Once in awhile-now and again-this is us

we made one stop before we got to the point. at this stop you see the back of half dome. it is an incredible sight. the whole place is incredible. for you that have been here, I hope these pictures bring back some good memories.

the ahwahnee

jerry spoted this heart

and a dog can always spot jerry

after spending a great day at glacier point,  we ate a late lunch in the coach and then headed toward wawona.  they have a nice hotel there too.

but we decided to stay in the campground here instead of driving back to north pines campground. it was right on the south fork of the merced river.

you can see the food locker on the right

it was so beautiful here. we have the merced in our campground too, but we aren’t camped by it. that might be good since there were bugs here.

the next day we go to the mariposa grove of giant sequoias.

stay tuned

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when we got back to camp last night, there was mama deer again and this time bambi was with her.

this morning we saw a bear. right near our camp. how exciting. a mama with her two cubs. and of all times the camera messed up. i had just taken the deer pictures the night before. but i picked up the camera to take a picture and it was nothing but a blur.

i tried a few  things  and  took  another picture.

the settings on this camera do different things than they did on my sony. but it broke before we left and it was going to be $250 to fix it. we could almost buy a new camera for that. i was telling kara my story and she said “i have a point and shoot nikon i don’t like and you can have it”.  she didn’t like that it didn’t have a view finder.

thank you so much kara. this is a nice camera.

but i’m still getting used to it.

i tried again.

dammit! what setting is it going to take to get a picture. here you can see the mama has a collar on. that is a gps tracker. the problem bears wear them so they can be found easily.

i give up. i’ve tried every setting. maybe my hands were shaking. no, jerry couldn’t get one either.

maybe the back window was too dirty, even though i had just taken pictures through it. so i stuck my head out the side window and finally got a picture. i think she saw me.

i don’t like the zoom on this camera as much as the sony. it was 20xzoom. this one is 14x.  it doesn’t get as good a picture zoomed in either.  that may have been one of the problems. i had it zoomed in too much and the bears kept moving. they stayed there for 5 minutes or so. they were in the shadows and behind trees a lot of the time though. but it was very exciting and fun to watch them forage.

the bears are a problem here. the park has really taken steps to keep them under control and safe. there are food lockers everywhere. at every viewpoint. every campground. at trailheads.

after all that we got ready and headed to glacier point. it was a beautiful day and the drive was gorgeous.

you can see by this screen shot you have to drive from #1, our campground,  all the way around the road to get to #2 glacier pt.,  which is  26 miles. but only 8/10 of a mile away as the crow flies. but boy is it worth it.

to see the view at glacier point,

stay tuned

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it was a beautiful day. and a gorgeous drive up the tioga pass.

we did pass through some the fire damaged trees. and it looks like they have the pine beetle here also.

we only had two campgrounds to pick from on Saturday night. most are closed and because of the spectacular weather the others were full. we got to the campground and the ranger said they had five spaces left. we got one of the last ones @ $7. a night.

we stayed here two nights. just hanging out. taking naps, playing dominos, watching everyone pack up and leave. by monday morning only 5 campsites were occupied out of 105.

poor people who have to work,  had to leave. ha ha.  we are very lucky, we have the whole week here. ha ha.

we drove to curry village yesterday. we’re starting to see some color now. most of yosemite is evergreen pine trees.

we got a glimpse of half dome as we got close to curry village.

curry village is near the base of half dome. we had to make our campsite reservations there. since it has been such spectacular weather, we were lucky to find one for the whole 6 days. we are in north pines campground, a short distance from here. they have wifi here so this is were i’ll do the blog.

maybe we’ll see a bear

almost a heart

we saw a deer as we ate breakfast this morning.

what’s next?

stay tuned

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the visitor center here is quite nice now. it’s been a long time since we’ve been in it. we watched a very interesting short film about the area. they have a lot of very detailed exibits also. we saw some very nice black and white photos, so i tried taking a couple.

it looks like snow

we didn’t want to drive over the tioga pass at night so we stayed in lee vining again. this time we asked at a gas station if there was anywhere to park other than the campground. sure, just go up a ways to the utility road and you can park there. it turned out to be a very nice spot, right on a creek.

the next morning we did the blog at a coffe house in lee vining and then headed up the pass.

stay tuned

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we started seeing the change in colors on the trees in bishop. I love the way the trees go up the mountains following the water.

we got to june lake and found a campground.

a lot of the trees have already lost there color

in the lower left corner you can see the color on the lake.

we drove around the june lake road the next day. it was a windy but beautiful day. there are four lakes in the loop. we stopped at gull lake to take some pictures.

grant lake is not as pretty. this is only one end of it, but you can see how the water level is drastically low.

you come back to 395 near mono lake. so that will be the next post.

stay tuned

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it wasn’t easy getting out to that field. we had to take dirt roads all the way. then it turns out the red field was not a red field. it was a bunch of red plastic fences put in such a way that from a distance it looked solid red. (didn’t it?) I looked it up online and someone is working on erosion. which is making his neighbors angry.

but on those dirt roads we found another interesting thing. acres and acres of very old cans and bottles.

back on 395 we made another stop in lone pine. home of mt. whitney and the Alabama hills.

we had never went very far back into the hills. this is where a lot of the old westerns were filmed. this was one of ted’s favorite places to take photos back in the good old days. I liked roaming around here and taking photos here too. the rocks are everywhere. too bad I couldn’t take any of these home.

we found cowboy canyon ted

look what we found

we stopped to say hi to some horses

the flies were so bad this one had his mask on

we got back on 395 headed to june lake.

stay tuned.

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don’t bother me, i’m napping

midas knew we were leaving him again and watched us carefully as we loaded the coach. we took our time and he got tired so he just went to sleep on the porch.

the drive to bakersfield is pretty boring, as most of you know. the view does get better when you turn on hwy 178 to the lake. we realized we had never been on this road.

it was a long tedious road for jerry to drive. he had to watch for the outcroppings along our side of the road

we made it to the lake and weren’t to impressed. this is where we camped and you can barely see the water. you used to be able to launch your boats here.

i saw this store as we were driving the next day and made (asked) jerry turn around to take a picture for sharon. it was out in the middle of nowhere in the city of onyx. I don’t know what the store was selling. it was closed.

the desert can be pretty if you look for pretty

it can be interesting if you look for interesting.

as we approached hwy 395 from hwy 178 we saw this enormus area of red off in the distance. the city was inyokern.

if you want to see what it was

stay turned

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we are leaving on our trip to Yosemite today. we’re getting ready to put in the cold food now, which is always the last step. (the beer went in when jerry turned on the refrigerator Monday).haha.

our first stop will be lake Isabella. we haven’t ever stayed there before. it should be nice this time of year. after one night we’ll head up  hwy 395 to lee vining where we will turn left on hwy 120 and go over the tioga pass into Yosemite. there is no snow yet.

we should see a lot of the fall colors along 395. it’s peak leaf peeping season.

as always we are looking forward to this trip. especially our anniversary at the ahwahnee hotel. this is a big splurge and we are going to enjoy every minute of it.

loading the coach I noticed one of the orange ‘brandy’ roses and I had to take a picture of it.

i’m seeing hearts already.

stay tuned for more

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