What Happened Next?
This story is a continuation of this article.
Our second day of travel in California started with great anticipation. I had explained to everyone that our destination of Yosemite National Park was going to be one of the highlights of our trip. Yosemite is incomparable, and it had been 40 years since I saw the magnificent landscapes of the valley.
Mother nature was in a better mood during our day of travel. As we headed north through Fresno and over into the mountainous region of Yosemite, we arrived at the beautiful Tenaya Lodge as the daylight was fading.
As we approached Yosemite, we saw evidence of forest fires and the destructive potential of big trees. The pictures below show the damage that fires and falling trees can do to a house. Once again, Mother Nature sent us a couple of reminders of Her power.
Day 2 and 3 – Yosemite National Park
Going Back to July 1981
It was 40 years ago when I took the pictures shown below of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, and El Capitan. At that time, I was a teenage city boy from Chicago who didn’t know anything about geology. The valley looked huge, the waterfalls were massive, and the California girls were seemingly everywhere I went in the park. I think the Beach Boys were following me around that summer singing their great music.
Finally, even back in the early 1980s, I realized that clearing the forest of debris would be helpful. Here I am bringing some firewood back to my Yosemite campsite.
About two months after this visit to Yosemite, I saw pictures like these in the Southern Illinois University Undergraduate Catalog in the Geology Program section. Being familiar with Yosemite helped me choose geology as a career. I was fortunate to have had that experience at such a young age.
Fast-Forward 40 Years to October 2021
We visited the Yosemite valley without a pass because it was late in the season. The slideshow shown below contains some of the scenes from that day. Now that I have the perspective of a trained professional geologist, Yosemite was a lot smaller than what I remembered from 40 years ago. However, El Capitan is still unbelievable to see.
Half Dome in the distance and El Capitan to the left. 
Laurie and Mark 
Jett, Bella and Toni 
The Jettster 
Toni and Ken 
The kids are standing in the Merced River. There is no water there because of a many-month drought that stopped the waterfalls and kept the rivers from flowing. 
Big trees 
Big Trees 
Bark Details 
Mark, Toni and the Capitan 
Toni, Jett and Ken 
A climber on El Capitan (just above the lowermost trees). 
El Capitan is really big 
Pure granite on El Capitan
Mother nature gave us one good day at Yosemite. It was a good day because we had reasonably clean air to breathe (minimal fire smoke) and nice rocks to view. However, there were no waterfalls to see, and the Merced River was a trickle. Although it is common for the cascades to fade late in the year, the drought that spanned most of 2021 left Yosemite in a state of dryness that didn’t feel right. I was just glad that no forest fires were active while we were there.
On the second day at Yosemite, we had to drive back through the valley to get up to the highlands to access the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. After about 80 miles of driving, Mother Nature stopped us along the road and said (in a Paul McCartney voice):
Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged. Go Home. This road ain’t open for you anymo’.
Mother Nature, October 13, 2021, Yosemite National Park
After the park ranger delivered the road closure directive from Mother Nature, we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere, with essentially a complete inability to access the eastern side of the Sierra Nevadas. Our phones had no signals, our GPS unit was of no help, and we had to make a command decision without anyone to give us local advice. We knew that our following two hotels were now inaccessible because Mother Nature decided to degrade the roads into an impassible state. Wildfires from earlier in the year caused a lot of damage to the roads (yes, wildfires were again the cause of our trouble!). This damage required rebuilding the one road we needed on the day we tried to use it! Was that bad luck or bad timing, or a little of both?
Eventually, we determined that we had two choices. First, we could drive about 7 hours out of the way to the north towards Reno, NV, and hope that we could navigate the icy roads without chains on our tires. Second, we could lose our hotel money and head west, as the gold miners did in the 1840s towards San Francisco. We made the only rational choice and headed west.
What Happened Next?
You will have to read the next installment of this series to understand how our newly devised travel plans allowed us to see some magnificent parts of California. However, we missed a terrific opportunity to see Mt McKinley and Death Valley. For a compelling story about the world’s most impossible foot race (the Badwater 135 miler) that occurs in those areas, click here! Please stay tuned.
