Category Archives: national park

national park, roadtrip, travel, USA, vehicles

Redwoods

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Leaving Sacramento on another fine day, we headed north on the Five through many miles of cropping land – even saw quite a bit of rice, which was surprising. Getting off the interstate & driving west we were quickly up in the hills & going past Clearlake. There was still quite a bit more time at the wheel before getting to the Redwood Highway. I must have been getting tired as I drove straight in to a really big tree. It was just as well that we came out the other side relatively unscathed.

As we approached this tree that you could drive through, a bit of a queue was forming as some complete muppet was trying to get a big Dodge Ram (that’s a very large pickup) through the hole. He was pretty stuck & holding everyone up. Somehow, I think with quite a bit of panel compression, he eventually got out the other side & everyone else could stop laughing & drive through. Most amazingly, that tree with the big tunnel through it is still growing strongly – incredible trees.

Further north we dived off the 101 & took the much more scenic Avenue of the Giants (the old 101). There were plenty of opportunities to stop & wander around various groves of the Californian Redwoods – well, those groves that remain after extensive logging in the late 1800s & early 1900s. Having grown up near & spent so much time hiking & biking around the Redwood Grove in Rotorua, NZ, this was really special to see the originals in their natural environment so close to the coast. (The Rotorua ones were planted during the Great Depression, along with many other species, to see what grew well in the area. That grove is still doing well & a very pleasant place to stroll or ride – some of the best trailpark riding in NZ is close by.) Able to grow well over 100m tall & for a couple or three thousand years – these are definitely the tallest living things on earth. To see so many of them was just fantastic. As I mentioned before, they can still continue to grow well despite scarring, holes & hollows in the base of the trunk. It was a little weird standing in the center of the base of a still living hundred metre tall tree.

Needless to say we spend a lot of time wandering around with crooked necks & jaws dropped. It was so nice & cool down on the ground & quite dark too. With light poking through the canopy & my snapshot-only photo ability, it’s rather difficult to get the proper impression of just how tall these trees are. But here’s a few token pictures to satisfy those who can’t abide all my words (not that such people are still reading).

A fallen giant – as the wood decomposes so slowly, dead trees can stick around for hundreds of years providing shelter for all sorts of plants & animals.

For some reason I’d decided on three nights in Eureka – which is not really all that big of a town. It had clouded over nicely by the time we arrived & the wind had picked up making it hardly attractive. Still we have a room & the historic downtown which I discovered this afternoon is quite nice (although with a strange lack of red, white & blue for the upcoming holiday weekend). Today we had a pretty lazy day, driving north to Redwood National & State Parks. I was feeling rather lethargic (I think excusable after two months on the road), so didn’t go for a ride (it would have mostly ended up being on the road). We walked through a few more groves (the Lady Bird Johnson Grove was particularly good) & marvelled at the magnificent trees a bit more.

(Because these trees are so old & so weathered being near the coast, their bark is grey-brown. If you want to see red Redwoods – go to Rotorua.

Taken for the meadow – not any Redwoods

national park, roadtrip, snow, travel, USA

Yosemite

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We’d started to hear over the previous few days that due to the huge winter snowfall & the very late spring, the rivers in Yosemite National Park are running very high. Consequently, the waterfalls were supposed to be spectacular. As we drove towards the park, we noticed easily that the Merced River (this river flows out of the Yosemite Valley) was high & in many places nothing but a raging torrent.

Our first big stop in the park was after eventually getting a park to walk the short distance to Bridalveil Falls. Seeing quite a few people returning rather drenched, I grabbed my rainjacket out of the car & wandered up. From a distance, the fall looked like this – you can see part of the spray cloud at the bottom.

Not far up the short trail, the river started to overrun the trail – being recently melted snow this was pretty chilly through flip-flops/jandals. At the viewing point the spray was so intense I was quickly quite wet (glad I put my jacket on) & could only just see the top of the falls.

Yosemite Falls & a flooded meadow & boardwalk.

We rode the shuttle bus around a bit further & walked up to see more waterfalls – this time Vernall Falls. The Merced was still thundering down this narrow steep part – the noise was fantastic. The nice wide trail was paved, but steep in parts. The final staircase was another path to a sound drenching & the view was somewhat obscured by a dead tree trunk.

After lunching near Vernall Falls, we returned to the valley floor & did the nice easy Mirror Lake walk underneath Half Dome. The highlight of this was the bear cub that came wandering along on the way back. Rather it ran along & then bolted across the trail. Mama Bear was nowhere to be seen, so that was great news.

The shuttle still doesn’t cope well with the gongshow that is summer in Yosemite, but we eventually got to the bottom of Yosemite Falls (the fifth highest in the world).

That was pretty much our day in Yosemite Valley. I enjoyed my visit so much more this time – the tremendous volume of water flowing & the sound associated with it was incredible.

Packing up in Merced we again headed for Yosemite – this time to drive over Tioga Pass & then head north through Nevada to South Lake Tahoe (which is back in California, but only just). Our only real break from driving was walking to Tuolumne Grove (giant sequoias). The largest living things on earth (by volume), it goes without saying that these things are pretty big – they can get old too, up to three-thousand years. This is a hollowed out trunk of a long-ago dead one to give a sense of size.

