Catching up

We have arrived home after our journey across the Central Valley and into the Sierra Nevada, indeed into the beautiful valley of Yosemite.

We left Sunday after Church, and drove to the little valley town of Madera where my wife's grandfather's widow lives. (She is not my wife's grandmother but they are very close.) We went by way of the Bay Bridge and out by the tract house development of Tracy but took the turn toward the place of my birth, Modesto. In Modesto we turned south and traveled along the amazingly dangerous Route 99. (If you are an American, probably 1/3 of the fruit, nuts, and vegetables you eat has been transported along this road for at least a little while as it traveled from farm to market.) Route 99 is four lanes wide, sometmes six, and is loaded with speeding trucks hauling food to markets and fertilizer to farms. No one drives slower than 70 mph on this road. Eventually, we came to Madera. We spent the night there. The heat was amazing. It was 103 degrees (F). The little boy enjoyed playing with the dog.

On Monday morning we left Madera and drove up into the mountains. It was a beautiful drive and I kept expecting the air to grow cooler as we attained higher elevations. But even at 6,000 feet above sea level the temperature was in the 90's.

The drive down into the Yosemite Valley was amazing. I can not even begin to describe it. Waterfalls, soaring cliffs (I had trouble looking up at these because of my neck.), a flat wooded valley floor through which passed a swiftly running Merced River. We stayed in a cabin at Curry Village. We went swimming soon after we unloaded the car. After swimming we tried to take a nap but it was too hot. Then in the late afternoon or early evening we went for a little hike to see Yosemite Falls. (If you are wondering what Yosemite means, I think I heard a ranger say it is a Modoc word that translates into English as "some of them are killers". It was a reference to some Paiutes who were living among the Ahwahneeches people in the Yosemite valley.)

We got back from the falls after the main dining room was closed, and we didn't feel like pizza. So, we went to the general store and bought cheese, salami, and crackers. We ate them as we sat in the amphitheater and listened to a lecture about bears. We saw many bats. The little boy grew afraid of the dark and we went back to the cabin to read HP6, which we had been reading aloud in the car all the way to Yosemite.

The next morning we packed up, mailed off some postcards, and left, but by a different route. We traveled for miles along the Merced River. On the way home we stopped at a starbucks in the the cute little town of Chowchilla and tasted samples of their new green tea frappuccino. I thought it was hideous but the little boy liked it. But he likes anything with whipped cream. I stuck with the iced mocha with no whipped cream.

In Chowchilla we got onto Route 152 and headed out of the San Juaquin Valley and into the Diablo Range. The San Luis Reservoir seemed a little low. I was a little surprized since we had such huge rains late in the spring. Of course, it wasn't as low as it was during the drought of the early 1990's. But I guess you if the canals in the Valley are full (and they are) we can't expect the San Luis Reservoir to be totally full.

Of course, it would be sacreligious to drive over the Pacheco Pass without stopping at Casa de Fruta and loading up on fruit. So we bought lunch at the Casa de Coffee, my wife bought some chocolates at Casa de Sweets, and we even took the little boy on a ride aboard the Casa de Choo Choo.

One not very good thing happened on the way home. My wife checked messages at home and there was one from her doctor asking her to call him. She did. It seems that she might have diabetes. She spent five hours today in a lab getting tested. We do not know the results yet.

When we got home we unpacked and got right back into reading HP6. We only have about 200 more pages to go and still have not figured out who dies. I understand that the last page had the NY Times book reviewer in tears, and she had never even read books 1 through 5.

Today I have been dealing with bad plumbing and bounced checks from tenants. One bright spot was when my friend Don Vladimir called on the phone. The little boy answererd the phone and announced that it was St. Vladimir on the phone for me.

Tomorrow I have cardiac stress test at 9:30 a.m. and an MRI at 1 p.m.

I'll post photos from the trip as soon as my wife uploads them.