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Folks..meet Karen of Crane Creek, El Portal, Yosemite National Park.




In fact, given that the population of El Portal is....wait for it...635, I was wondering, why not rename Crane Creek as Karen Creek? :)

I had met Karen when Uma , a fellow NTP member, introduced me to her when we went birding in Nandi Hills


Here's more info about them .


On Saturday May 30th, yathin decided that we would see as much of Yosemite as we could before coming back to roost for the night, so by the time I reached the Amstutz home, it was past 10.30pm! Things were not helped by our mistaking another house for that of the Amstutzes and having that homeowner (Karen says he is quite grouchy...trust us to pick the only grouchy neighbour, possibly, in El Portal!) tell us he didn't know where the Amstutzes lived (they lived some houses away!)....so I just went in and crashed, and decided to have all the interaction in the morning...but even in my tired state, the beauty of the guest room (they have enclosed a patio to make this) was stunning:





( More about the Amstutz home, and the wonderful morning I spent there )

You'll agree, that's a very beautiful home, in tune with the surroundings of El Portal! I also enjoyed myself hugely, watching Lupin riding a horse...





Eliza is so responsible, that Karen left the other two in her care and came away to spend Sunday with us; and the little neighbourhood is so known and safe, that the children could wander around for the day! Can one imagine such a quality of life in larger towns in any country?

I loved your home, and the warmth of your family, Karen...thank you for making a memorable visit to Yosemite possible!


I'm off to a guided tour of Forest Park this evening..pity it's on a day when the temperature is 36 deg C!...but I don't want to miss the opportunity!

While talking about human beings at Yosemite I completely forgot to talk about the fact that Yosemite seems a very popular spot to get married in! Just like my post about photo shoots in Forest Park, we saw this beautiful bride having a photo shoot while we were walking:





The photographer's assistant was helping her bridal veil (like the falls nearby !) to float out in the wind....

(You want to see THAT bridalveil floating out in the wind? Here's the video...





I really like the fact that I caught TWO bridal veils on camera this trip!

By sheer coincidence, we later drove past the Yosemite Valley church and there this same bride was, walking out on the arm of her newly-wedded spouse....I heaved a sigh of happiness, and a prayer that everything should go well with the marriage....unlike the sad mythology of Half Dome, Basket Dome and North Dome :





The geological explantion is this:




But the legend is more heart-stirring!


And speaking of the wind floating out the bridal veil, the other lovely image of humans trying to harvest energy without despoiling Nature too much, was provided as we drove out of San Jose...





I do love windmills, quite apart from the fact that they are a clean source of energy...somehow, the turning giants on the landscape are quite amazing. KM worked for a company which owns several hundred windmills in the Tamil Nadu area, and which sells the power generated, to the national grid. The windmill stand on land which has rich orchards, too. Wind energy should be truly called, like AnjanEyA or Bheema, the pANdavA .... vAyu putrA, or the Son of the wind...that's also an album by an American folk singer, Arlo Guthrie!

Well, one does also document the human presence at all points....! Here are a few images of the most successful mammal (in terms of breeding and presence) on earth...


This is Half Dome, and if you look closely, those ants are....people...








Here's a video where I zoom in. It's not *really* surprising, given the proximity of Silicon Valley, that the languages most likely to be heard at the viewpoint (this one's Glacier Point) are ...Indian! You can hear a little Hindi, and then, of course, the couple walk blithely between the camera and the view.

But then the camera zooms in on Half Dome and..you can see the rock climbers who have reached the top.








Here are some rock-climbers who have finished, and are drying out their equipment:






(  more if you click )


Deeksha pointed out these lovely criss-crossing vapour trails as we approached San Jose on our return...



We went to as many destinations in Yosemite as humanly possible, in those packed two days; east to west, I discovered the park as I have always wanted to, including such areas as the Tioga Pass, which a friend recently told me he had never visited though he has been to Yosemite four times!

This was a trip that I would rank with my visits to....the Pyramids, the Necropolis in Iran, the visit to Darjeeling when I saw Mount Everest at the age of twenty-one, the sighting of the tree-climbing lions in Tanzania's Lake Manyara....

Thank you, Y, thank you, K, you gave me great memories for a lifetime!

These images truly took my breath away;
I do love the mountains and the streams,
The springs and the snow.
With all the trappings of men,
These scenes are yet pristine and clear.
It takes me to when the rivers' flow
Was not dammed and broken.
In my dreams
I take the unfrequented ways
Filled with flowers, Nature's token
Of benison for creatures here.
It was not a time when
Man had left his mark on the lands,
Or wandered over the country in large despoiling bands.
These images make me sleep...
And dream of Paradise that's still ours to keep.
Nature's not kind, but always fair;
Those who are the fittest can survive...
Breathe the free, pure air,
Flourish, and thrive.




Storm gathering beyond Olmsted Point






Tree growing on granite at Olmsted Point



( More scenes from Yosemite )







Yosemite sunset


No photographs can do justice to Nature's majesty....

Thanks to Karen, I was able to id some of the wildflowers that grow in the Yosemite Park; they were so varied in colour, shape and size!

On Tenaya Lake, I loved the pattern this fallen tree-trunk made:





( some flowers, one VERY large tree, and so on... )


I liked this tree very much; someone has painted a picture of a cat sharpening its claws on it! It's as if the cat is inside the wood, clawing it!

The creatures of Yosemite are varied in size and appearance, and we got to see very few of them; but what we did see was fascinating!

Let this squirrel welcome you to this post...





( if you want to see other critters, click here )

We saw several BLUE-BELLIED LIZARDS. I got a closeup of this one where you can actually see the blue belly, but some predator seems to have got its tail!





