Category Archives: Travel

Maybe it’s all a matter of attitude

Around home, Cars, Photography, Sierras, Travel

Uhhh…that should really be Maybe it’s all a matter of altitude. Let me make a short story, long.

Michele’s sister, Claudia, was going to the family cabin at Squaw Valley and she graciously agreed to give me a ride – pretty far out of her immediate way – to get the Range Rover which was now back in Minden at Hollar’s 4×4.

As an aside, I had meant to post that on Monday but got the date backwards and told WordPress to post it on 06/05/2013 rather than 05/06/2013. I really left on Monday and got back on Wednesday. End aside.

Because Claudia was in Napa, the easiest way to meet her was to take the ferry to Vallejo. Michele dropped me off and I started my trip at the Ferry Building which has been remodeled – in 2003, under the Willie Brown administration – into a foodie paradise featuring local purveyors.

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In the back, the Ferry to Vallejo loads at a new pier.

Rover trip-0010I said Goodbye to San Francisco and about an hour later said Hello to Vallejo which is still devastated from the Navy pulling out (I think as a way for the Pentagon to punish California’s anti-war liberal Congress-members).

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Claudia picked me up and we headed to Minden under a darkening sky that turned to rain in the foothills and snow – with big flakes that didn’t stick to the road – as we got higher (passing blooming dogwoods in between).

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When I picked the Rover up at Hollar’s 4×4 and drove to Squaw Valley without the low coolant light going off even once, I felt very hopeful. Not hopeful enough to drive to Gerlach, but hopeful enough to think I would get home. Claudia and I spent the next day driving to Gerlach in her truck and, on Wednesday, I started home early so I could be home to let Precious Mae out (she had been locked in all night because Michele was now in Napa) .

When I fired up the Rover, in the cabin’s driveway, the low coolant level light started flashing immediately. This changed my chances of getting home, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I figured that there were two main obstacles: Donner Pass at  7,056 feet which I could go over slowly by taking the old road and Emigrant Gap at about 5,200 feet where I didn’t think there would be an old road to bypass the freeway.

After getting gas and a supply of anti-freeze, I drove around Donner Lake with Donner Pass looming, ominously, in the background.

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Donner Lake and Donner Pass are named after the infamous Donner Party (duh!, OK, probably only infamous in California). I figured, no matter what, my trip would be considerably easier than that experienced by the Donner Party in 1846. Considerably easier than working on the First Transcontinental Railroad when – primarily – Chinese  workers labored to get tracks through this solid rock landscape (today, it is hard to believe that all this work was done by hand, lots of hands).

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After taking a couple of hurried pictures from the side of the road near the summit, I turned back towards the car. Coolant was running out from under the engine. Not dripping, gushing. All I could think of as I ran back to the car was If I can just get over the summit, I can coast to a place to park where AAA can pick it up. I jumped in and started driving.

As soon as I got over the summit, I turned off the engine and started to coast. Ahead was a a little uphill section and then it looked like a long downhill and I was calming down, so I fired up the engine, and – watching the temperature gauge – got over the next bump. That pretty much went on until I got to Emigrant Gap where I stopped, let the Rover cool, and then poured almost a gallon of coolant into the reservoir tank. I called Michele and told her that I was not going to make it and I would keep her posted.

I went over Emigrant Gap at about 45 and coasted – off and on – to the Rest Stop at Gold Run. I stopped, washed my hands and sweating face, and decompressed. I was about 145 miles from San Francisco and our towing covers 100 miles so I thought I would see if I could get under the limit. This went on for a couple of hours, coasting downhill, crawling uphill at 45 until I finally got to the Great Central Valley. The I pulled off the freeway at a Park and Ride to add more coolant. It turned out that I parked next to the Placer Buddhist Church and I took that as a good sign. So I walked over to the Church while the Rover cooled. The Church was closed but the Koi in a pond- infront of the Church – were calming.

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I filled the coolant reservoir and it only took about a quarter gallon and I was off to see if I could get within 85 miles of San Francisco to give myself some breathing room on the towing distance. Then a funny thing happened: the Rover stopped spewing coolant. I checked in Vacaville even though there were no flashing lights, everything seemed fine and I kept going (at 45 on the Freeway!). I didn’t bother to check before I went over the Bay Bridge. I didn’t even bother to check  this morning when I fired up the Rover to go to the market. Still no flashing lights.

Michele’s theory, which I am completely buying into, is that the Rover problem is only bad at high elevations. This is because the pressure cap releases fluid at about 15 psi – pounds per square inch – and that is the differential pressure between the atmospheric pressure – outside the Rover radiator –  and the pressure inside the Rover cooling system. I have no idea what the pressure should be  inside the radiator, but let’s say it is 25 psi now. At sea level, the outside pressure is about 14.7 psi. That plus the 15 psi pressure cap is almost 30 psi at sea level, well over the inside pressure of 25 psi. Going over Donner, the atmospheric pressure is about 40% of sea level or 5.88 psi and that is not enough to keep the cap from releasing massive amounts of coolant.

