Author: Zingblog 2

Once we got away from the Bay Area the weather started getting hot, up to 100 degrees as we crossed the Central Valley. As we drove up into the mountains the weather cooled to merely hot and the scenery grew more spectacular. On the way into the valley we stopped at Bridal Veil falls, one of several that spill down over the surrounding cliffs.

We met up with our friends Wanda and Chris in Yosemite Valley where we spent a couple days camping. Wanda and Chris are really excellent people, generous, funny and intelligent. I first met Wanda at a SIGGRAPH years ago when her business card read Director of Chaos. We all became good friends when I moved out to California and now they have a daughter about Michelle’s age. We stayed in Housekeeping Camp, a campground of tent-cabins peculiar to Yosemite. You can’t leave food in your tent because to the bears, so every campsite is provided with a food storage locker built like a mailbox. Since we came by plane W&C brought a cooler with cool things as well as some extra blankets and other sundries.

It was late afternoon by the time we arrived, and it took a while to get checked in and set up. Still the girls had time for a swim in the Merced River and then we went off to dinner. I’m used to cooking our own food when we go camping, so even though I’ve been to Yosemite before, it still feels weird (but good) to go out to eat. National parks aren’t your local state campground, so there’s all sorts of lodges, hotels and restaurants. We went to the cafeteria in Curry Village, which was quite good. The kids enjoyed riding around on the bus. Finally we came back to the campsite, built a fire and talked well into the night.

The next day (technically a Tuesday but Second Saturday by our reckoning) we headed down to Mariposa Grove to see the giant sequoias. There was construction on the narrow, winding mountain road, so the thirty mile trip took almost two hours. But it was totally worth it! We took a tram ride to the upper groove figuring the hike would be a lot for the kids, but hopped off on the way back and hiked down the last half. Saw lots and lots of really, really, really big trees, many of them thousands of years old. Truly staggers the imagination.

On the way back we stopped for lunch at the Wawona Hotel, a hundred-year old wooden lodge house in the park. When we got back to camp we went for another swim in the river. This time I went in and I can tell you the water was cold! That evening we had dinner in the Mountain Room at Yosemite Lodge, a fairly fancy restaurant. Chris and Wanda are big gamers and that night they introduced us to Dominion, a card game a bit like Magic but more streamlined and without all the annoying card collecting. MIchelle lost a tooth that night!

The next day (logical Sunday) we did all kinds of activities in the valley. Checked out the nature center at Happiness Isles and then went for a nice hike among a series of rocking, branching creeks. Checked out the Indian Village and (of course) the gift shop, and wound up the day at Yosemite Falls, where the kids had great fun climbing over rock and boulders at the base of the falls. W&C had bikes with them, so we split up and took turns biking aound the valley between stops.

As we were packing to go, Jeannie discovered something had chewed a hole thru a corner of her backpack! She had forgotten the tin of chocolates we bought in Marin. Even though they were sealed in shrink-wrapped plastic, some critter had sniffed them out. We found the plastic wrapper but not a trace of the tin or the chocolates. We can only guess as to what kind of creature did such an act. Lizzy speculated it was evils squirrels, but I’ve never heard of squirrels hitting a target that big. My conjecture was Otter-Bears, a mysterious animal that is rumored to live in rocky caves in mountain creeks. Michelle said it was a deer with fingers. But Jeannie and most other sensible people think it was probably raccoons.

We left the park in late afternoon, driving over Tioga pass and getting up to 10,000 feet. On the way we stopped at Olmstead Point (named after the famous park designer; not sure what he was doing way out west) and was a view of the valley looking back from the very top. The scenery for the whole drive (another 2 hours to go 30 miles kind of trip) was unbelievably beautiful, just breathtaking. Snow still lingered on some of the north slopes of the mountain tops. We came out of the Sierra on the Nevada side, into the dessert at Lake Mead. Then it was a long but relatively flat cruise north thru endless cattle ranches. Finally we headed back into the mountains as nightfall neared, headed up to Lake Tahoe. More on that in Part III.

We just got back from a fantastic and epic vacation to California, including San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, and Lake Tahoe. The California Republic always seemed like a mythic land to me growing up in the cold northeast, and the years I lived there were some of the best times of my life. I’m glad I had the chance to go back and share it with my kids, and I’m happy that the land has lost none of it’s enchanting character and charm.

The week leading up to the trip was busy as things tend to be. In addition to the usual work and trying to beat the heat, Denis and Sarah were in town for a visit. Jeannie and the girls and I met them for lunch in Times Square Tuesday. It was nice and the kids won a bunch of Dora schwag in a promotion and gave it to my niece Anna. I’ve been working with Blick to get our outsourced development set up. More on that in a future post. Wednesday I flew thru the week’s yardwork including pulling weeds from under the hedges, as we’d be gone the coming weekend.

