Giant Trees and Back to the Desert

It rained on us when we left Yosemite and we didn't go too far. We wanted to stop in a reasonable sized town and see if we could get the van engine light problem looked at and maybe fixed. So we stopped at Oakhurst, a town just an hour or so from the south gate of the Park. We found a good deal at the Yosemite Southgate hotel--folks there were friendly and helpful-- and located a local mechanic online (with excellent reviews) and Carol called to make an appointment for the next morning. The van still didn't have any symptoms, just the engine light and an error code which apparently indicated "misfire on cylinder 7". Carol took the van to Dan's Auto Center the next morning.

Dan and his employees had all their bays filled with other vehicles, but shortly Dan himself came out to see what the problem was. He looked like a very kind man, almost saintly. I explained the situation. He brought out his little computer to hook up, and said it actually said "misfire on cylinders 2, 3 and 7", not just 7. But he tried for awhile to see if he could make it misbehave again and couldn't hear or see anything at all wrong with the engine running. He also did some transmission checking at my request, but all seemed well. We talked it over for a good while and he said it could have been something as minor as some bad gas. He didn't think we should try to fix it when no symptoms are occurring. So I was reassured. If no more symptoms occur, we'll get it tuned up by our regular mechanic when we get home. Dan spent about a half hour checking the car and talking to me--time that he could have been spending working on the other broken cars in his garage--and he refused to charge me a nickel! Yes, possibly a saint. This is a very nice town.

Our next major sightseeing stop was a visit to General Grant and General Sherman, the two largest trees (by volume) on the planet. They were in King's Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park, respectively, which are adjoining parks. King's Canyon, which contains the Grant Grove housing Gen. Grant and many other mind-boggling sequoias, was our first stop. The drive up into the park was a major climb, with lots of twists and turns. We stopped at the Park Visitor Center first, to get our Natl. Park Passport stamped and to watch their movie. Then we headed for Gen. Grant. Right in the parking lot for the Grove there's a cluster of VERY big sequoias. As we walked the trail, we kept seeing more and bigger trees. It finally just stuns you--how big can a tree actually be?? These trees, the giant sequoias, are related to the giant redwoods we'd seen earlier near Eureka, CA, but they're more massive (the redwoods are taller but have smaller diameters). When we finally got to Gen. Grant (the second largest tree in the world) it was almost anticlimactic. But he's very big, all right. We took a bunch of photos of different trees--most of them have been named, but we didn't record their names.

We saw this grove of large trees as soon as we entered the parking lot of the Grant Grove.

Jack and Carol and a cluster of big sequoias.

They just kept getting bigger....

General Grant was the king of his grove!

Then we headed off to drive into Sequoia National Park, to see the BIGGEST tree in the world, Gen. Sherman. It was another long, steep, twisting and turning drive to get there, but with great views. Gen. Sherman had many more people visiting him than Grant did--I guess more people like to see the biggest and best, rather than the second biggest and best. There were probably 100 people in front of Sherman, jockeying for photo positioning. I decided to just take a photo of a group of kids in front of the tree, since it gave a pretty good perspective. (Bear in mind, however, that they are about 20 ft in front of the tree.) Sherman did look bigger than Grant--his trunk was more cylindrical. Wow. Big trees!

General Sherman was mighty impressive!

The drive down to the south entrance/exit of the Park was spectacular, range after range of mountains--VERY twisty road and it was slow going. We thought maybe we'd be able to camp at the Foothills campground, which was still open--many are closed for the season--but it was full by the time we got there. So we kept going out of the park to the first town, Three Rivers, where we found a little private RV park and camped there. (The owner of the campground was a West Virginia guy--small world...) As it turned out, the next day was Sunday and there was a little church right next to our campground, so Carol went to church--very welcoming, friendly people. The church was beautiful and old--the inside was built all from local woods. It felt a lot like our Oriskany church.

Beautiful mountain scenery driving down out of Sequoia Natl Park.

Three Rivers church, constructed from local wood.

