Jason the Ninth

The 9th groundhog.

In spite of my misgivings about being seen as honoring Heywood Hale Broun (author of "the Fifty-First Dragon"), I've decided to do like Sir Gawaine and keep a count of the whistle-pigs I conquer. (Of course, rather than slaying them as Gawaine did his dragons, I release my woodchucks just over five miles away -- over the river and through the woods, across two highways and on the other side of the airport.)

When I get to the fifty-first groundhog, I'll probably forget the magic word, and get burned like Gawaine did. In the meantime, however, maybe my antenna feedlines will be safe!

For those of you who haven't yet read it, the Fifty-First Dragon is a short-story certainly worth the few minutes it takes to read.

A Story About Education...

Bopnopper and Lint Monkey are often asked to proof-read articles I write as fillers for the local ham radio newsletter, under the pseudonym, "The Opinionated One". I'm hereby asking them to proofread this month's article below, and give me their feedback. Other readers may find the article, ummm, well, interesting. That is, if you have nothing to do and actually can afford to waste the time it takes to read it. Thanks for comments and corrections. ------- I was talking with my friend Verman Krabbliess the other day, and the subject of education came up. Now before going further, you need to know that education is to Verman like water is to the Sahara Desert. “That’s not true,” Verman would protest. “I had 12 full years of formal education.” “Yes, but all of them were in grade school,” I reminded him. "A lot depends on the value of the experience." “What’s the most valuable educational experience you’ve ever had,” Verman asked me. That’s an easy one. The most valuable educational experience in my life occurred on Saturday, July 12, 1970, when I was a teenager in Jacksonville, Florida. I remember it quite well. I learned more in that one single day than any day, week, or even month, before or since. A local ham by the name of Fester Rengwerm offered to give me a 100-foot ham radio tower in exchange for helping him take it down. He said he was moving into a retirement apartment and getting out of the ham radio hobby. Never having participated in a tower party before, I agreed to come over and help him. It was an educational experience of a lifetime, and one I’ll never forget. To start with, I learned that Fester was a bald-faced liar. As it turned out, I didn’t “help him" take down the tower. I helped the other four guys he’d talked into helping him take down the tower. Fester didn’t do anything except provide some hard hats and a cooler full of various beverages, all of which, because I was under age 21, were illegal for me to sample. Fester felt bad when everyone else was enjoying the liquid refreshment before starting work, while I just stood around looking like a lost puppy. He went into his garage and dug around, and finally brought me a dusty old can of Dr. Pepper. The second thing I learned that day was not to ever open a can of lukewarm Dr. Pepper, especially after having shaken the dirt and insect parts off of it. All four of the guys (Peet, Henry, Stan and Zahn) were totally soaked in Dr. Pepper from head to foot, much to the amusement of Fester and me. I quickly learned that you don’t laugh at hams when they are soaked with lukewarm Dr. Pepper. Next, I learned that I had gotten the short end of the proverbial stick. Fester had offered each of the other four guys one of his radios plus generous portions of the beverages, in return for their assistance. To sweeten the deal, he also offered them assorted tuners, amps, meters, cables, and all kinds of other neat and expensive gear from his shack. And since they were still hesitant (I learned later that most of them were pretty smart), he offered them $150 each. As for me, not being smart and never having experience with towers, I had agreed to help only for the promise of the tower itself. I next learned an age-old tradition among hams which dictates that those who douse others with Dr. Pepper earn the privilege of serving as the “ground man” on the tower team. The "ground man" is the sucker who has to stay on the ground while the others climb the tower to take it apart. Periodically, the hams on the tower will lower pieces of the tower for the ground man to grab and stack, or will lower a bucket for the ground man to put in more tools and be hauled back up, etc. The ground man usually gets a crick in his neck from looking up, usually within 10 minutes of the start of the project. I was no exception. I learned that Dr. Pepper isn't quite as effective at diminishing the pain of neck cricks as the beverages the others were drinking. As the day wore on, I learned that the ground man works harder than all four other members of the team combined. The position of ground man is the modern day equivalent of the position held by former Kenyans, Tutsi’s, Hutu’s, and Rwandans living in the southern United States along about, say, 1845. But I was happy to be part of the team. I kept my eyes and ears open and I continued to learn. The fellows carefully instructed me in the proper protocols of ham tower work, such as the rule that once a ham climbs a tower, he doesn’t come back down until the job is completed. This is what makes the ground man’s job so important. And unpleasant. Six times during the day, the team up on the tower could've sworn they heard the sound of nature calling, and I had to take refuge under Fester's carport as they answered. Many other aspects of tower work I picked up myself, just by watching and listening. For example, by carefully observing the proceedings, I learned an awful lot about Gin Poles. The most important thing to have when working on a tower is a good stout, reliable, and sturdy Gin Pole. We had two Gin Poles that morning. One’s name was Stan Stanislowski from Danzig, and the other was Zahn Uffavitch, born in Warsaw. Both these Poles could empty a gin bottle faster than Deb can empty my bank account. They both downed two bottles of the stuff before starting up the tower, and tucked three more bottles into their pockets and tool belts for consumption later in the day. I learned how exciting it is to be