Almost immediately after leaving the grove, we started to come across more & more snow. The views along the road were beautiful with snow still capping the high points – it was well gone last time I drove this road.

Still a little bit of snow at Tioga Pass (just under 10000ft/2900m):

Out of the park, we lost elevation a lot quicker than we’d gained it & were soon driving north through west Nevada. I was surprised to see the scenery gradually change into nice green pastoral land – I’d never expected to see black-faced sheep grazing in Nevada. I’m well pleased to be travelling roads I’ve never been on before.  With a big climb up & then down, we were at Lake Tahoe in no time.

national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Joshua Tree National Park

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Leaving our humble/crumby/roomy trailer we headed west, & after crossing the Colorado River for the last time & declaring we had no fruit, were allowed unimpeded into California.  It was a longer drive through the edge of the Colorado Desert to the SE corner of Joshua Tree NP than I expected.  As we drove in to the Cottonwood Visitor Center I was a little confused by the lack of Joshua trees – instead there were quite a few Mojave yuccas around.  It turns out the park straddles two different deserts – the lower Colorado & the higher Mojave & the Joshua trees are found in the west, higher part of the park.

We checked out Cottonwood Spring, found a lot of greenness, but no spring.

It was quite a drive west through the park stopping at the occasional exhibit & view point.  I was trying to work out why my friend from work in Canada, Janet, had come down here for two weeks of climbing earlier in the month – the gneiss didn’t look at all climbable.  The Cholla Cactus Garden was very neat – provided you didn’t get any of the barbed spikes in you.  Apparently they are painful & difficult to remove.  I went so far as to put my sneakers on for the first time in days.  Just as I completed the loop I saw a family posing their two young children in amongst the cacti (off trail) for what would have been a neat photo.  By the time Valerie went past them, the youngest was screaming in agony – he got stuck by quite a few spikes.  Idiot parents.

Eventually we did get up high enough to see Joshua Trees – many different shapes & sizes & just everywhere.

Also, the rock got a lot better.  We spent a bit of time wandering the trail around Skull Rock (never quite found the right angle to see the skull properly, but it was close enough) before continuing through ever increasing amounts of good climbing (I assume, what would I know?) granite.

Leaving the park we joined the freeway just west of Palm Springs & headed towards Los Angeles.  Around here I saw the biggest wind farm I’d ever seen – they were all over the place.  That wasn’t too surprising, it was a big wind tunnel & Valerie had great fun driving this bit.  As we got closer to LA it was clear that even high winds were not enough to disperse the great big cloud of smog sitting above the city – turned a nice sunny day quite disgusting.  With the help of the map book we left the interstate & headed south through the hills – the sky was a little clearer & there was a lot less traffic.  Very pleasant indeed, but being no towns around we couldn’t find anywhere to stay so had to go west again to find somewhere to stay.

bikes, GPS, MTB, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA

Flagstaff Ride & Grand Canyon South

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A quick bit of research on the interwebs the previous night had me at the trailhead for Mt Elden just outside Flagstaff on Sunday morning.  The parking lot was strangely busy for early Sunday morning – it turned out there was a local Super D race on (a mostly downhill race, with a little bit of climbing).  From the trailhead there was six kilometres of easy climbing up through beautiful forest.  Near the end of that I stopped & chatted for about twenty minutes with a friendly local pharmacologist – got some good tips for Sedona the following day.  I continued up the Schultz trail before eventually hitting Sunset.  Here the climbing got a lot steeper & I was having to work now – ended up at nearly 2800m!  I was continually being warned that soon fast racers would be coming the other way, so that was a good excuse to walk up a very steep rock garden.  Slightly past that, the racers started passing by very quickly – as the trail was quite narrow, it was safest for me to walk so I could quickly get out of their way.  I saw the second rider completely lose it & go flying down the side of the hill about ten metres, stopped only by a lone pine.

Grovelling up the fire road to the lookout, I found the start line & watched for a little while before starting my big descent on Upper Oldham. It was fantastic with a great variety of trail, some techy rocky switchback, followed by with fast flowy bits & then back to the technical rocky stuff. I really enjoyed the ride & the great variety there was in the twenty-two kilometres I did. It was nice to earn all the downhill with the (mostly) very pleasant climb.  The last part of the ride was around Rocky Ridge – aptly name.  The whole area was very popular with bikers & hikers – great to see so many people out using the trails, I think I could quite happily live in Flagstaff.

I still love riding through meadows at high altitude

Back to the motel it was definitely time for lunch before we headed back to the Grand Canyon. This was my third visit to the GC, but my first to the more often visited South Rim. I loved seeing it from a different perspective, even if it was busier & somewhat windy. I still can’t begin to describe the vastness of it & these few photos may not be much use. Very interesting place, especially seeing all the different strata. This time we managed to get glimpses of the Colorado River – something you can’t see from North Rim.

Looking west, the haze had definitely set in as the sun set