Of course, the whole point of the Range Rover, for us, is to go to the mountains; to go over Donner Pass or, more importantly, Tioga Pass at  9,943 feet where the pressure is under 4 psi. But, if I stay at sea level until I do a restoration on the Range Rover, I may be OK. Or, maybe, it’ll be OK for the next week. We’ll see.

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An east side of the Sierra Nevada detour

California, Photography, Sierras, Travel

On Tuesday morning, Aston and Eileen got up early and drove to San Francisco to go to work and we started a little later to drive to Lee Vining to meet Karen Amy and her friend Chris. The first stint took us along the east shore of Lake Tahoe so we could marvel at its blue gem-likeness set in a granite ring. From there, we picked up Highway 50 to crest the Carson Range at Spooner Summit and drop down into the Great Basin of  Nevada just south of the state capitol, Carson City.

From there, it is Highway 395 all the way south to the backdoor to Yosemite at Lee Vining. We cross back into California at Topaz Lake about 60 – some odd – miles south of coming into Nevada . I was born in San Francisco and have lived in California all my non-Army life. I was brought up to think of myself as a Californian more than as an American. As much as I love Nevada, I think of California as my home and even though we have only been in Nevada for a little over an hour, I get a little coming home tingle as we look down the valley with California in the hazy distance. This border crossing, back into California at Topaz Lake seems so archetypical: we drive through high Nevada – it may be dry enough to be called – desert, cross a long flat pass at about 6,000 feet, and then head down into the Topaz Lake Basin with green fields on the California side.

The Walker River flows into Topaz Lake and we go up river as we head south up a long canyon. About 15 years ago, the Walker River overflowed taking out the road and we had to detour about 50 miles out of our way to get to Death Valley. A year or two later, we drove through the denuded canyon on a new road and marveled at the devastation. Now, going up canyon, I am not sure, even, where the river took out the road.

Our plan is to meet Karen at noon at the Mobil Station cafe but we start to run late because we keep running into unexpected traffic controls. It turns out that we are caught up in construction of Digital 395, a 583-mile fiber network whose motto is Connect on the Wild Side. The project seems to be a public/private partnership with lots of semi-official – but unidentifiable –  sounding names like the Eastern Sierra Connect Regional Broadband Consortium and the California Advanced Services Fund. Among others, it is funded by the California Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Commerce under the Recovery Act. I couldn’t help thinking that alot of the people who moved here to get away from civilization and are now getting broadband would use it to badmouth big government. Our trip through Bridgeport is the worst with twenty minutes waits for a slow, controlled, crawl through town which is having all its roads repaved;

iPhone photo by Michele Stern

meanwhile, Karen has shown up an hour and an half early. We finally show up about 30 minutes late and the four of us have a quick lunch so we can scurry twelve miles back to Conway Summit at 8,138 feet where the Aspens are starting to turn.

Portrait by Michele Stern 

After we wandered around the Conway Summit area, going to Virginia Lake and then back down to the view overlooking Mono Lake and, way in the distance, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, south of Mammoth.

By now, Michele and I were in full tour guide mode, wanting to go down to the edge of Mono Lake to better show it off.

Mono Lake is, of course,  not a lake but a dead sea and it is the major rookery for Seagulls on the west coast. Still, it is always a shock to see them here, hundreds of miles – by road, at least – from the sea (which is, after all part of their name). But, here they are, chowing down on Alkali Flies and Brine Shrimp. Somehow, they seem both tamer – as in less frenzied – and wilder – as in less dependant on humans – than on the coast. As we watched the Seagulls, I ended up watching the soft waves, lapping the shore, and marveling at how different these waves are from the waves at Virginia Lake, 45 minutes and 3,200 vertical feet away.

By now it was getting close to our 4 o’clock cut off time, so we took a quick peek down the June Lake loop, looking for fall color, and then headed back over the hill. Karen and Chris to Yosemite Valley and Michele and myself to Portola Valley. At 8600 feet, it was already winter at Tuolumne Meadows.

 

 

The long way home

Americana, Travel

 

Coming back from Boise was the trip going in reverse except that the views and sightlines are all 180° off so that it is really never the same trip. I might not be the best authority on this, however, as Michele and I have driven across Nevada – probably – more than 20 times and, to me, it never seems the same. And all the trips are great, but maybe, it is an acquired taste. One trip, I remember, it was snowing – but right on the edge of the freezing line – for the whole trip which meant that every mountain pass had wet snow and every valley was misty rain (except for worrying about what the weather would be like in Utah – our destination – the trip, ensconced in our heated car, was magic).

The Owyhee Mountains seemed much more mountain like this time around and, what seemed like richer farms and ranches coming in, now seemed poor.

After the oasis of Boise with its soft green-ness, even the green floodlands of the Owyhee River seemed lost in the endless, late summer, Dry.