working under a tower where four hams are perched 100 feet above you, especially after two of them have consumed enough alcohol to put the entire Democratic National Convention over the legal driving limit. From watching those guys, I learned why it’s called a “wrench”, and why it’s called a “nut”, and the difference between a “bolt” and a "%@#$* bolt!” I learned what the “D” stands for when referring to a safety belt’s “D” ring. And I learned why the ground man always wears a hard hat. I learned the folly of not taking a can of hornet spray with you when you and three other guys climb a 100 foot tower after having been thoroughly soaked with Dr Pepper. I learned that it takes four hams an hour and a half to loosen the six screws holding the beam to the top mast. Based on the heated conversation going on way up on top of the tower, you might think this was due to rusty hardware, perhaps complicated by the shortage of hornet spray. But my personal opinion is that the Gin Poles played a big part in the situation. For a while there, I thought it was raining screwdrivers. I learned that Florida fire-ants can climb a 100-foot tower and make a nest inside the traps of a tri-band beam. From the dancing going on up on top of the tower for the next half hour, I figure the other team members learned something more about fire ants, but they didn’t share it with me. I learned that when you leave a coil of 500-pound-test nylon rope lying in the grass in the Florida sun and rain for nine years out behind a shed, the rope won’t actually hold up 500 pounds anymore. In fact, it won’t even hold 68 pounds. I learned that the drum cadence in the opening credits of the Hogan’s Heroes TV show isn’t played by drums. No, it’s a recording of the sound made by a 68-pound antenna rotator as it dismantles itself by bouncing down the rungs of a 100-foot tower, after breaking loose from a 500-pound-test rope that’s been sitting in the Florida sun and rain for nine years. I learned how hams can use a car jack to dislodge a stuck top section from the section of tower beneath it. I learned that you’re supposed to make sure the jack is fastened to the tower solidly, so that when the top section finally breaks loose, the jack doesn’t come sailing down 100 feet to imbed itself three feet into the sandy Florida soil for the ground man to have to dig out. And speaking of soil, I learned what happens to the pants worn by a curious neighbor who happened to wander into Fester’s back yard to see what all the hubbub was about, at exactly the time the car jack missed his head by half an inch. Sometime along about noon, the four guys up on the tower decided to take a break. Because of the rules of tower protocol already mentioned, they didn’t come down the tower, but merely rested from their labors while staying up on top, leaning back against their safety belts. Peet and Henry lit up cigarettes, while Zahn and Stan pulled out their bottles of gin and began swigging away. Then it happened. I’ll never forget. The scene will live with me the rest of my days. Stan sneezed. Ordinarily, sneezing is fairly inconsequential. But being on the tower, Stan sneezed right into Peet’s face. Now even this normally doesn’t create too much of a lasting impression, as I expected Peet to react normally, such as by playfully tapping Stan’s head with the 15-pound sledgehammer to remind him of his insensitivity and breach of common courtesy. But no, this sneeze was different. It was memorable. When it happened, Peet was in mid-draw on his cigarette, and Stan still had a mouth full of 180-proof Beefeater gin. A bright yellow fireball twenty feet in diameter engulfed the top of the tower, Fester’s sliding glass patio doors shattered, and the seismograph at Florida State University registered the only 4.0 magnitude earthquake in the state’s history. Dogs began barking four miles away, and for a brief moment, the tourists over on Interstate 95 thought they’d caught a glimpse of an oil refinery’s flare stack exploding. Fortunately, the safety belts kept the four crew members in place, saving me the trouble of digging them out of the sandy Florida soil. Although a three-day search was conducted, we never found any trace of Peet’s mustache or Henry’s eyebrows. I also noticed that Stan and Zahn’s bottles of gin had disappeared. I learned later from Peet that the bottles will probably be found the next time Stan undergoes a thorough colonoscopy. My education continued. As the day wore on, I learned about guy wires, and why you should always wear leather gloves when working with them. I also learned at least fifty new words that day, none of which my mom would let me use until I turned 40 or became an Army drill sergeant, whichever came first, she said. In fact, even today, Deb won’t let me use those words, although all of our children are fully grown and gone. I learned that once a tower was up, it seemed best just to leave it up. In spite of that, at the end of the day, ten sections of tower lay neatly stacked in Fester’s back yard, along with a dump-truck load of guy cables, pins, bolts, nuts, thimbles, and other assorted hardware. I learned that although the tower had looked gray when it was up in the air, now that it was down on the ground, it looked a deep chestnut brown. “If I’d a know’d that tower was so rusty, I’d a never climbed it,” said Henry. “Yup, yup, me neither. it’s a good thing we had a few drinks a’fore we went up, ain’t it,” laughed Zahn, through his bleary eyes and red nose. “And I’m shore not as think as you drunk I am, neither,” he said, jabbing his finger at his chest. One by one, they loaded their radios and other gifts into their pickups and drove off. Because of their conditions, I didn’t want to ask any of them if they would mind giving a lift to me and the tower sections to my house half a mile away. And not being old enough to drive, I ended up carrying the tower, section by section, on foot from Fester’s to my own back yard. I learned that although it really should be, it isn’t technically against the law to give a rusty worthless tower to a Novice class 14-year-old. And finally, at the very end of the ordeal, I had learned that I really didn’t want a tower after all. That's the value of education.

