Hello, readers!

Hello, readers!

I am not currently on the road. Please check back periodically later this year as I have no idea when I'll be traveling! August? September? October? Who knows!

Cheers,
Kelly

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Out of the mountains and back into the world



8/18/2017

Well, it had to happen eventually. I had to reach the end of the road. I’ve been on this trip now for almost six weeks, Jane’s tired, I’m tired, and it’s about time for me to get home and get back to work.

But the end of the road that I’m talking about for now is actually the end of the Redwood Mountain Overlook road, site of my final Sequoia/Kings Canyon hike. And boy, was this a road I was glad to get to the end of!

I reluctantly packed up my camping gear this morning – there’ll be no more camping stops this trip, unfortunately – and hopped in Jane, ready for another half day of hiking. A park ranger had recommended the Redwood Mountain grove to me as a nice out-of-the-way, fairly unpopulated hike where I could finish winding down prior to my return to “civilization”.

As soon as I turned onto the road leading to the trailhead, it immediately became apparent to me why this hike is so unpopulated.




This monster of a road winds its way down the mountain into a low valley, but it does its best to get you there as fast as it can – that is, it’s very steep because it mostly just goes straight down. It’s unpaved, narrow, and bordered on one side by a steep, soft slope that seems ready to give out at any moment. Best yet, it features some outstanding potholes and washboard features.

In short, it’s the perfect road to drive your lowered vintage Mustang down! Not only will you get to test your brakes (on the way down) and your throttle control over washboard features (on the way up), but you’ll also get to find out what electrical connections and mechanical components aren’t as snug as you thought they were. If the car’s still functioning by the time you get to the top, you’ve won the lottery!

Jane and I barreled our way down the slope, wallowing into unseen potholes and trying not to get going so fast that we would slide off the edge of the cliff on any of the turns. The steering, which by this point in the trip was very clearly unhappy, howled in protest as I spun the wheel left and right repeatedly to get around obstacles I saw at the last moment. Things even managed to rattle, even under the weight of all of the gear I had stuffed in Jane. But hey, we made it to the bottom just fine.

I parked and tried not to think about the fact that I would have to go back up the dang road again in a few hours, instead setting off on the large loop trail with the intent of just hiking for an hour or so before turning back. This redwood grove is another one of the largest in the parks (I still haven’t figured out if it’s in Kings Canyon or Sequoia), but it’s a lot less densely populated with redwoods.

I saw quite a few giants and hiked along a small stream for a while, which was extremely pleasant.






Someone made this redwood log into a storeroom


And then I realized that I had been hiking upwards for quite some time. I looked around and the trees and overall landscape had completely changed – I had gone from a marshy redwood forest to a dry alpine climate in a very short distance! Fascinating.





As far as I could tell, this was mostly due to the change in elevation (going up) as well as my positioning on the slope. I suspect it must have something to do with the way wind and weather moves over the mountain, as the slope opposite me across the valley was still heavily forested with lots of redwoods towering over the rest of the trees. Had I been able to do the entire hike, I would have looped around over to that slope and down through the valley again. But alas, I only had the morning to hike, so I turned back the way I came, which somehow looked completely different going the other way. 






I returned to the parking lot and sat on a rock to eat my lunch, whereupon I observed a group of young teens having an argument over my car. All agreed that it was a very nice car, but half said, “That’s awesome that it’s down here!” and the other half said, “No way would I take a car like that down here! That road was terrible!” which was an accurate assessment.

I went up to them and said, “Well, I took it down here so I guess now I have to take it back out,” and then I got in and started my way back up. I admit that I paused a bit at the base of the trail, just looking upwards at what I had to tackle. You see, the problem with a vintage car from the Muscle Era is that you’ve got a lot of power and not any traction control to speak of. In most conditions this is totally fine, except when you’re driving on ice and washboard surfaces. For whatever reason, a heavily ridged surface kicks the rear end out sideways really quickly if you’re not good on throttle control or countersteering. And I really wasn’t too keen on kicking the rear end straight out over the edge of the cliff.

But hey! This is what we do, Jane and I. We tackle that which makes the average person more than a little uncomfortable, and we wrestle with it, and we win (most of the time). Or we keep trying until we do. Sometimes you’ve just got to have more guts than sense.