As we drive through the high desert, watching it float by us as if on TV, we chat and joke, we listen to Eileen’s iPhone music collection, we sense, more than hear the ever present car noise. But, when we stop, when we get out of the car, it is a deep quiet.   In Scenes in America Deserta, Reyner Banham talks about the silence of Drylands, Silence  heat and light. The silence flowed back around us, like a filling pool, as I switched off the engine of the car….In Basin and Range, John McPhee quotes Freeman Dyson It is a soul-shattering silence. You hold your breath and hear absolutely nothing….You are alone with God in that silence. We weren’t alone, and our chatter followed us out of the car when we stopped; but the background silence was always there. One one stop, Eileen and I took pictures of each other, and I think Eileen’s better captures the silence and immensity of the space.

At one point, as we drive along, I watch a truck – on a parallel road but in a life sharply divergent from ours – throw-up a dust trail. It starts me  thinking about how hard it would be to sneak up on somebody out here. We left Boise after lunch and now the sun is getting low as we get close to Winnemucca and the Interstate. The mountains are soft in the fading light and we start thinking about where we will have dinner in Reno (a Thai restaurant south of the airport won) .

To be continued….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

was

While we were in Boise

Americana, Travel

 

Boise is a shock of green after hours of driving through miles of sun-bleached-beige drylands. Especially at Ophelia and Peter’s home which is near the Boise River (not the Snake River as some, sometimes, tend to mis-identify it.

 

In the green and the softness of Boise’s early fall afternoons, it is also a little shocking to a coastal Californian that – shocking in the morning when we go outside, that is – that it had frozen the night before.  But, by mid afternoon when we went over to see Peter and Ophelia’s grandkids and grand chickens, it was short sleeve shirt weather.

While we were Boise, in the outside world, the tide turned against Lance Armstrong, one of the Pussy Rioters was released from prison, and, contrary to my prediction, Obama was hit hard in the poles over the debate. Each thing was sort of shocking to me and each was, really, already there.

In a way, in the back of my mind where I am not paying much attention, I have known for a while that Armstrong was doing something. Winning seven times is a lot and the were growing rumors that he was doping, or juicing, or whatever is the proper term. But the magnitude of the whole thing, the amount of evidence, the casualness of it all that is just now coming out, is still shocking.

And what is it with the russian courts? It turns out that Yekaterina Samutsevich wasn’t even in the cathedral for the hooliganization for which she was convicted. So a higher court suspended her sentence. To an American mind, in my mind, it seems that she is either guilty or she should be let go. That she is innocent but we will still call you semi-guilty is bizarre. But, then, I have no idea about how any Russian court should work.

And coming back to the reality of post vacation news – in the post debate polls – to find Obama trailing is very shocking. I think that, with Romney gaining stature by being on stage with the President, that he , Romney, came across less evil than he had been painted by the Obama ads. But, in a way, he has always been personable. That is his schick. Somehow Romney was able to pull off the slight of hand of announcing a goal – reducing the national debt, for example – being the the same as actually having a policy.

Driving to Boise took most of a day and driving home was the same, so our time enjoying the warmth and camaraderie of our little group was very short. Soon it was time to wave goodbye and get back on the road.

Going to Boise

Americana, Photography, Travel

Last weekend, we drove – with Aston and Eileen – to Boise Idaho to see Ophelia  and Peter for Ophelia’s birthday. It is a trip that I have never made but – in the map of my mind’s eye – I thought  that Winnemucca would be about two thirds of the way. I sort of picture Idaho as being over Nevada and Oregon as being over California. In reality, Eastern Oregon is over a big hunk of Nevada and, after going north from Winnemucca deep into Oregon, one is then required to go east to Boise. It turns out that Winnemucca is about the halfway point and the drive, north and then east, takes on the qualities of a Are we there, yet? atmosphere.

I mean Are we there, yet? in the best possible way. This is the kind of country that I love to drive through – just to drive through – even without the reward of Peter and Ophelia at the other end. The drive was a delight for us. It was photo-less interstate driving all the way to Winnemucca where we made a left to head north into Oregon. (Winnemucca is in the Humboldt Basin in the Great Basin meaning that everything drains to the Humboldt Sink rather than some ocean.) Heading north, we slowly climbed out of the Basin running along side Santa Rosa Range.

The land is more Drylands than Desert with dry grass and soft mountains. While we are still in the Basin, the land is spotted with small farms and ranches. Not small in size but small in the amount of money that can be eked out. As we go north, the ranches become even more hardscrapple and the land becomes more dramatic. This is Red Country, independent and poor, not acknowledging that they are grazing their cattle on our – the American people’s – land.

We leave Nevada with the de rigueur casino where we have an early lunch and try our hand at the penny slots (Michele won five cents which she then lost on the nickel machine),

then we drive out of the Basin and through the high Drylands of Easter Oregon where the living is even more scrapple.

Then, down into the Owyhee River Basin – which drains into the Snake River and then into the Pacific Ocean – which seems both richer and more dramatic,

and into Idaho where we got a celebratory cup of coffee – technically a capuccino, in my case – knowing we only had 41 miles to go.

From there it was through the Owyhee Mountains where we can look down into the Snake River Basin and, then, it is an easy hop to Boise where we go for a walk along the actual – flowing to the sea – Snake River.

To be continued…