Guest Speaker at Faculty Meeting

At the university's opening faculty meeting this morning, the guest speaker was Betty Siegel, president of Kennesaw State University in Georgia. She was a great, down-home, sweet-talkin' Georgia peach who's a great speaker. She said she was in Sequoia National Park a couple of weeks ago (guess who else was there, too!), and she said she asked a ranger how tall the trees were. The answer was that the tallest trees were more than 300 feet tall. "Wow!" she replied. "I'll bet their roots go halfway to China." "No," answered the ranger. "In fact, sequoia trees have some of the shallowest root systems of any tree. Seuquoia roots rarely go more than a couple of inches deep. In fact, they often lie on top of the rocky ground." "How can they stand for so long, then?" she asked. "Their secret has to do with the fact that you never, ever, see a sequoia standing by itself. They are only found in groves. Each sequoia spreads its roots out. Each tree intertwines its roots with the roots of its neighboring trees. Together, they weave an impenetrable mat of roots which holds up the entire forest. Each tree is entirely dependent on the other trees' roots for support. If you cut down or kill several sequoias in an area, the remaining trees quickly succumb to winds and storms, and within a matter of weeks, all the trees are down." Hmmmm. Nice little bit of philosophy, there. She got her point across quite nicely.

Answers and Kudos

Thanks to everyone who's posted comments recently. Kudos to Jen for knowing that the Hollywood sign used to say "Hollywoodland", and semi-kudos to lint monkey for taking the trouble to look it up. Kudos to Grandpa Fordham for immediately recognizing Great Falls on the Potomac River just west (upstream) from Washington D.C. Thanks to Jen and Nicole for good guesses. The photos were taken from overlooks in Great Falls Park, the Virginia side of Great Falls National Park in Maryland. This park is just west of the Washington Beltway. To reach it, you get off the beltway onto the George Washington Parkway a couple miles north of Tison's corner, just before you go across the Potomac River bridge. Take the parkway west a couple of miles and turn right at the sign for Great Falls Park, about a mile before you get to the village of Great Falls, Virginia. It normally costs a couple of dollars to get in, but I have an annual National Park Pass which gets me in free to all the National Parks. It's well worth the money, however. Kudos to Sgaterboy for recognizing the Embraer 170 aircraft from just its wingtip and the front surface of the engine nacelle. Now that's knowing your aircraft! And in response to Bopnopper, neither the Baltimore cemetery nor the Greenmount cemetery are as pretty as the Belgian cemeteries, because neither of these have any flowers in them. Baltimore cemetery doesn't even have any trees. Almost everyone in these cemeteries has been dead for more than 75 years, most more than 150 years, some for almost 200 years, and no one puts flowers out anymore. They are not kept up, except for general grass mowing. Notice how crooked and dilapidated the stones are. And to answer Music7's email, we have no idea why the Singewalds didn't want their graves marked. They certainly had the money. But even the son who moved to Florida (my great-grandfather John Lawrence) is buried in an unmarked grave in Jacksonville, and what's more, all three of his children (including my grandmother) are in completely unmarked graves, no stones or markers whatsoever. Puzzling. Genealogy research turns up some fun riddles and puzzles. One of the most intriguing has to do with my great-grandmother Rowell's parentage. And there's another puzzle involving my Creek indian ancestor, where her purported age at the time of the incident doesn't jive with the historical dates of Jackson's trail of tears ... more investigation is obviously needed. Fun, fun, fun.

