For starters, I landed a new job. This new job requires a lot of travel. The good news is that they gave me a high powered laptop (Google Earth is now much more fun!!) but the bad news is that my laptop has all kinds of security measures that prevent me from blogging, or even checking my web-based email. Since my weekends have been all about my family, for 4 months I have been unable to sit down and do any meaningful writing. I had a lot of great hikes, trips, and things that I wanted to post here, but each day brought new appointments, trips, meetings, and deadlines.
There, I got the excuses out of my system. I started this blog because I have wanted to communicate about what interests me. You can see that if you have done any reading. I want to maintain that effort, and I hope to ramp up my content to match my current level of activity. This should be much easier now that I have stolen my daughter's laptop and brought it with me to my lonely hotel room. Also, I have spent so many nights in a hotel that I have what I call Goldmember Status. This is really a cheap consolation prize for being away from the people you love, but it does come with free high speed internet. At this rate, I am racking up enough points to earn a few night's in Tahiti. Should that happen, I promise to blog about it. But I am not holding my breath.
So, let me address hotels. The rooms pretty much suck even when they are well kept, but hotel staff can be awesome and that mitigates the loneliness. A couple quick grievances. I will never understand why all hotel rooms have these high speed blower heating systems. Even when one turns the heat up the room is cold because of the wind chill factor. Another thing is hotel cleaning. It is clear that they use the same bucket and scrub brush to wash everything in all the bathrooms on one's floor - because the curly little hairs that keep randomly appearing on various surfaces in the bathroom are new each day, and they are not mine. (EWWWWW!) So, no matter if one stays in the same room, a hotel will never feel like home. I now have to promise my wife Mary that I will never gripe about her long dirty blond hairs in the home shower drain!
I got a break from my hotel last week. Mary had an out of town trip scheduled, so I asked my boss If I could work out of my home base to ensure that we didn't lose any kids while she was out of town. Boss said "yes" but then wife's trip got cancelled, so we got the bonus of some good time together. I caught up on laundry, got some home cooking, and did some yard work. I also took my scout troop on a trip to Yosemite on the weekend.
Our troop's annual Yosemite trip is pitched as "snow camping" but in Yosemite Valley at Curry Village(!) one cannot be sure about the weather until arrival. The Valley elevation is about 4,400 ft., which seems to coincide with the snow level predicted by weather forecasters damn near every time we go there. In four years of making this trip we have seen big snow, light snow, sleet and freezing rain, and no snow. This year it turned out to be no snow. We arrived on Friday evening and pitched camp to dry air and wet ground on the Upper Pines Loop. Snow did fall on the tents on the first night, but it did not accumulate and overnight temps were milder than predicted. We had some young scouts in the troop with nervous moms at home, but the weather was relatively balmy and the scouts had little trouble getting out of their tents in the morning and making their own breakfast.
Because of the government shut down, there were no park rangers manning the park. But one got the feeling that there were still folks around to address emergencies and the cleaning staff did tend to the toilets and such. I don't want to write too much about the politics of a shut down, but I am happy to say there is absolutely no logic to it. Regarding which employees work and which get furloughed, there are distinctions in the federal ranks. One can be essential, non essential, exempt or non exempt. Some folks are on special allocations so they are not dependent on these giant omnibus budget bills, they continue working in spite of the theatrics on Capitol Hill. These distinctions are in and of themselves, an absurdity because if there is no money to pay for operations, then there is no money to pay for operations! An employee can work but the lights can't be turned on. But I digress.
The boys got geared up and ready to hike. We hit the Mist Trail heading up to Vernal falls. The boys proceeded with good pace considering many of them were clad in the snow boots we advised them to bring. After pumping our quads up the steep pitch on the lower part of the trail, we arrived at the gate just beyond the big bridge. It was closed due to threat of falling rocks. Having seen the Yosemite search and rescue video put on by the Yosemite Conservancy each summer, I knew better than to take a bunch of scouts up some slippery and icy rocks. So, unlike the foreign tourists who danced around the closed gate, we turned right and proceeded up the John Muir Trail, a "long cut" that leads around a side canyon before rejoining the Mist Trail at the top of Nevada Falls. After hiking only a couple miles total, we broke for lunch. My son proceeded to knock a large rock off it's perch. The rock tumbled perilously down the hill and across the switchbacks we had just climbed up. By the Grace of God, there were no hikers down there, although we never did see the rock come to a rest, and were not comforted by the sound of the rock crashing in the distance below. Because of this, my son was sent back to camp early. I had a good talk with him that evening. He struggles with his nervous energy like many an adolescent, but there is no excuse for creating danger. After only a few hours, the scouts made it down the hill and cooked dinner.
The Park is beautiful in the wintertime. There are fewer people and for photography buffs the clouds can do magic against the granite rock faces. I have never really experienced a bone chilling cold there, but you definitely want a comfy sleeping bag, as temps can drop into the single digits at night. We experienced lows in the teens on Saturday night. I am pretty much to the point where I don't even like to go during the peak summer months, so winter is a refreshing time of year to experience a less frenetic trip.
The next day was a quick up and out. We drove back through an abandoned Park gate and onto Mariposa. It wasn't long before we hit our first traffic on Highway 99. Like most trips in California, I knew it would end that way. But it is only January and I have already visited one National Park, so I remain optimistic about the things that 2018 has in store!
