Central California - Yosemite

Julie and I have left on a journey around central California. We flew into San Jose because we hate long drives, and for us, it would have been two days of complete boredom from Salt Lake to California.

The most significant accomplishment on our first day was lunch at In-and-Out Burgers. I had heard lots about the chain, but never eaten at one. It was good, but I am not sure I understand all the excitement.

The wind farms along the highway are incredible. There must be thousands of turbines, but they are so much smaller than the monsters they make now. I wonder when they will start upgrading them with fewer, more powerful systems.



When we started making reservations for our trip, all the lodges inside Yosemite were booked. We ended up deciding to stay at the Blackberry Inn, a B&B outside the park. What a great piece of luck. The place was fantastic.

From sunrise to sunset, there were dozens of hummingbirds at the feeders on the big front porch.



Steve, the owner, did a great job with the house and the breakfasts were to die for. While it adds a bit of a drive to get into the park, we would definitely stay there again!

Cricket the cat enjoyed talking to the customers and watching all the hummingbird feeders.



Just as you enter Yosemite, you can see the valley. El Capitan is the big rock formation on the left and Bridal Veil Falls is on the right. Does every national park have a Bridal Veil Falls?



In May, all the snow is melting, so the waterfalls are full of water and amazingly powerful. This is the top half of Yosemite Falls. It's the fifth highest waterfall in the world, and Julie and I hiked to the top of it. We had already gone up 1,200 vertical feet to take this picture. Living in the mountains helps keep you in decent shape for climbing.



The bottom of the falls was an ever-changing pattern of water streams dissolving into mist.



Hiking up the falls, we ran across some sporting team from Norway. When they got to the top, they thought it was great to clown around at the top of a big, big cliff. Julie and I were expecting to have to talk to the rangers as they filled out the death certificates.



We didn't climb Half Dome. It still had too much snow and the trails were closed.



While most of the park is beautiful, some areas were burned to the ground from forest fires.



Julie on the footbridge at the base of Vernal Falls.



Our hike to Vernal Falls was on a Saturday morning. Even though schools hadn't let out for the summer, everyone and their brother came to Yosemite.



Vernal Falls, while much smaller than Yosemite Falls, was just as gorgeous. It hammered down into a pool where the mist made a little rainbow.



The volume of water was intimidating. You knew that if you slipped into a creek, you were likely to be whisked off in the near freezing water. The thought made you pay attention as you scrambled across wet rocks.



There only seemed to be two types of hikes in Yosemite: flat easy hikes through the valley, and big, long, steep hikes out of the valley. I would love to go back and do some more of both. The scenery is as good as it gets.

Crossfit Park City rocks!

Chris and Eric, our two Crossfit trainers, went to the regionals to compete this weekend. They were competing against 70 other Crossfit studs from around the northwest.

Chris, on the right, won three out of four events and won the region. Eric, on the left, was in third place. Not sure who Jerome is, but he's a good bit bigger than Chris.



Hopefully at least a smidgen of my Crossfit trainer's conditioning will rub off on me. Of course I am typing this blog entry, sitting in bed in a B&B, with a glass of white wine.

It may take a while.

Just a few quick shots

The trip is going great and we have had a lot of fun so far. We got to Morro Bay this afternoon, so we are done with the mountains.

With all the snow this year, the Yosemite waterfalls are outstanding!



The huge presence of Half Dome.



Julie, next to the most massive tree in the world.



And a black bear who ran across the road, but then stopped down the hillside to tear apart some logs looking for bugs.



Lots of gorgeous scenery. Lots of wildlife. Great hikes. Tomorrow we go kayaking.

I'll post more later.

Look at the pretty new retaining wall

Not too far from our house, they are cramming a little development onto the side of a hill. That guarantees you will need some retaining walls. This one was nice looking with big timbers and a decorative fence at the top. That is, until it started falling down.



Looks quite a bit worse from this side. Part of it has ripped out from the hillside and is falling. Most everything else is leaning enough to be worrisome.



But the worst view has to be from up top. There are two nice houses that have been there a good while and aren't part of the new neighborhood. I wonder how bad it has to get before they start having foundation problems.



I guess they never said that building on the side of a mountain is easy. Our house's retaining wall is built with 700,000+ pounds of concrete blocks. You can see it here.

OK, we're leaving

I want to take some pictures of something other than snow, so we're leaving town and heading to California. We will be visiting Yosemite, Sequoia, Morro Bay and Carmel.