So up we went.

There were a few hairy moments, but we made it to the top with nothing more than an exceptional amount of complaining from the power steering pump. We’re old hats at challenges like this, you know. I knew that if I had anything to be rattled loose or destroyed, it would have been rattled loose or destroyed long ago somewhere back in Canada or maybe Montana.

I popped the hood and added some more power steering fluid, which the pump promptly puked back out, despite being low on fluid and clearly asking for more. I said, “screw it,” and Jane and I started making our way down out of the mountains.

One of life’s greatest pleasures, I find, is going down a delightfully twisty road. But the pinnacle of this pleasure is when the downhill slope is precisely steep enough that you can maintain the speed limit without the application of the skinny pedal or the brakes. I coasted my way down the mountain in neutral, enjoying my sudden 40+ MPG status. Who said muscle cars can’t get good gas mileage?!

Our destination for the night was Bakersfield, CA. Now, those of you who know Bakersfield are now immediately thinking, “But why?!” Myself, I’ve never been to Bakersfield before, and I figured it really couldn’t be as terrible as everyone says. But as I entered the dusty wasteland surrounding the city, I found myself agreeing with everyone elses’ assessment: Bakersfield is just terrible. At least, its environment is. I’m sure the people are quite nice.

In fact, the reason I was going to Bakersfield was because I wanted to meet someone! A member of the Vintage Mustang Forum, Bob, resides here. I’ve known him through the forum for quite some time but have never met him in person. He had been keeping an eye out for original Mustang body parts, and had found the holy grail: an original rust-free 1966 fastback decklid! He contacted me asking if I wanted it, saying it was cheap, and the answer was “of course I do”.

Yeah, I know, my car is already painted and wearing all her parts. But I’ve never been happy with the reproduction decklid that I had to put on after the wreck. The panel fitment is a little wonky and the metal quality is not great so I have to be careful with it, which is kind of silly in a car that’s used as a camper and road warrior. I figure next time I paint Jane, I’ll put this original decklid on instead, and then she’ll be even better!

I met up with Bob at a popular local divey diner spot and we wedged the decklid crosswise into Jane. It’s a good thing that I won’t be camping anymore, because unloading this thing every day would be a massive PITA!
 
The prize, wrapped in an old sheet because it's covered in old flaky paint.
We went inside for dinner and Bob informed me in no uncertain terms that “the portion sizes are huge here and you definitely won’t be able to finish the meal,” which of course meant that I was bound and determined to eat anything that was put in front of me. I mean, I’m from the South. I was a member of the Clean Plate Club growing up. In short, I can put away a ton of food and I can’t back down from a challenge.

We both ordered the country fried steak and I maintained that of course I would be able to finish the meal. Bob then made a critical mistake and told me, “I bet you that decklid that you can’t finish this whole meal.”

And that’s how he ended up watching me painstakingly wipe up every crumb of a giant country fried steak, a double order of hashbrowns, and a 12” pancake. I was very proud of myself and all he had to say was, “Good god, woman.”

Don’t worry, I paid him for his decklid anyways.


So on that note… Kelly signing out!

Monday, October 23, 2017

The Stars Align


8/17/2017

Another day in paradise! You know how sometimes your car just looks really exceptionally good? That was how Jane looked this morning. Something about the sun hitting her just right, and that healthy V8 engine under the hood with all of its fluids in the right places, and the faintly musty muscle car smell wafting from the welcome confines of the interior. Some days, everything is just right. Some days, Jane seems to be in just as good of a mood as I am.



I took advantage of that good mood and we set off southward along the Generals Highway in pursuit of giant trees and the seclusion of the forest. Just past the Giant Forest Museum, we hung a quick left towards Crescent Meadows and wound our way up the narrow road into the heart of the sequoia grove. The day’s mission: to see and hike as much of the old growth forest as possible.




Sequoias are only found on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, so they’re not exactly common. They seem to be relicts of an ancient time, giving the impression that the world was a lot bigger then than it is now. These towering red giants stretch hundreds of feet above your head to impossibly high reaches, dominating everything around them as kings of the forest. They are, in a word, majestic.
 
