The View Out West

Back more than a week and one of the curses of the blogger -- so much to say but so little time. I did want to catch up on the photos from out west as Nature Girl and I hit the trails of Yosemite and Lake Tahoe. We flew into Reno and then drove south to the Tioga Pass entrance to the national park, stopping off for lunch in Carson City and getting a chance to see one of America's smallest state capitol complexes.

The photo at left shows the entrance to the Nevada capitol building, my version of the Silver State's own "Abbey Road". Having also visited small city capitals in Juneau, Alaska; Helena, Montana and Concord, New Hampshire it is always fun to see how each state operates in a small town atmosphere. Still missing from the list: Pierre, South Dakota and Bismark, North Dakota. Nature Girl is very understanding of this odd obsession of mine. The silver in the dome is understandable from a state founded on the silver rush. We had lunch in a little pub right across the street but unlike other state capitals this one is different in that there are three major casinos within a few blocks. At least the political gambling is legal...

Yosemite and Tahoe are incredibly beautiful and serene in their own ways. Yosemite all-natural with wonderful quiet, sometimes the only sound the whisper of the wind and trees gently swaying back and forth with an occasional creak or groan. You are high enough in terms of altitude (ranging from 5000 to more than 9000 feet) to see big differences in vegetation from Aspen to pine forests to above the tree line. Nature Girl took a horse ride along the Pacific Rim Trail circling above the cabin where the Sierra Club has a shrine to John Muir; I opted for the meadow hike and twinkling my toes in the Tolumne River.

A definite highlight is taking a less-travelled road than most may consider when visiting Yosemite; the northwest corner of the park is little-visited Hetch Hetchy, where the valley that Muir once described as a "Little Yosemite" now lies beneath hundreds of feet below water. The reservoir -- created by an outright act of Congress in a controversial decision to dam a national park spurred by lack of water during the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire-- provides 85% of the drinking water for the San Francisco area. The water is so pure you can see dozens of feet down clearly and requires little treatment, but environmentalists are pushing to have the dam blown up so the valley can be restored.

It reminds me (on a grander scale) of the debate over the Falls Gorge Dam power project. I personally feel there needs to be balance between the needs of nature and the needs of those pesky humans, and so favored work on the already-existing Gorge dam to provide power. The environmentalists seem to be winning, leaving the monkshod plant protected but a valuable resource unused. Remember this when we have the next power outage, or we can't handle growth if that ever shows it's face in northeast Ohio again...