work this one had .  Triangles cut in the ends, nested into their mates.  Kinda pretty, actually.

And this was the ........ Yup, you guessed it.  The "other" tunnel tree.  One of the things that saved these trees from the sawyers is their characteristic of shattering like glass when they hit the ground.  There wasn't a section of this tree intact that was over 50 feet long, and not split besides.

"How Big?  Giant Sequoia trees are the largest living things on earth...bigger than the dinosaurs...as heavy as 800 buses...as much wood in a single tree as in an acre of Pacific Northwest Timberland...

"So How do they compare in size to us?  Try standing a one-and-a-half inch twig on the ground beside you.  Imagine that twig is you and you are the tree.  Now look up at the Giant Sequoia as you become the twig!"

At least that's what it says on the sign.  I'm looking at the root structure of a fallen giant, wondering how come there's still some dirt in there amongst the root system after all these years.  The older I get the less I understand about the world around me.

Another sign (this one easier to read from the photo) talking about the age of these guys.  And then a mule deer doe.  I had to hollar, whistle, stamp my feet, and generally make a fool of myself to get her to notice me so Barb could get this shot. She was busy grazing on the bushes, and really didn't want to be interrupted.   Hummm.  Why does all that sound familiar to me.  Have I ever done anything like that to get attention before?

Barb was obviously carrying the camera today.  First I'm sitting under the "Clothespin Tree" (this is a naturally caused tunnel tree from numerous fires), and then I'm sitting on another tree that I can't remember the name of.  Who names trees, anyway?  Do they really care?

The "Faithful Couple" tree.  Branches out into two separate trees up there a ways.

El Capitan.  With climbers.  Takes more than a day to go up the face of this rock, so the climbers sleep in a bag in this sling sort of thing.  Nothing I have ever done in the past or may do in the future can now be called stupid.  We saw no fewer than two groups of climbers, one on the sunny side, and one in the shade.  The shade group was comprised of about 6 climbers, and they seemed to be able to crawl/climb up the cracks.  The ones in the sunshine were dangling from ropes, with a huge pile of "stuff" dangling below them.  Made my palms perspire just to watch them.  So we quit watching them and went to the "village" where we finally found the parking lot for the visitor center.  No signs to tell us where anything much was, and Barb wrote a "suggestion" on a comment sheet once we got oriented.  No wonder there are traffic problems.  Everybody's driving around trying to figure out where anything is!  We rode the shuttle for the remainder of the day.  Yosemite Falls was just one of the 14 stops the shuttle made.

We liked the falls.  Particularly knowing that in August/September there's not going to be any.  The wind created by the falling water makes all the trees in this area grow one-sided, but we couldn't get a decent photo of any.  The wind also blows pretty hard sometimes all by itself around here too.  One of the early rangers counted to 198 while the water was stopped from falling because of the wind.  I'd have liked to have seen the water falling after that long a pause!

We were impressed by the falls.  Of course, we're both suckers for a waterfall.  Or a campfire.  Or ocean waves.  In other words, we're pretty normal I guess.

Yeah, that's another shot of Yosemite Falls from a different vantage point.  And there's us, toasting the beginning of our third year of being homeless and unemployed.  Note the big grins.  Actually, we missed getting the right date.  We actually took off on May 30, 2000, but we forgot to take a memorial day photo of it this year.  sigh.  Just can't seem to get our PDA (Personal Data Assistant --sophisticated computer--which we don't have) set up right!  HAHHAHAHAHHHAAA!!!

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