Random guy for scale. 
Our first stop was a brief pause at the famed Auto Log, a downed Sequoia big enough to drive onto! In fact, that’s what it used to be famous for. Before rot due to accelerated wear set in, cars used to be able to drive up onto the tree and park quite safely. It’s closed to vehicles now, unfortunately, but they don’t mind if you go up there on your own two feet.




A British man stopped there while I was wandering around, and informed me, “Well that’s just a proper right lovely kit there, that is!” (or something very close to that). I think he meant Jane. He asked if I’d rev the motor as I pulled away and I obliged, hearing, “GAWWWWWWWWW!!!” as I left, which I interpreted to mean, ‘that sounds amazing’.

Our next stop was one of Sequoia National Park’s most famous attractions: Tunnel Log! This massive log fell across the road leading to Crescent Meadows back in the 30’s and was subsequently tunneled through, since that was easier than chopping the whole thing up and moving it. I lucked into showing up at a time when no one else was there, so I parked Jane and took a few shots before moving on through. I mean, there’s just no way I could resist something like this!





I eventually did reach the Crescent Meadows trailhead and lucked into a parking spot, so I decided to use that as my base of operations for the rest of the morning. A huge network of looped trails crosses the grove between here and the Lodgepole Visitor Center, so I decided I would just go around in circles until I got tired or too lost to do anything but backtrack back to the car. I’m not kidding when I say that there’s a lot of trails in this area, either. Here’s the map I used:



I ended up hiking probably 80% of the trails there trying to see as many sequoias as possible. One of the first things I saw was Tharp’s Log, a downed sequoia that a man (named Tharp, presumably) had turned into a cabin!



Like the horseshoe hinges 



Mostly I just saw a lot of really giant, really red, really cool trees. And I'm not going to walk you through how I turned left at this fork to get to this tree, and right at the next fork to get to the next, so here's a photo dump and if you want to go see them for yourself you'll just have to walk in circles like I did to find them!






Just liked the lighting and the juxtaposition of the fern and the burned stump.

The inside of a Sequoia!

Got a bit toasty but still alive after halfway burning.




An unusual place to put a path... path is 3 feet wide, for reference.

Halfway burned at the bottom but still alive at the top! Sequoias are very resilient.



Now this is an interesting one. This is a partially decomposed Sequoia trunk. The "stakes" poking into the stump are actually the remnants of the branches! Somehow, the wood surrounding them has eroded out first.





This photo was, sadly, taken far after Spring 2017. It appears they are a bit behind schedule.

There's a lot of things I could say about this but I won't say any of them.


A picture of the base of one of the trees with me for scale! I wish the guy taking my photo could have gotten the whole tree in there but I guess he thought that I was interested in people being able to see my face. I'm not. I mostly cared about how huge this tree was.

More I could say about this sign but I won't....

This tree looks totally burned out from this side!

I mean, it is definitely not okay.

But then you walk around to the other side and it looks like a perfectly normal growing tree... very peculiar.

A human-sized Tunnel Log. 
The General Sherman tree - largest tree in the world!! 274 feet tall and 32 feet in diameter. Insane.



The Sentinel.


Before I knew it, late afternoon had rolled around, and with it came thunder and clouds gathering in the distance. I figured that that would be the best time to hike up Moro Rock, a large rock dome rising thousands of feet above the adjacent valley floor. It’s a site well-known for its extreme lightning danger.

Yeah, I might not be the brightest crayon in the box. And I certainly cannot claim ignorance, as I’m aware that lighting can strike miles away from the apparent edge of the storm. All I can say is that you should do as I say, not as I do.

Moro Rock is an exfoliation dome, comparable to Yosemite’s Half Dome though of course not nearly so famous because it hasn’t cracked in half yet. But they’ve both been affected by similar processes. An exfoliation dome is exactly what it sounds like – a convex dome of rock that is constantly shedding its external layers. This behavior is caused by the relief of overburden over a previously deeply-buried rock – usually due to erosion. As the tremendously heavy rock overlying the soon-to-be-dome is lifted, it experiences a reduction in compaction-related stress. This causes the rock to expand outward, developing fractures and joints and causing sheaves of rock to be calved off as it reaches the surface. And eventually, as the surrounding softer rock erodes away, you get a big domed rock sticking up into the sky, periodically throwing bits of itself at the valley floor below.

What a spectacular place to put a stairway and hiking trail!



