Fievel Goes West: July 2010

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks

This is a bit out of order, but here are some of the fabulous pictures we took in Sequoia and Yosemite. Both parks were gorgeous, and we did some amazing hiking in both--3 days of backpacking in Sequoia and day hiking in Yosemite. As we looked through our pictures, we have noticed how truly amazing all the places we have seen on this trip have been. We are very lucky to have this great opportunity to see our beautiful county. California is extremely diverse and kept surprising us with how quickly it could change.

Sequoia N.P. at sunset on the drive to our first campsite

Chris and one of the world's largest trees! This one is probably about 2,000 years old. Sequoia NP is home to the world's largest tree: General Sherman. It is about 36 feet wide at the base and 275 feet tall.

This very friendly baby bear cub was walking down the hill towards our path. We snapped a few pictures before moving on, fearing that the mother was close by.

Here is Yosemite's famous El Capitan ("El Cap"). It is one of the world's largest granite monoliths, measuring over 3,000 feet tall. We met a couple climbers who were attempting to climb to the top over 3 days...crazy!

Yosemite falls from the bike trail. It's 2,375 feet tall and is one of the parks most popular spots.

Half Dome hike: Most of the next few pictures are from a hike we did to the top of Half Dome. This is easily the most spectacular hike we've done thus far. It was roughly 17 miles long, with about 5,000 feet of elevation gain and took us over 10 hours to complete (we took tons of pictures). The last 600 feet of elevation gain are so steep that there are chains bolted into the rock and all hikers have to wear gloves to maintain a secure grip on those chains. Crazy! We took the Mist Trail on the way back down and got to see some spectacular waterfalls and listen to distant thunder safely off the top of the dome.

You can see the line of people going up the last few hundred feet. I had a death grip on those chains the entire time, and we found out later that about 20 people have died since 1920 after losing their grip and sliding down the rock.

View from the top.

Chris and I with the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the distance.

Chris and I with Yosemite Valley in the background.

Waterfall on the Mist Trail.

And finally a view of Half Dome from the valley floor at sunset. Incredible!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Killing bunnies (and other fun stuff)

For those of you following along, you'll notice that our posts are jumping out of order from how we said we'd post. Work on our new farm has stepped up some more, and we've decided to skip over the posts from Santa Barbara to Kentfield for the moment to highlight a couple recent events at our current stop, Omi's Farm in Napa, California.

Omi's Farm is a 20 acre farmstead with quite a diverse mix of animals and plants. The back portion of the farm is home to a five and a half acre vineyard, full of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes with juice destined for the opaque wine bottles that seem to be everywhere in this region. Moving forward from the vineyard is a large chicken coop and approximately 50 chickens of many breeds, all producing eggs of different colors. To the left of the chickens is pasture for male sheep and childless females, with the other females and their children in the adjacent pasture. To the right of the pastures is an open area with the farm house, outbuildings, rabbit hutches and pens, turkeys, and several fruit and nut trees. The farm grows apples, pears, figs, passion fruit, walnuts, cherries, peaches, plums, and pomegranates in the orchard area, in addition to a garden full of tomatoes, chard, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, corn, and eggplant, among many other vegetables.

Tending to the animals and plants is a daily chore. We begin our days with breakfast around 7:30, followed by feeding and changing water for the rabbits, chickens, and turkeys, as well as collecting and washing chicken eggs and taking kitchen scraps to the chickens. After the animals have been fed, we spend some time helping take care of the propoerty, harvesting fruit and vegetables, and caring for the garden before breaking for lunch and heading back out to do some more work.

Because the farm raises animals, it follows that those animals are being raised for a reason. Those cute, fluffy bunnies fetch $25 a piece on the meat market and, from what we've heard, taste delicious. We had the opportunity to, along with Kirsten and a fellow WWOOFer, Jordan, slaughter and clean five bunnies the other day. The process was a bit greusome for those of us unaccostumed to it, but Kirsten made a good point: those animals gave their lives so we can eat a healthy, tasty meal later on. We won't post the details of the process, but if you're interested in learning more, or checking out some pictures, feel free to email either one of us.

Caring for the animals is an important part of farm life here. Kirsten and Jim work hard to ensure that the animals have a healthy diet, clean and safe housing, access to fresh water, and medical care when needed. Even with all the attention paid to animal health and welfare, problems do arise. Before we arrived on the farm, one of the female sheep passed away due to an unknown cause. Just the other day, that sheep's lamb was found dead in the field as well. Kirsten had noted a couple days prior that the lambs had some swelling around their jaws, and had called the vet to see if it was something to worry about. When the lamb passed away, the vet was called in and noticed the swelling of the jaws, known as 'bottle jaw,' as well as pale skin on several of the lambs. She explained several likely causes, and suggested we take the lamb to UC-Davis for a necropsy to discover the cause of death. Jim decided it would be a good idea to follow the vet's advice, and we made the hour long drive to UC-Davis to drop off the lamb. The next day, we were told that the problems were caused by a parasite the lamb had picked up, and the rest of the flock was put on a medication plan to eradicate the parasite.