Field trip accounts are hard work, sorting out the pictures and videos and uploading the least awful of them, and then getting the narrative together....will be doing the plants soon!

I wondered if I should do a day-by-day account of the trip, but then decided that it won't be easy...I would probably mix up everything and give wrong information as usual...so here are some of the creatures of Yosemite...

The birds, of course, were far more in number than the mammals; and the only butterfly I could actually look at and photograph was the California Tortoiseshell; there was a perfect wave of them across the road and the banks of the Merced River, across from Karen's home in Crane Creek. We were not lucky enough to sight a Coyote (we never stopped complaining to Yathin about that) but we did see the Pica, and I think Yathin got some good pics of it, too.

If this was the rate at which one feels like taking photographs ( and in my case, at least 60% of the photographs should be, and are, deleted!), I can only imagine how many photographs Yathin must have taken over his eight trips to Yosemite so far, at various times of year. (I think to myself that Yathin only posts his best photographs and all the DM-quality photographs must be there, somewhere on his hard disk. I don't want to face the fact that photographers like Yathin won't HAVE DM-quality photographs.)

One of the very common birds that we saw was the AMERICAN RAVEN; Karen's email id has the raven in it. Here's one against the beautiful Yosemite sky:





And another view:




( lots more under here; look only if you have the time and the inclination )

Here's another juvenile Scrub Jay, turning over its shoulder to say bye to the visitor from far away:






Next up, other creatures of Yosemite...

Here's the sign that said that Yosemite Valley, and Tuolumne Meadows are not too far off, on my recent visit to Yosemite:






At the very beginning (a very good place to start, as Julie Andrews would have said!), I must give heartfelt thanks to yathin. A casual remark to him that I would love to go to Yosemite sometime in the vague undefined future brought forth the response that he was, indeed, going to Y on the 30th and 31st of May. I decided that it was too good an opportunity to miss, and promptly booked my tickets to San Jose airport; he lives just 3 miles from the airport!

He banished his poor younger brother to some friend's home on Friday (29th) and Sunday (31st) nights, so I could sleep comfortably on the bed, convinced me that he was more comfy on the couch, and had even rented the car in which he was going along with two of his more-friends-than-colleagues, Hitesh (who works in San Jose) and Deeksha (who was visiting from Bangalore.)

When I landed, Y took me home, and we left as early on Saturday morning as Deeksha's jet lag would allow; broke for breakfast at Denny's, and so began an amazing trip aross the width of Yosemite; Yathin started at one of the easternmost points, Crane Flat....


You can view the map of Yosemite National Park

here

to see how detailed was the trip that he took the three of us on!


Lee Vining is actually off that map, and he took us beyond it, to see the beautiful Tufa formations at Mono Lake, too!

Yathin drove right through the day on both days. On Saturday night, we arrived back at Yosemite Valley, where the others checked into their accomodation, and then he drove me the twenty-five or thirty miles to El Portal, where the Amstutzes lived, and dropped me off there before going back to get some much-needed sleep. On Sunday morning, Karen Amstutz took me to meet the others at Bridalveil Falls after breakfast, and we then spent the time together until the evening, all five of us, visiting Glacier Point, and other destinations, with both Y and Karen showing us so much incredible stuff on the way.

The wonderful thing was that all the destinations we wanted to see were open, including the Tioga Pass Road (it is closed eight months of the year, and also if there are any sudden thunderstorms)...we were very lucky indeed, to have that happen on the two days that we were there. Here's the sign that shows our good luck:





( A little more about the trip )


Here's the wonderful view of the mountains reflected in Lee Vining Creek:

I zoomed in and out for this video, from the slope on the hillside that we were standing on; this is the continuation of the road, and the whole slope seems to have had a major landslide at some point of time.





The uploading of the pics is going slowly, with so much else to do and the wifi stopping whenever the microwave is on! :)

It was great to see Oriental languages in the snow at Yosemite...

First, the Tamizh messages:





"vAzhga vaLamudan" (may you live and prosper) says the message, adding "enjay" for good measure!


This one says "jOthi ishai" (light and music):





Apparently they were made by the Aradhya family:




A major source of disappointment was this message in Kannada:





Vinu *heart* Deepa, it says. I never got to meet Vinu and test his/her truly *melting* love!

There was also this message in the Japanese/Chinese Kanji script:



Even asakiyume and wakanamori were not able to say what those characters mean!

So...oriental languages, and a message of love...who ever thought that I would see my own name in the snow in transient graffiti?

Can you feel my hand in yours
When we are apart?
When separated by the miles, and worse,
Can you hear my words?
Do they resound in your heart?
If you feel my hand in the touch of the breeze
And my sounds in that of my beloved birds,
Then... our separation will cease...
Our togetherness will start.


I saw this amazing Asakiyume Effect in the sky when a thunderstorm built up over Yosemite....





KM has gone to Detroit for a few days....yesterday was our 33rd wedding anniversary!

and






Will have to organize my pics a LOT and then will come my dream-come-true 3Y trip....

This whole post is about the Amtutzes. Uma..thank you for introducing me to Karen, and then the whole family. Prashanth and Deepak also enjoyed their company, and it was a great group to spend the day with....


Here they are, in these two photographs:





and



(You can see the three daughters rolling around on the rocks!)


( Read more... )

Let me close with this picture of some balloons for sale:





Karen and Paul....like those red balloons, our hearts go with your little daughters!





Anyone who wishes to has a standing invitation from the Amstutzes, to visit Yosemite National Park where Karen is a wildlife warden.