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Jul 5

Summer Trip Day Seven, Bodie State Historical Park

Bodie

Today, I visited Bodie State Historical Park, north of Mono Lake and Lee Vining.  Bodie was a gold mining town and is now a ghost town.  There are still a couple of hundred building there.  Most are standing.  A few are falling down.

The image below is the interior of the stamp mill, where the ore was crushed into dust to make it easier to extract gold and silver.  (Shot at ISO 6400.)

Bodie_Stamp_Mill

You can peer into most of the buildings and see the lives that people left behind in Bodie.  Wallpaper falling down.  Clothes littering the floor…

Bodie_Interior_1

Bodie_Interior_2

Bodie_Interior_3

I walked over to the town cemetery.  Many of the graves were from the heyday of Bodie.  And a few are more recent, of family members returned, perhaps, to where they grew up.

Bodie_Cemetery

After I left Bodie, I returned to Yosemite.  The Grouse Creek fire continues to grow, and the haze in the valley is worse than when I was here a few days ago.    

Grouse_Fire

Tomorrow marks the halfway point of my trip.

Jul 4

Summer Trip Day Six, Devil’s Postpile

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but my time at Devil’s Postpile National Monument turned into a full day of hiking and about a hundred photos.

Today was July 4, so the park was crowded—probably a couple of thousand visitors—their busiest day of the year.  They have a shuttle bus system to reduce the number of cars on the narrow, windy roads.

Among other things, the monument protects Rainbow Falls of the San Joaquin River.  This photo shows how the falls got its name… (As always, click the images to enlarge them.)

rainbow_falls

The monument is named after a large, well, “pile” of columnar basalt.  Normally perpendicular, there are some places where the columns seem to bend over. This image is infrared, which shows the green foliage as nearly white.

devils_postpile2

Here’s another infrared shot, of the dead trees left from the 1992 Rainbow Fire, which burned about 8000 acres of forest.

rainbow_fire

And here are a few other favorite images from my five-mile hike at about 7500 feet of elevation.

deadwood

pine

Tomorrow, it’s back to Yosemite.

Jul 3

Summer Trip Day Five, The Eastern Sierra

Bristlecone Pine

Today was pretty busy. I started the day at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Like many people, I first learned of Manzanar because of the work that the photographer Ansel Adams did there. Manzanar was a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.

Below are images of the cemetery at Manzanar. Some visitors leave mementos at this monument, including strands of origami cranes.

Monument_at_Manzanar

Paper_Cranes_at_Manzanar

After Manzanar, I drove down to the Whitney Portal, which is where the trail up Mt. Whitney begins.  It was very crowded there, and I only spent a half hour or so before heading down.

Next, I drove to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains. The oldest living organism on the planet is thought to be a bristlecone pine in this forest, at a little over 4800 years old. The photo at the top of this post is the skeleton of a bristlecone pine. I did a 4.25-mile moderately strenuous hike at about 10,000 feet. The temperature was in the high 60’s, which beat the high 90’s on the valley floor 6000 feet below.

Finally, on my way back through Bishop, I stopped at the Mountain Light Gallery, which is the gallery started by the late Galen and Barbara Rowell.

Tonight, I’m in Mammoth Lakes, where I just watched the July 3rd fireworks.

Jul 2

Summer Trip Day Four, Yosemite and Mono Lake

Mono_Lake

I continue to be inspired by my infrared photos. The image above is from the South Tufa area of Mono Lake, near Lee Vining, California. Mono Lake is an alkaline and saline lake, and the tufas are calcite rock formations in several locations there. The infrared camera highlights the interesting clouds we had today.

In Yosemite, the Grouse Creek fire continues to burn, and the Yosemite Valley had even more smoke today than yesterday. I did spend more time at the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias.

Tomorrow, I plan to explore south from Bishop.

Jul 1

Summer Trip Day Three, Yosemite

Yosemite_Valley

I spent the day exploring more of Yosemite, hiking to Taft Point, driving to Washburn and Glacier Points, and then spending more time in Yosemite Valley.

The Valley has a lot of smoke in it from the Grouse Fire, which started from lightning about a month ago. It’s a little frustrating that the grand vistas are pretty hazy, but I appreciate the benefits that fire brings to the forest environment.

The image above is another infrared photo. It is the classic view from the “Tunnel View” overlook. El Capitan is on the left. Half Dome is just left of center in the far distance. Bridalveil Falls is in the lower right.

Tomorrow, I work my way back through the Yosemite high country, and will end up in Bishop, on the other side of the Sierras.

PS: My friend Nancy wanted a photo of me driving through one of those “tunnel trees”. The California Tunnel Tree in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias isn’t big enough for a car (and they don’t allow them there anyway). When the tunnel was cut in 1895, they didn’t foresee the size of today’s cars. No car, but here I am under the tree.

california_tunnel_tree

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