I’ ve kept my wristwatch on Duluth time but my new cell phone set in its charging cradle acts like a night light showing me the local time automatically through the power of gps technology. I went bed past midnight Duluth time and woke up at 4AM Pacific time. Add the two hours of time zones and that’s a respectable five hours plus. The problem is that this is as good as its gotten on what supposed to be a vacation. Starbucks hasn’t opened yet and that’s not good for San Fran and its not good for me. Ambient music plays in the lobby of the second Marriott of the week. This one looks across the bay in So. San Fran at planes taking off and landing at the airport.
The first thing I did was review the latest additions of donations listed in recent blog posts and add them to the latest donations reported to me from our PO Box all generated from the ads we placed almost two weeks ago. I’ll try to get that thermometer ap figured out again and upload it to the next post. We’ve got a ways to go.
One of the phone messages I found on my cell once we escaped the Sierra’s dead zone was from the Trib’s Ed reporter asking what our latest take was. I’d cranked out a quick press release earlier in the day saying we’d hit 6o%. It wasn’t much of a release and it told reporters to check this blog for the latest. I didn’t return the call because it was well past the Trib’s deadline.
And the Siearras? Beautiful. Shirtsleave weather. Sunny. We drove a short distance to the biggest tree in the world the General Sherman. Every year it adds the mass of a sixty foot tree to its girth. In the early morning sun the red of its bark and the shadows from its deep folds would have challenged the best landscape artist. Sequoia is out of the way and we had a small company of travelers with us, an extended family of slavic speakers, a trio of monks.
The day before I had worn my Abe Lincoln tee shirt. I should have saved it for today because a great many of the giants were named after Abe and his generals. I stood on the railing protecting the tree’s roots from being lovingly trampled and made my wife crouch below me to get a picture of me and the tree named after President Lincoln’s second favorite general.
The trees are so large there is no way to capture them in a photo with a person showing both their scale and the human. Its either a person up close with the trunk behind them and the remaining 200 feet to be imagined or the entire tree with a dot of a person standing at its feet.
Since my last visit forty or so years ago the paths around the trees had become paved people highways cunningly twisting through the giants to offer dramatic views.
Mule deer common. I saw my first western tanager and white faced woodpecker. A black bear munched in a meadow surrounded by giants. We spent a spare few hours strolling through two stands and then drove down a thousand feet from the exertions of 7,000 feet to the Park’s “Crystal Cave.”
A raging fire through Kings Canyon the year before had burned the electrical wires that lit the cave. We were all issued mag flash lights and took a dimmer tour with points of flash light tracing stalagtites and mites willy nilly from 25 hands as we proceeded through the cave.
Well, that’s enough of tour. Light is finally brightening the lobby skylight and more people are checking out. Time to look at my email and make a few calls to Duluth.
The path to the cave must have been another thousand feet but