Guess Where I've Been -- Part V

Yep, I'm doing more genealogy. This time I'm in Baltimore Maryland, trying to locate the graves of my Great-Great-Grandfather Traugott Singewald (1816-1884). Traugott, born in Saxony (present-day Germany), along with his brother Gottlieb, mother-in-law, and all of his immediate children, apparently didn't want any of their graves marked. Every last one of them is buried in a grave which is completely unmarked. Given that there are thousands of other germanic graves with markers all around (many with "Geboren", "Gestoben", dates, and even poems in German), I wonder why the Singewalds didn't want their graves marked? The cemetery records are accompanied by notes saying, "unmarked at dec. request". Why? The grassy area in the picture above is the place where two of Traugott's sons are buried. The location of Traugott (in the cemetery's records as Frawgot H. Singwald, because of the terrible handwriting on the original cemetery cards), along with F. H. Tingvald, Mrs. Singwald, and Margustine Stossel (apparently Traugott's mother-in-law) occupy a nine-grave plot (along with a couple of Singewald children, ages 22 days to 5 years) and all of them, every last one, is completely unmarked. I wonder why? After visiting two cemeteries in the worst part of Baltimore, I headed for D. C. for my business meetings. The traffic between Baltimore and D. C. was, well, normal for a Friday afternoon. Last night I had dinner with the new crop of InfoSec MBA students, and this morning I sat in on their first in-person class session. This afternoon I had some time off. Time for a visit to a national park, right? Okay, so ... where is the picture below taken? (Hint: it's not in Baltimore!) I'm kinda proud of the picture below. Click on it and view it full size, and scroll back and forth. The picture above is a stitched composite of two actual photographs. Pretty good, huh? Okay, click on the photo below, and zoom in and tell me what is that little dot in the exact center of the photo. Look closely. (The picture below is a close-up of the far-right-hand cascade in the picture above.... that shows how huge these falls really are!) Below are the falls from a little further downstream. Keep in mind, the water flow is low because it's the dry season. These falls really roar in the Spring. Yes, those are fully-grown trees on top of the rocks. A few yards inland from the falls is the remains of the canal built to allow boats to bypass the obstacle of the falls. Below is a lock from the Patowmack Canal, which was the brainchild of none other than George Washington. Look up Patowmack Canal in Wikipedia for a short but interesting history lesson. It was started about the time of the U.S. Constitution, and was a full generation before the great C&O (Chesapeake and Ohio canal) which replaced it. Upriver from the falls is a dam which serves to de-sedimentize the river. The river backs up behind the dam, gets calm, and the drops its sediment. Some of the "clean" water is then siphoned off, put into an aquaduct, and becomes Washington D.C.'s (and its suburbs') drinking water. The rest of the river water goes over the dam, and then over the falls. (Given that my sewage from home goes into this river, I guess I shouldn't drink the tap water at Uncle Gary's house!) The lake behind the dam is gorgeous. Canoeing down this river, you'd never guess what awaits you a hundred yards to the right. Downstream, too, has some nice scenery. Notice the geese on the rocks in the river. Click on this picture to enjoy the true beauty of this area. Okay, so what is the name of this park? (Hint: I was on the Virginia side of the river, and my National Park pass got me in for free.)

