A couple dozen turkeys decided to visit the RV park this morning.
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Phyllis and Peter have a wildlife preserve directly behind their home.
Today we had a 4 point black tailed deer and several turkeys come to eat. Yes this at this point the road is 6 lanes on each side. A 12 lane interstate. Driving here can be challenging.
Phyllis and Peter came over to the park to visit and to take a short hike with us. The views from the top of the hillside were great. The deer were not shy. They did want a little distance between us and them but did stop and eat even with us nearby. It was a great visit and time to share.
Since we left the mountains we stopped at a RV park in Atwater, CA before arriving in Napa.
The rv park in Napa is part of the Skyline Wilderness Park. The park has some nice hiking trails and is far enough outside of town to be a quiet place to stay. Turkey and black deer are common in the park and we have seen both. Here is the view from the hillside above the park. Yes, that is a vineyard across the road. I was not surprised this morning when it was even cooler than last night. It was 34 degrees. Burr!!
The park service has started closing most of the campgrounds because there may be frost on the ground by next week and snow by the end of the month. Once that happens driving on these roads becomes difficult. There are so many blind curves with steep grades and no guard rails to even drive with tire chains. I don’t think I mentioned it but right up next to the edge of the pavement on both sides of the road tall metal posts painted bright colors. This is there so people plowing the roads can identify the edge of the road for clearing the snow and so drivers who do come up will not drive off the edge. I am glad we are headed down to warmer temperatures.
It was even colder this morning 38. It was 80 yesterday in the midafternoon and I expect it to be in the 70s today. Let's go on a hike.
The hike to Big Baldy ridge is 5 miles round trip hike to a peak of 8,209 feet. This will the highest we have ever hiked, and I think the highest land we have every stood upon. There are several mountains that are taller in the area but much more difficult hikes. Several require climbing gear. The tallest is a 20-mile one-way hike which means several nights on the trek. No thank you.
We gained 1,040 feet in elevation from the parking area for the hike.
The views were amazing.
When we reached the peak, we could look in every direction and see mountains in the distance. Looking to the west we could see the coastal mountain range peeking out from the smoke from the fires in the south. The peak was bald granite above the tree line. We enjoyed our lunch there and relaxed to recover for the hike back. It was almost all down hill which made it much less difficult.
We did find animals along the hike.
When we got back to the visitor center. A mom and her fauns walked across the parking lot.
An interesting choice for a birthday activity.
We ran the generator for 2 hours. This charged up all our devices and the house batteries. We also enjoyed a few of the modern conveniences we had been doing without like the microwave and watching a movie on the tv. Last night was DARK. I mean no light at all except the stars. Wow! Were there stars. We could only see the ones directly above us because the trees are so tall. But the milky way was visible with more stars than we have seen in a long time. Burr, it got chilly last night. When we got up, it was 41 degrees outside. I got up and started heating water on the stove for coffee. BTW, at 6,000 feet water just won’t get to a full boil. It steams but that is about the best you can get. This is the second time using a hand pour drip coffee holder. It is an interesting way to make coffee. Today, we took all the small hikes. First, we drove all the way to the “End of the Road”. Literally it is the end of CA180, the road through the park. Along the way we saw huge mountains, shear cliffs, roaring rivers, a waterfall, and lots of switch back curves with few if any guardrails. Some of the guard rails were just very short walls of stone. The mountains were amazing. There were so many different types of rock. Thousands of feet of granite towering over us but other types too. I could not identify them but there were several from one type that looked like it had a lot of iron mixed it because of the almost rusted color. Some were black and could have been lava. The road ran along a cut in the mountains that at times was only just wide enough for the two lanes. No extra space beyond the outside lines. Shear rock on one side and a fall of several thousand feet on the other. Nerve racking at times but beautiful. Once we reached the bottom we were traveling along the banks of a river. It was moving fast and crashing over enormous boulders. Some were as large as houses. I can only imagine the sound something that large would make crashing down from above. As we moved further up stream the boulders became rocks and the river was less violent in rushing over them. Next we walked to a waterfall. We would have liked to have stayed longer at the falls but the bugs there were relentless. Even with bug spray on the came and buzzed our faces driving us back to the truck. At the end of the road, we started back up to camp and eventually had lunch. The drive down is over 26 miles of switch backs and 26 miles back with lots of stops at overlooks. After lunch, we headed back toward the park entrance to take some of the short “tourist” attractions. They are all short walks on paved paths. Our first stop was General Grant, a huge tree and a .8 mile path around several others. Big Stump 2 mile trail which works its way around the remains of some of the largest trees that existed. Later we hiked a trail that took us past very large stumps. Huge trees used to stand there and it was uncomfortable to stand and look at them. One tree that was burned in an intense fire is called Resurrection tree. It is called this because after burning it came back to life and now is growing. Shake pile of an enormous tree that when felled shattered into 1,000’s of pieces after it was cut down. Later the lumberjacks would lay a bed of soft limbs and leaves to catch the tree so it would not shatter. Even though these trees are huge they sort of shatter when they fall. There are huge stumps at every turn. And Finally, Mark Twain Stump which was felled to cut slices that were shipped to museums around the country proving that the trees here were really this large. Up until they were at museums many people said the size of the trees as a hoax. There are stairs up to the top which allowed us to stand on the stump and helped to appreciate just how large these trees were. A man who was working here planted two trees and they were protected. This is what they look like 130 years later.