We got up way early Friday to catch an 8:00 AM flight. The whole getting to the airport and onto the plane process went smoothly. I meant to nap on the plane, but wound up getting into the book I was reading. We got a great view of Yosemite from the plane, a nice bit of foreshadowing. The first thing we did when we got there was cruise down to Silicon Valley to check out our old haunts. We had lunch in a burrito place near Jeannie’s old job, drove by old house in Redwood City and in Palo Alto, past my old office and the hospital where Lizzy was born, and few other landmarks. We ended up the tour by parking near Stanford parcel B and hiking up the hill to the big radiotelescope. We didn’t make it all the way to the dish because the kids were tired but we got high enough to get a good view of the bay.

Our hotel was near the airport in South San Francisco. It was nice enough and conveniently located. The big surprise was the weather. Just as in NYC it’s been super hot, in SF it’s been cool, to the point where they haven’t really had a summer. It was in the 50’s and 60’s and foggy the entire time we were there. That evening we went into the city and had dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf at one of the seafood restaurants. The kids loved all the silly tourist trap stores – magnets, posters, socks, left handed things. We got a bunch of seashells at the place where they sell seashells by the seashore. They also dug the sea lions, although the population there is still low compared to what it’s been. I guess they’ve swum south until the weather breaks.

Saturday the plan was to go the Exploratorium. On the way we stopped at the vista point on the SF side of the Golden Gate Bridge. The kids got their national park passports stamped there for the first of many times. The Exploratorium itself was a lot of fun. An interactive science museum full of hands-on exhibits, it had lots of cool stuff to explore about geometry, physics, color, sound, light, magnetism, etc. We ended up spending the whole day there until it closed at 5:00. There was even some origami stuff including a couple models by our friend Robert, and book in the gift shop called Origami American Style by John Montroll. I have to ask him if it’s legit; I’d never heard of it and it’s not from his regular publisher.

After the museum closed we walked around the Palace of Fine Arts and the pond and gardens. Then we drove up to twin peaks (the highest point in SF) to try and take in the view. We could see the radio towers from below, but by the time we got to the top of the hill the clouds had closed in and the view was just a cold windy white sheet. On the way down again we stopped at a park near Haight-Ashbury that had a hilltop just a bit lower. This was below the clouds and so we had a great view of the city and the bay and a fun little hike.

We ended up the evening back at Fisherman’s Wharf and dined at a different seafood restaurant. On the way we happened across an arcade of antique and classic coin-op machines ranging from Pac-Man and Galaxian back to 100-year-old player piano mechanical orchestras with built-in wind and percussion sections. Those were really fun and if I ever get silly rich I’m gonna buy me one.

On the way out of that we encountered a waterfront naval museum. This was something I always wanted to check out when I lived there but never got around to it. The kids wanted to take the tour for the submarine, and so we did. It was really cool. A 300-foot long, diesel-powered WWII vessel, it was crammed from stern to stem machinery and living quarters. Unbelievable to think 80 or so men could live in such a confined space. Even the officer’s quarters were very cramped. Not a good place to be if you’re over 6 feet tall.

Sunday we drove across the Golden Gate and spent the day in the Marin Headlands. Hiked around a bunch of places with excellent view of the bay and SF. Went out to the lighthouse at Bonita Point, across a swaying footbridge on which only two people at a time are allowed to cross. The sun came out for a spell and all was deep bright azure! Went to Rodeo beach and dipped our feet in the cold, cold Pacific Ocean. Walked up another trail to look down on the ocean from the cliffs. Bought a tin of chocolate in one of the gift shops because I liked the design on the box. Once we had our fill of hiking we cruised down to Sausalito and had snack by waterfront and enjoyed the scene at the harbor for a while.

For dinner we met up with friends Japantown. There was a street fair with Cuban bands going on when we arrived. We went by the Paper Tree, an amazing origami supply store, but it was closed. We walked around the Japantown mall, and we checked out the various stores, with the kids looking for hamster erasers (I don’t know, they’re some thing from Japan) and me looking at anime robot kits and samurai swords. The kids bought some Totoro dolls and I got a neat little paper robot kit. Not exactly origami, but related. Had an excellent dinner that included sushi, tempura and fried baby octopus. Finished the evening the hotel hot tub.

Monday we began the bear-oriented part of the trip. After stocking up on supplies we lit out for the famous Yosemite National Park. Jeannie and I had been there a few times while we lived in California, including one unforgettable trip in the winter in which we cross-country skied Badger Pass the whole time. We’d also been there a couple times in the fall, but this was our first trip in high summer and the first time for the kids. It’s a really fantastic place with just mind-boggling scenery, perhaps number one of any place I’ve ever been (or maybe a close second to the Grand Canyon) in terms of sheer geological grandeur and epic scale. More on that in Part II.