Yosemite
I’ve spent the last two weeks doing manual labor and it sure
is hard! We found a meadow that someone
on an ATV tore up doing donuts. It’s so
stupid that with the thousands of miles of trails, people feel the need to go
off the trails and tear up meadows and campgrounds. Last week we had to build a wooden fence to
protect Long Barn meadow. That involved
using an auger that had a mind of its own.
It’s easy enough to use the auger, until you hit rocks. Rocks make the drill stop turning and the
top, which you are holding, begin to spin.
In other words, the drill stops and the auger handles are ripped out of
your hands. There is a rubber safety bar
that is supposed to stop everything from spinning. In theory it sounds great, but in practice,
if the handles don’t rip your arms out of your sockets, the bar will break your
legs. OK, that may a bit dramatic, but I
do have bruises on my legs where the rubber bar beat me up. The area is very rocky, so it was a long hard
battle just to get 6 holes dug. We ended
up on our hands and knees with a pry bar digging the rocks out and using a post
hole digger instead of the killer auger. After 3 days on that fence, we had a
group of volunteers come help with another one. That involved replacing the top poles on a
horizontal rail fence. A thousand times
easier!
There was a group of black powder enthusiasts camping
nearby and they were very hospitable.
They brought us deer sausage and invited us to come shoot muskets with
them. That was fun, the muskets were all
custom made and they wore homemade buckskin clothes too. Loading the muskets was quite the process,
but I think that was half the fun for them.
The muskets were very long and it was harder to hold still than an
M-16. It didn’t have much kick and they
said it’s a much more accurate weapon. I
shot pretty well, but one girl hit the bulls eyes on her first shot. She backed up a few feet and it the bulls eye
again. They told her she could join
their club anytime! After we were done
shooting, they invited us to come back for dinner for a venison pot luck. Too bad we had to do an evening patrol at the
lake, I would love to have hung out with them.
The next week I only had to work 2 days. The first day, my boss decided he was going to do
some much needed paperwork in the office. He said I
could work on signs. I said I don’t think so, I’ll at home if you need me. I’m pretty frustrated at how unorganized they
are. There is no plan for what projects
need to be done and we waste an unbelievable amount of time each day deciding
with we’re going to do. A few weeks ago
I spent hours sorting road signs and plotting the location on the map. Those signs are now sitting in the floor,
shoved back under the snowmobiles. I
then found some 4x4 posts the signs need to go on and cut them to the right
size. Those posts are now sitting on the
side of the bldg. So no, I wasn’t going
to do more sign work just to have something to do. The next day I come to work only to find my
boss wasn’t coming in till noon. Our
facility guy was going to rip out a concrete slab on a bathroom on an
upcountry campground so I said I’ll go help him. I love to do demolition! The concrete slab came up pretty easily, with
both of us using sledge hammers. Picking
up the mess was much harder. We
used the smaller pieces to fill in some pot holes and the bigger chunks were
going to be used on another project.
After all that hard work, I decided to head to Yosemite for
a few days. It’s the next park over, so
I didn’t think it would be a lot different.
It was! The scenery was much more
dramatic, with huge granite formations and sequoias. I spent the first day just driving over
Sonora pass, through Bridgeport and Mono lake and enjoying the drive. It took forever to drive thru the park,
because it so big and because of all the people. You can only have dogs in paved roads, so
several of the places I would like to have hiked were off limits since I had
Brutus with me. I did find one paved trail
where we could check out a sequoia grove.
Man are they big! Brutus was unimpressed; he took a nap while I carried him down the 1 mile trail and back. That was pretty
much it for the day, so I found a very over priced hotel about 1 ½ hour from
the park and hit the sack! Guess I paid
the price for not doing any research and looking for a hotel at 7PM on a
Friday night! The next day I left
Beefcake in charge of room security and I headed back to the park. I saw a lot more the 2nd day
including some waterfalls. Of course,
had I come in the spring, the waterfalls
would have had actual water going over them.
There is a nice bike path in Yosemite Valley, so I rode around checking
out all the sights without having to worry about parking the truck, which is no
easy feat in a crowded parking lot.
I had full internet access, sort of, so I planned out the
next leg of my trip. I leave here on 15 Aug and I’ll head up to Lake Shasta for
a week. From there I’ll wander up into
Oregon. My guard unit from Portland
recently created a group on Facebook and they are putting together a picnic on
24 Aug. The timing is perfect and I can’t
wait to see everyone! During my military
career, I was with that unit the longest and the one I have the most
long term friends from. I also have
cousins in the area and am very excited to reconnect with them as well.
Today I’m headed over to Pinecrest Lake for an afternoon swim. I am a bit reluctant to leave the cool
mountain air here in the Stanislaus.
Yesterday is the first time I’ve turned on my AC and then it was only on
for about 2 hours. The temp rarely gets
up to 80 and its still in the 50’s at night,
Yup, I still turn on the heat first thing in the morning to take the
chill out of the air. I only realize how
hot the rest of you are when I venture down to the valley for my weekly grocery
run.
Well, that’s all the news that is news, lets hope I have something
more interesting to write about next time!
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