You see things here you would never see anywhere but California.
We left the full hookup regular RV park for a campground in the forest.
No hookups. Nothing. Just a road with cleared sites along the way. We are way out in the woods but in a camping area with hosts to keep track of things and vault toilets. There is a dump station with potable water to fill the tanks in the 5th wheel. So, we used our batteries and propane for the fridge, heat, and the stove. We do have a generator and will use it to recharge the batteries. It is very quiet and very dark at night.
We are very happy with the site.
Today we drive into the Sequoia National Park. This will be a great day. It's smokey but as we go higher the air clears. The smoke is from the San Bernardino fires which are 100’s of miles southwest of us. Wow! There are huge trees here Standing between giants! With just a picture it is hard to see how big they really are. This is a cross section of a mature but not even a large Sequoia with all its bark removed. There are two kinds trees that are most common in the park the Sugar Pine and the Sequoia. The oldest Sequoia are 3,000 years old. All the largest trees are over 2,000. They are not even mature until they have reached several hundred years old. The bark does not easily burn on a mature tree and insects will not burrow through the bark because its thickness and increased tannin near the wood. A mature tree will have over 2 feet of bark. When they reach maturity all the lower branches fall away leaving a huge trunk that extends a 100 feet or more above the ground. This makes it very hard for a fire to reach the limbs far above. The trees need fire to harden the bark and induce seeds to germinate. They don’t rot or die of old age. Biologists have determined that a Sequoia has no ultimate lifespan. Unless cutdown, ice age, or volcano it will not die under almost any other natural event. Many of the largest trees are named. This one is named Sentinel. The Sentinel tree is just an average size tree for this forest. Look close at the bottom and you can see the car. The Sugar Pines are huge by comparison to regular pine trees but look tiny in this forest. The interesting thing about the Sugar Pine is the pine cones. They are huge! The Sequoia by comparison has a pine cone that is about the size of a large chickens’ egg. From tiny seeds grows a gigantic tree. Today we started with a hike to Moro Rock and it was exhausting but we had amazing views. Hiking at over 6,000 feet is difficult when you start the day at about 500 feet. It does not make it any easier when you are walking up a rock that includes 350 steps to get to the top of what is equivalent walking up over a 20-story building. The views just kept getting better as we climbed. But when you look back to where we started, it was a bit overwhelming. And at times it was a narrow path between the cracks in the rock. Then there you are standing on the very edge of a gigantic granite outcrop. We were like tiny ants standing on a boulder. After a time of taking in the views, it was time to head back down. Then a hike on the Sugar Pine trail. A 1.4-mile hike through along the ridge and valleys between sugar pines and sequoia. First a quick look back at Moro Rock. Yes, those are people way up at the top. As we hiked, we came up on this Sequoia. Not a big tree for their species but still very impressive. Let’s give a bit of perspective to the size. These berries grew along the trail. They look well defended by the thorns. Time for some lunch at the truck and after that we walked around the largest tree in the world. Redwoods and Sequoias are enormous. We seemed tiny standing under them. The General Sherman is the largest tree on the planet by volume. It is not the tallest in this forest. One that fell in 1959 was cut into a tunnel for people to walk through. It was only a small tree for this forest of only 12 foot in diameter at the base but still amazing. We stood near trees that were thousands of years old. The oldest known Redwood is about 2,520 years old, but the oldest Sequoia is even older at a documented age of 3,200 years old.
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January 2024
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