Guess Where I've Been... Part IV

  There's no excuse. I knew better. I really did. I have no one to blame but myself. Everything I've read, everything everyone has told me, all the warnings, all the publicity, the news -- all turned out to be completely true. As the Brits would say, "Spot on".
   I was hoping to do some more good hiking, just like Friday. The weather forecast predicted a gorgeous day, with temperatures in the 70's. Perfect for a Saturday on a wilderness trail in a National Park. I should have known better.
  The first hint of trouble came at 8:00 a.m. I had gotten up at 6 a.m., showered, eaten breakfast, and packed. I was on the road by 7, leisurely driving the 60 miles from my hotel room in Fresno, up to Yosemite. The first hour, I covered the first 50 miles without incident. But then, at 8:00, traffic stopped, and thus began the bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go crawl up the mountains.
   It took me another hour and a half to go those last 10 miles, on a road that can best be described as a series of 500 hairpin turns, with a thousand cars in front of me and another thousand behind.
  The second hint of trouble came at 9:30, when I passed the sign that said, "Yosemite National Park Entrance Station 1/2 Mile Ahead -- Expect 20-30 Minute Delays -- Have Money or Pass Ready".

The third hint came a half-hour later -- at 10:00, as I pulled into one of the seven lanes of the entrance station. (The sign had been "spot on"!) I had the following conversation with the entrance station ranger.
Ranger: "Good morning and welcome to Yosemite National Park. Can I see your reservation, please?"
Me: "Reservation? Ha-ha-ha. That's a good one. You're kidding, right?"
Ranger: "No, I'm not. All our accommodations and campgrounds are full and booked solid through the rest of the summer -- and have been since March."
Me: "Oh, well, that's no problem, then. I'm only here for the day."
Ranger: "For the day? Just one day? Well, you're a little late for that. It's already 10 a.m."
Me: "Ha-ha-ha. That's a good one. You're kidding, right?"
Ranger: "No, I'm not. Yosemite Village, Half-Dome and El Capitan are all at least 20 miles in from here. Given the traffic, you'll be hard pressed to get there and get back before dark."
Me: "Ha-ha-ha. That's a good one. You're kidding, right?"

He wasn't kidding. When it got dark at 9 pm, I was still 6 miles inside the park, which didn't make me very happy. I don't like driving after dark in areas inhabited by deer. Given my eyesight, I also am not too enthusiastic about driving on mountain roads that consist of a thousand hairpin turns -- and no guardrails -- after dark.

The fourth hint of trouble came at 10:01 a.m., as we continued our conversation:
Me: "Okay, forget the points of interest. Can you recommend some hiking trails that don't have a bazillion people on them?"
Ranger: "Yes, I can. I've heard rumors that Death Valley National Park has a couple of trails like that in August. It's about three hundred miles to the south on Highway--"
Me: "No, no, no, I mean here, in Yosemite. Are there any trails here in Yosemite that don't have a gazillion people on it?"
Ranger: "A trail without a gazillion people on it? In Yosemite? In August? Ha-ha-ha. That's a good one. You're kidding, right?"

Alas. All day in Yosemite National Park, a full 12 hours, and how much hiking did I get in? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Zippo.

Why not? Isn't a hike on a crowded trail better than no hike at all?

Yes. Definitely. But the real reason I didn't go hiking was... I couldn't find a parking place!

All the lots were full, the overflow lots were full, and the sides of the road for miles in each direction were completely full.

