While Yosemite Valley is very famous and much-photographed, another area of the national park, the Tioga Pass, is rather less so. The Tioga Road runs for nearly fifty scenic miles surrounded by the high Sierra Nevada peaks and domes. The Tuolumne River flows across the sub-alpine meadows of the same name which offer wonderful views and some lovely walks.
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If colour is the language of dreams, what about the many names we use to describe colours? Yes, we can say blue, red, green, yellow, pink, and everyone will have a mental image of each colour as it is named. But will we all have the same image? There are so many reds, so many greens, so many pinks … You get my drift!
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I’m not a fan of living in the past. Nostalgia can be a dangerous exercise and too often people look back with rose-tinted glasses at a past that never really existed. But I do enjoy looking through sepia-tinted glasses from time to time!
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It is said that an early explorer in the region we now call Death Valley led his mule to a spring-fed pool to drink. The mule refused as the water was briny despite being miles from the sea. From this simple event Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America, earned its name.
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When the Spanish invaded and conquered much of the American south west, one of their first acts was to build missions. They claimed they were saving the souls of the indigenous ‘heathens’ but they had a much more worldly agenda. Their motivation was to subdue, control and in due course employ the local population to exploit the resources of their newly acquired territory.
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Bodie is a former gold mining town, now a ghost town which, as the state park website says, has been ‘preserved in a state of arrested decay'. It looks largely as it did when the last residents left, its buildings still furnished and stocked with goods, offering a unique glimpse into the past.
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When I was (much) younger I used to marvel at older people saying how quickly time passed, but now I see that they were right! It’s hard to believe that another year is over, when it seems as if it’s barely begun!
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Planning our California itinerary was a bit like playing join the dots! There were plenty of places we knew we wanted to go to, sights we wanted to see. The great national parks, the giant redwood trees, the Pacific Coast and inland landscapes. Once those were plotted, we had to find the best routes between them. But what is best?
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If you visit a city only to see its famous sights, you are missing out on much of what makes that city what it is. The people who live there may do so against the backdrop of its grand buildings, iconic monuments, parks and so on, but for the most part those things are of secondary importance to their daily lives. If you want to really get to know a city you need also to observe those people.
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In 1914 a volcano in north eastern California, Lassen Peak, blew its top. Its outbursts continued for three years but it now lies dormant, at the heart of the national park that bears its name. Much of the park is wilderness, but a road runs north to south through its western section, giving access to many trails and vista points.