Looking back down the stairway to the forest floor below, and thinking about my hazardous behavior.
I hiked doubletime up to the top, trying to be mindful of the impending storm, and was rewarded with an incredible view of the surrounding Sierra Nevadas. There really is just something special about this mountain range. I think that I could distinguish it from any other range in the US on sight alone. Something about the gray and green dappled serrated peaks and the shape of the flanks of the valleys and the clouds as they cluster in the sky is just… well, it’s just very Sierra Nevada-ish.




This is what happens when you're too excited to properly focus your camera on a really blue lizard. 



The storm moved a bit closer and I did get smarter, hopping down with plenty of time to spare. Jane and I meandered back up the road towards camp, dilly-dallying some in hopes that the clouds would clear by the time we arrived. I just hate cooking dinner when it’s spitting out.
 
Jane has another admirer taking a picture of her rump.

Jane in the foreground kind of makes these sequoias look smallish, but they were about 40 feet away so... they were not small.



Well, the clouds did clear, and the weather turned beautiful again, so I took an evening hike over to the General Grant tree before cooking dinner. The General Grant tree is actually in Kings Canyon but might as well be a part of Sequoia, because honestly otherwise it’s just confusing. It has the distinction of being the second largest tree in the world – second only to the General Sherman tree, which I saw earlier. Incredible! It’s 268 ft. tall, falling 6 ft. short of the “largest tree in the world” award, but has a larger diameter trunk than the General Sherman.

It is also impossible to fit into one photograph unless you have a mega wide-angle lens, which is frustrating.

Out of the two, I have to say that I liked this one better. Its presence is overwhelming in the oddest way. On the one hand, you know you’re just looking at a tree. And if you’re just looking at a picture, you don’t really realize how large it is. It’s only when you look at it in the grand scheme of things, next to all the other tall trees surrounding it, that you start to realize how huge it truly is. A single branch from this tree is equivalent to an entire standard-sized tree (like a dogwood or a cherry tree or whatever). If that branch fell from that height, it would surely crush anything below it and would likely shake the ground enough to register on a seismograph.
 
Other trees for scale.

That one squiggly branch in particular is... well, extremely large.


After thinking about that for a while, I found myself a bit nervous. Fortunately, the area around the tree is roped off, probably for that reason. But then again, nearly 50% of the forest is made of these sequoias, and probably it would still be pretty devastating if a branch fell off of one of the “small” 200-foot trees. So I went back to my campsite, which was… well, also directly under a sequoia tree. I squinted suspiciously up at the branches while cooking dinner but none of them jumped off the tree to squash me so I figured that maybe I would be okay.

Night fell and still the tree hadn’t attempted to kill me. But I kept an eye cast up there nonetheless. That ended up being extremely fortuitous, as it led to an important realization: I had selected a campsite that had a perfect gap in the forest looking up into the sky just past Jane’s parking spot. And framed within this gap was the Milky Way in all its glory, made even more vibrant by the absence of light from the new moon.

For those of you who have never truly seen a dark night sky – please, make an effort to go see one someday. It can be difficult, getting out away from cities and towns and streetlights and highways and all of the things typically associated with civilization. But there is something very special about looking up into the sky and seeing thousands of stars scattered across the night. An endless series of constellations and stories and memories is attached to each one, and you can feel it. Let yourself really look at them for a while, and they start to weigh on you even as they buoy you up, seemingly pressing you down to the earth at your back while simultaneously pulling you up into the sky. It’s a peculiar feeling, having stars as your only light. And it’s one of the times I feel the most human. Not that I’m not human (I swear), or that I don’t feel connected with the rest of humanity usually, but seeing the stars that people have looked up at for thousands of years connects you in a far deeper way.

I basked in the light of the stars for a while before I remembered the best thing about living in this day and age: the digital camera. More specifically, MY digital camera, which I bought in part because it’s supposed to be exceptionally good for low-light applications. So I propped my camera up on my shoe and a stick, tried not to shake it around too much, and snapped some shots.

I was astounded at what I got back.



I got smart and started using very dim lights to highlight Jane a bit so she could be in the shot too. And that’s how I got a couple of the best, most unique pictures I’ve ever taken of my car.





Don’t think there’s really much more to say to improve the day (or this post). So until next time… Kelly signing out.