By waiting in line, eventually, I was able to get out of the car. And fight the crowds for a spot on the path leading to an overlook
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And then wait in line for a turn at the view
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Sheesh. Have I written before about how much I dislike crowds? Once you get to the front, the view is actually quite nice. Half dome is an impressive piece of work. It is even more impressive when you realize it is solid granite. What's more impressive is, Half Dome is actually one of the smaller of the mountains in this range! It is at least 8 miles in the distance, here.

One of the bigger ones is El Capitan. It is probably ten times the size of Half-Dome.

Like the ranger had told me, I wasn't able to get in and back out before dark.
This is the famous half-dome shot taken an hour or so before sunset, from the bottom of the Yosemite Valley. Ansel Adams made this view famous. The mountain is huge, and is about three miles away in this shot.

At dark, I was still well inside the park, ...and way up in the mountains.

However, even though I couldn't manage to get to a hiking trail, I was able to snap a few good pictures during the day. I don't know if you are familiar with the Grand Tetons from Wyoming; someone once said they couldn't understand why those sharp, jagged, uninviting harsh rocks were so named, if you know what the french word tetons means in English. No, in my mind, these three domes (shown below) here in Yosemite are more appropriate for the name "la Trois Tetons". This set of mountains is right across the valley from Half Dome
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Okay, get ready to be amazed. Click on the picture below and look closely. That's Half-Dome on the left, looking edge on. Notice how little it looks compared to all the other granite in this view. Okay, just wait, there's more! Look just to the right of center, and you'll see another "half of a dome". There are two waterfalls, one directly below, and one at the bottom right of the second half-a-dome. See them?

Here's a telephoto view of the second dome and the waterfalls.

And here's a closer view of the top falls. If you look closely at the very top of the falls, you can see a wooden bridge crossing the river at the top. And if you get out your magnifying glass and look left of the bridge, you can see a bunch of people, standing on a platform. See them?

Okay, below is a pic of the bottom falls. Click on it. Now on this picture, look closely at the very top right-hand corner of the picture. Get out your magnifying glass again. See the people on the trail in the upper right corner of the photo?

Okay, here is the amazing part. Now that you've got a perspective of how tiny the people are compared to the falls, go back to the first picture, the panorama view of the whole range including half-dome, and try to find those people again! That will show you the majesty of these mountains. (No, I'm not just showing off the telephoto lens that came on my Canon! I just wanted to give you some idea of how huge these granite mountains are.)

In spite of the thousands and thousands of people, I did find a few off-the-beaten-track side paths, and got a few shots of the, um, wild life, if you can call it that.

I think this is a ruffled grouse. The colors didn't come out well, but it's really a pretty bird.

And this was another beautiful bird, a Stellar's Jay, I think.

I've concluded that deer are simply wild cows. When it comes to avoiding danger such as highways, they have all the intelligence of a handful of sand.

These animals all live within earshot of people. There was no place I went today that I couldn't hear people talking, babies crying, teenagers giggling, horns honking, busses idling, and motorcycles revving. To get off the solidly-populated trails, you have to have a backcountry overnight permit. Yosemite reportedly has a lot of real wilderness, but it apparently takes at least a week to get to it. I got to see about 5% of the park.

In addition to Half Dome, El Capitan, and the waterfalls, it has the famous Bridalveil falls, the famous Yosemite waterfall (one of the highest in the world), at least three stands of huge old California redwoods, and a dozen othe major attractions. But by spending 12 hours inside the park, I was only able to see two: Glacier point (elevation 8,000 feet, where the upper views above were taken), and the bottom of the valley where the Ansel-Adams-like picture was taken. The very first picture in this post shows me in front of El Capitan, with Half-Dome in the far background. It was taken along the road to the bottom of the valley.

The ranger was "Spot on": it took almost four hours to drive the 19 miles to that spot. I should have known better. A day hiking in Yosemite? Yeah, right. "Ha-ha-ha. Good one. I must've been kidding."