Meanwhile, it keeps snowing here. I am hoping this is the last picture of snow this spring. I shot it from my car window on the way to CrossFit.



Double click on the image to see it bigger. In a dreary, cloudy picture, almost in black and white, there is one little yellow house right in the middle. I didn't see it until I pulled the image off the camera. A nice little surprise!

Saving pictures in Outlook

Julie and I both use Outlook for our email. We have been frustrated lately when we get pictures that are embedded in a note. We want to save the pictures, but there is no easy way. You can't drag the image to a folder. You can't right-click and pick save as.

Here is a very easy to follow set of instructions to fix this. Follow them very carefully or it may not work. Once you have set it up one time, saving pictures is just a click of a button.

http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/saveembeddedpictures.htm

Yes, this should definitely be built into Outlook, but it isn't.

Jasper's best friend

This stunning young lady is Hannah. Her parents are renting our condo and they came over for dinner the other night. Hannah got dressed up for the occasion with some stick-on earrings.



She's as cute and friendly as she can get and she just loves Jasper. It's great to have such nice people right next door!

Update: here is a picture Hannah's mom, Sally, just sent from her iPhone. Hannah has on her stylish biking helmet.

Local guests

Our friends the Benson's are on a nice vacation. Meanwhile, some squatters came in to take over. As best we could tell, it is a mom and a little one. They tried to be very uncooperative by waiting until I was there with my camera to walk over and sit down in the shade. I understand that for a hot day, but it was only 30 and there was a stiff breeze.

They seem to have a pretty shaggy looking coat right now. Perhaps it is the transition from winter fur to summer.



It took me about 30-45 minutes of slowly creeping closer. They never seemed terribly worried about me and I always had a mapped out plan to run for my life.

Quite the lovely pair.



I think Junior told mom a joke. Looks that way...



I've seen dogs scratch behind their ears, but it is quite something to see with a young moose.



They were mostly pruning back Bill's lovely lawn. It is tough to do when you are tall and awkward though. I like this adaptation. Something half way between standing up and laying down. It seemed to work quite well.



I'm going to have to get better at judging males vs females and ages. Everything I have found on the web says that to age a moose, you should look closely at its teeth. I am guessing this applies to a hunter who has killed the moose, because I can't see anyone snuggling up close enough to check a moose's molars.

Exercise is hard

I have been trying to get in the habit of going to my CrossFit workouts three times a week. I am enjoying it, but most workouts kick my butt. Here was today's, with some notes.

• 100 Double Unders (jump rope, spinning two revolutions per jump)
  
• 10 Burpee Box Jumps (stand, down to the floor in a plank at the bottom of a pushup, back to standing, jump up on a 24" box, jump down, repeat)
  
• 20 Ring Push ups (instead of hands on the floor, your hands are on gymnastic rings lowered down to a few inches off the floor)
  
• 30 Wall Ball (hold a 20 lb medicine ball at your chest, go into a deep squat, rise quickly and push the ball up against the wall, over a 10' line. Catch and repeat)
  
• 40 Power Cleans (take a barbell with 95 lbs, from the floor, lift it quickly up to your chest, as though you are about to do a press. Repeat)
  
• 30 Wall Ball
• 20 Ring Push ups
• 10 Burpee Box Jumps
• 100 Double Unders

This is how the workout is prescribed. If you have to back off things, that is allowed. The workout is timed, and you are trying to finish as quickly as possible.

I was able to do most things, but I used 75 pounds instead of 95 and I haven't mastered double unders, so I had to replace each with 300 normal jump ropes.

I can't tell you how tiring this is. Everything but the double unders uses your triceps. Mine were melting by the end. I just keep telling myself "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Snow in the Cottonwood Canyons

We have had some annoying April/May snows the past few days, but it is melting off in the afternoons almost as fast as it comes down. However, this week has been the perfect example of the difference between the snow at Park City and the snow over in Little Cottonwood Canyon, about 5 miles away.



In the last four days, Snowbird has had 7 feet of snow. They have been getting the lake effect snows of the Great Salt Lake, just like you hear about with NY and the Great Lakes. Snowbird's peaks are about 3500 feet higher than where we live, which has made an important temperature difference. The moist air gets pushed up the canyon, rising from 4,000 feet to 10,000+ feet. The temperature drop forces all the moisture out as snow.

Great for the water supply. Great for the only ski resort still open. And mostly great that we didn't have anything like that on our side of the Wasatch range.