After church, we drove south, heading for southern CA, to visit a place where we used to spend a lot of time when we lived in CA, the Anza Borrego Desert State Park. And we also plan to visit some friends on the coast. That day we made it as far as Mojave, a desert town noted for its Air and Space Port, of all things (www.mojaveairport.com). Apparently a very major deal in aviation. We stayed in a motel for a couple of nights here, to catch up on work. Some major wind generator farms are located here, and all around for miles and miles.

We passed gazillions of windmill generators on this drive.

Back on the road, we saw a sign for the town of Boron and started reminiscing about 20 Mule Team Borax and the Death Valley Days TV show, hosted by Ronald Reagan and sponsored by the Borax company. We were both fascinated by the idea of driving a team of 20 mules and we wondered if there was a museum where we could see that happen. Just then we passed a sign saying "20 Mule Team Museum Next Exit", so of course we took the exit! There is a borax mine in Boron, and they do have a little 20 Mule Team museum--but no actual mules there. The mules are apparently kept somewhere near Bishop, CA--there is a working team of 20 mules that pulls vintage borax mining wagons and appears in parades and events (next appearance, Rose Parade and then the Presidential Inaugural Parade). They had lots of models of the mule teams and equipment in the museum and we watched a movie showing the team being hitched up and driven. The cool thing is that when the wagon needs to go around a curve, some of the mules are trained to actually jump the chain that runs down the center of the whole team and pull to the side, while the remaining mules keep pulling ahead to provide the motive power. Totally amazing. Each mule has a different job to do and knows its name, and the driver calls each mule by name when he wants that mule to do something special, like turn one way or the other. Only two men work the team of 20 animals. Those are some well-trained mules. A feisty little lady at the museum told us all we wanted to know! Carol bought a tee shirt with a mule on it and then we crossed the street to have lunch at the 20 Mule Team Cafe.

The museum of our dreams.

This lady was our hostess at the 20 Mule Team Museum, and she was a fountain of knowledge about mules!

How many of you remember Death Valley Days?

This painting shows the team executing a turn--the mules facing us jumped the chain on command.

Beautiful mule painting--obviously by an artist who loves mules.

We finally drug ourselves away from the mule museum and continued our drive south. We made it to the town of Yucca Valley and the Joshua Tree National Park, where we camped for the night. We'd camped in this Park 3 years ago, during another long Epic Journey, and liked it. The Joshua trees are weird and wonderful to look at, and there's lots of wildlife around. Had a quiet night and shoved off the next morning, to see if we could make it to Agua Caliente County Park on the border of the Anza Borrego Park that we're heading for. Agua Caliente has hot spring water piped into pools for soaking, and it has been awhile since we've soaked in a spring.

Agua Caliente hot pool is housed in a sun room--the ceiling opens.

Another soaking pool that's kept a little cooler.

These two borregos posed for us!

We stopped at a general store by Agua Caliente Park--no one was around but this sign and giant gong were there. It said to "Ring Bell 4 Service"!

We made it, claimed our campsite and immediately put on our bathing suits and headed to the pools. Lovely! Everything looks brand new in this park. We were here one time maybe 30 years ago and the pool was a little sketchy back then. According to another camper we talked to, they had a big flood here not too long ago and it destroyed most everything, so it's been rebuilt and they did a nice job. We could have stayed longer. We walked their nature trail, reacquainting ourselves with the desert flora and fauna. And we soaked and relaxed in the pools night and morning. And as an extra treat, just as we were driving out of the park this morning, two desert bighorn sheep trotted right by us, climbed up on a rocky outcropping next to us, and posed for photos! Nice!

We're now in a campground in Borrego Springs, the little town right in the middle of Anza Borrego State Park. It's good to be back in our old stomping ground! We've always loved the desert pastel colors here and the way the rocky, barren mountains seem to float above the desert floor, like a mirage. And something new--an artist has created lots of cool metal lifesize sculptures of wild horses, mastodons, eagles, dragons--lots of different stuff. They look very primeval out on the desert scrub. We'll be here for a few days, before going to visit our friends Cindy and Tom.

Metal sculptures of wild stallions fighting in the desert.

Desert mastodons.