Guess Where I've Been -- Part III

So many trails.... so little time...(sigh) No, it's not trick photography, the trees really ARE this big. And they are popular, too. Man, I hate crowds. Okay, click on this picture below, and look closely at the very bottom of that tree on the left... the one with the fire scar at the base. See the people? Here, here is a telephoto shot of the same exact tree. The exposure is different, but it's the same view. Compare the photo below with the one above to get some sense of how HUGE these trees are. This is the General Sherman tree, supposedly the largest living thing on the planet. I had to wait about ten minutes for the crowd to clear out. And there are two dozen more people behind my camera here waiting their turn... Did I mention how much I hate crowds? To get away from crowds, I have to get away from the easy trails and go for the gold. The Big Kahuna. See that huge rocky-topped mountain below in the background? It is a cliff, several miles away, and the map shows that a trail leads up to the summit. Perfect! Let's go for it! The only thing I like better than a relaxing drive through a deep forest... ...is a nice relaxing hike through a deep forest. And this forest is deep. "Through the forest glades I wander..." Lovely, just lovely. Photos don't do it justice. Yes, that's moss on the trees, although it doesn't always grow on the north side of the trunks like they say. Nice shade, great trees, bushes, gorgeous meadows... a few bogs here and there to get your boots nice and muddy. Don't be bashful: go ahead and click on the image and try to put yourself in this location and enjoy the beauty, the peace and quiet... When you get away from the people, you get to see some animals. The funny coloration on the chipmunk is due to the sunshine lighting. (Although they resemble the animals from the Rockies, all of these animals were photographed by me today in Sequoia National Park.) This hike has convinced me that I've got to get a different tripod. As nice as mine is, it takes a while to get the camera on and off it. I need one where I can pop a button and get the camera off the tripod, or push something and have it back on the tripod ready to go. Several times, the camera was on the tripod and a critter popped up, and I couldn't get the camera into position fast enough. Oh, well... The park is in its dry season, but every now and then you see a meadow which has held the snowmelt water longer than normal, and it is still nice and green and full of summer wildflowers... Another nice location. Yes, the meadow is chock full of wildflowers, although you can't see the individual plants in the big image. The photo is disappointing... the colors are unbelievable. Here I'm getting ready to move out from the forest onto the cliff face. This is about 8000 feet above sea level, and over four thousand feet above the valley floor. That's the Sierra range in the background, about 20 miles away. The air is thin up here, and I have to take my time to avoid getting too winded. It's a long way up. I am not a rock climber. I don't do the pylons, rapelling, belaying, anchoring, etc. No, I don't climb -- I hike. If I can't walk it, I don't do it. If I have to use my hands, I throw in the towel. Below you see the hiking trail moving out onto the bare rock. I don't necessarily need a trail to follow, as I have a good sense of direction. But a nicely marked trail is always comforting to reassure me I'm still in the "safe zone". Below, you can see how nice this trail is as it skirts the side of the cliff face on the way to the top. If you accidentally fall over the side, it is probably close to six hundred feet straight down, then you'll tumble over boulders and through trees and other stuff the rest of the way down the several thousand feet to the bottom. It's steep. Getting close to the top. This is looking back the way I came. It was cool in the shade of the forest, but it's quite hot out here in the sun. I got a slight sunburn just from the few minutes I was out here. The thin air is partly to blame, too. Made it! I'm hot and tired. The real tippy top is about twenty feet further beyond me here, but it looked just a tad too treacherous for me to continue out to the end. I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. I know when to play it safe. What's the fun of a hike if you don't live to return to the car, eh? You can't really appreciate how high up this place is until you've been there. I can see why Edmund Hillary and those like him do what they do. This is addicting. One thing that was very interesting. Because of the altitude and reduced pressure, my bag of chips, my granola bars, and my Hostess Twinkie packaging all swelled up and became like balloons! You can't see it very well in this photo, but the Frito's bag is almost ready to pop! The Twinkie package is so stiff I can't even feel the cake inside. And the snack bars' packaging is so round from being ballooned out, it actually mashed in the sides of the granola bar! On the way back down, just as I was re-entering the forest, I banged my shin on a sharp-edged granite boulder. Dang. Two great big ow'ies, and no one to kiss it better. I wanted to go up Kings Canyon, but (sigh), there wasn't enough daylight left. Maybe next time. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to do Yosemite.