Without the help of the vet and the staff at UC-Davis, many more of the sheep might have died. The knowledge of toxic plants (one of the possible causes for the sheep's ailments) and parasites made it easier to determine the cause of death, as well as the likely reasons for the parasite introduction--either a new member of the flock, or contaminated soil that was dumped at the farm recently. Understanding the interactions between the land, the animals, and our actions is important if a farm is to run smoothly and sustainably.

--UPDATE--

Rabbits are delicious. We had our first opportunity on the farm to try rabbit meat last night. Kirsten cooked up a fantastic rabbit chili, which we ate with tortillas, polenta with sauteed veggies and jalapeno cream sauce, and some delicious salsa verde Jordan made. Farm life is certainly tough.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Bryce Canyon to Las Vegas

Our last few posts have detailed our travels and our time spent and experiences gained at Hell's Backbone Grill. Since that time, we've traveled to Bryce Canyon NP, Zion NP, Las Vegas, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, Sequoia and Kings NPs, Yosemite NP, Berkeley, San Francisco, Kentfield, and finally Napa. A lot has happened since leaving Utah, and blogging has been relegated to the back burner for the past few weeks. We're finally making time for more posts again, and we hope to get back into the rhythm of regular posting from here on out.

Because we have so much time to cover, we're going to break up the last month or so into a few posts and try to salvage as much of our experience from the depths of our memories as possible. Starting with our first week after HBG:

Our first stop was Bryce Canyon National Park. It's famous for its wide array of colors and for its hoodoos (pronounced like voodoo). Hoodoos are huge rock spires whose shape and colors are a result of different minerals changing effects of erosion. We hiked through Fairyland Canyon. The trail head was very crowded, but the trail itself was nearly empty. We learned quickly not to stress about big crowds in the national parks; all we needed to do was walk a 1/4 mile down a trail and they would disappear. We hiked 8 miles, saw some spectacular hoodoos and canyons, had a run-in with a rattlesnake, and got to bed early enough to catch the sunrise in the morning.

The next morning we awoke at about 5 am, joined the masses to watch the sunrise at Sunrise Point, and immediately hit the road towards Zion National Park. Despite a 2 hour detour, we managed to get a backcountry permit for a 3 day hike on the West Rim Trail. Few of Zion's 4 million visitors a year make it onto that trail, which made for a peaceful hike.

The West Rim Trail offers great views of the famous Zion Canyon and, for the most part, is relatively flat. Flat for the hike out to our first camp, that is. We put in about 9 miles, made camp, and realized we did not bring nearly enough food. Making matters worse, our a misstep knocked over our pot full of dinner. We ate our fill on day 1, but had very little left for day 2, and would have to hike the 9 miles to the car on day 3 with only a granola bar each. We filled a daypack with all the food we had in preparation for the next day's 12 mile hike to Angel's Landing, and went to sleep under the stars.

Day 2 was where the big elevation change came in to play. It did not take long for us to realize we had a HUGE hike in store for us on the second day in Zion. We got about 2 miles out before getting into some very intense downhill switchbacks. We kept going down, and down, and down, constantly acknowledging that we would have to hike back up at some point. Eventually the trail flattened out, and we approached the crowds preparing to hike Angel's Landing. Neither of us had seen a trail like it. According to the National Park Service, "The route to Angels Landing involves travel along a steep, narrow ridge with support chains anchored intermittently along the route. Footing can be slippery even when the rock is dry. Unevenly surfaced steps are cut into the rock with major cliff dropoffs adjacent" The route was only a few feet wide at times, with 2,000 feet of sheer cliffs dropping off at either side. It is probably one of the most dangerous hikes in America, but rewards its visitors with one of America's most spectacular views.

After taking in the scenery, we reluctantly started back to camp. We had to hike 6 miles, uphill. We learned later this trail has a 2,200 foot elevation change, meaning the trails highest point was nearly half a mile above its lowest. We ran out of snacks and water, and had to take a lot of breaks. It was easily the hardest hike either of us had ever done, and we had just enough energy left at the end to cook dinner, filter some more water, and crawl into our sleeping bags.

The next morning we hit the trail as soon as possible. We had a tough 9 miles ahead of us, but we were rewarding ourselves that night in Las Vegas. We were staying in a hotel which meant our first shower in a week, our first real bed in a month, and more food than we'd eaten in days. We were going from being completely immersed in nature to the so-called Entertainment Capital of the World. The only thing that remained the same was walking; we walked about 10 miles sight-seeing which brought the grand total for the day to 19 miles. We slept in the next morning, got in the car and headed towards Santa Barbara, California where we would be vacationing with Carrie's family for a week.