Monday, October 19, 2015

I'm sort of unpacking my thoughts in reverse order now.



Taking the Alien Highway route back meant we came back through Yosemite. Which normally would have been completely awesome. But we started getting rain in Gallup Mew Mexico. Which is where we first found out about the Grapevine. I Loves twitter so much. (yeah - intentionally misspelled unlike my normal writing where I can be a tard)

And it was raining super, wipers on high, hard. This of course turned me into a sissy because waterfalls started popping out everywhere, and that whole grapevine thing had just happened so I was sort of freaked. Plus I've never driven in snow or even been a passenger in it. I wasn't sure what kind of weather we were going to get at this point. The rain did make driving through the desert way more interesting though.





I really became a little freaked when the whole side of this mountain started having waterfall veins all over it.




When we first planned our trip I thought we would be two weeks late for the changing of the leaves. But by the time we got to Ohio, the trees were beautiful, but not enough to get the camera to really capture it. In Yosemite it was all I could do to get a few shots through the windshield wipers. It was raining that hard.



One interesting thing was the military was up there camping out. I saw a couple of  base camps. But they were all in cammo with cammo tents, so I only got a brief shot of their trucks.




We finally did see some snow around the 9000 foot level.




Which is also where I started thinking I was being a little dramatic about the level of tree loss here in Ca. At 9000 feet, things looked pretty normal. However, by the time we got down to 5000 feet, you could really see the stress the trees were under. Around Twain Harte I guestimated they might lose 15% of their trees.



The view from 9000 feet.



Now you start getting into the 5000 feet range and you can see the change.











By the time we got to the valley floor we were shocked to find out there had been really no rain. I mean, it rained for three states( Gallup to Yosemite), and we get back. Nothing.

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