The Nysaverse

I left San Francisco early Monday morning on the drive to Yosemite. While I’d originally contemplated avoiding I-580, as the 880 bridge collapse Sunday was going to complicate the drive, I ended up deciding to brave traffic if for no other reason than to see what the whole mess was about. I’m seriously glad I don’t have to deal with the result of that accident - while the radio was talking about traffic being surprisingly light as people stayed home or took public transit, if traffic goes back to normal that’ll be one heck of a traffic headache.

The drive to Mariposa was much shorter than I’d thought it would be. Once out past Pleasanton, the trip was perhaps 2 hours across the central valley to Merced, then a fairly short trip up to Mariposa. I drove through town about noon, and being too early to check into the hotel I headed right out the other side towards Yosemite.

I don’t remember much from the last time I was at Yosemite, so the drive took longer than I’d originally thought. It’s about 40 miles from Mariposa to Yosemite Valley, along winding valley roads. Much of the initial trek towards the park is downhill, and I’m glad I’m not burning my own car’s breaks on that stretch! After you reach the bottom of the hill, you wind along the Merced river until you reach El Portal, at which point you start heading uphill again.

Just outside of El Portal there’d been a rock slide earlier in the year (or maybe late last year?) that completely buried Hwy 140. While driving towards the park I’d noticed what looked like a hiking trail on the other side of the river, about the same level as the road. It didn’t occur to me until we reached the detour (an portable, expandable bridge to the other side of the river) that the hiking trail was actually space for detours around rock slides such as that one.

I must say the rock slide was rather impressive - it buried the entire road, and ran a fair ways into the river. Makes you actually consider the danger of being caught in one yourself, while parked waiting for the stoplight to turn green, allowing one-way traffic onto the one-lane detour. I tried snapping some pictures from the detour, but as stopping is prohibited on the detour I couldn’t get a really good shot.

Once in the park, you come upon amazing scenery extremely quickly. As it’s springtime, there’re waterfalls aplenty, some where there’s no signs or stopping points, and aren’t marked on the maps. Perhaps there are actual names for these seasonal waterfalls, but I didn’t find many of them.

Getting into the Yosemite Valley itself, you start seeing some of the really high and prominent waterfalls, along with the giant granite monoliths that make Yosemite famous - El Capitan greets you to the valley, along with Bridalveil Falls.

I’ve already taken about 140 pictures just today, although that’s padded by many “duplicates,” as almost every vantage point gets several different aperture/shutter settings while I play with the exposure and (occasionally) DOF. As I’d gotten there fairly late (about 1pm), I tried to get it much of the car-accessible parts of the valley. With about 2 hours before dusk I started towards Vernal Falls bridge, which is a fairly short and easy trek. I wanted to get out, get some pictures in the early evening light, and give myself another chance to get my legs ready for a longer hike tomorrow. The hope is to get some decent hiking in tomorrow.

Before it got too dark, I headed back to Maripose to check into the hotel, and get a much-delayed “lunch.” Finding the hotel was a bit of a challenge, and I ended up stopping at the gas station to inquire. Turns out it was just as I came into town (from the central valley, not from Yosemite), but as there’s no viewable sign I’d completely missed it. Now to seriously process the images, and got to sleep and get rested for tomorrow.

Met up with Brad and Katie today. We’d put off deciding what to do until yesterday, and finally decided to climb Mt. Diablo - one of the higher hills (sorry, but I have high standards about what qualifies as a “mountain”) in the bay area. The two of them hadn’t been there yet, either, so it was something new for everyone.

The climb is fairly steep, and besides some loose rock on the trail there’s nothing really worrisome about it. Apparently there was a group doing 26 and 50 mile runs to the top - I wish I was in the kind of shape you’d need to do that run, but even then I’m not sure I’d be that kind of crazy. A fair number of bikers on the road, too. I’m not sure I could stand the sheer amount of time spent in first gear to do that!

So anyways, the three of us reach the top in fairly good time. <mob accent>Some pictures were taken, some scenery was viewed - that’s all I know!</mod accent> I got a couple decent pictures, but I wasn’t taking too many. The problem with a steep climb while the camera is carried in a backpack is that the camera doesn’t get taken out much. I have some from the top, and a couple from the way down, but otherwise the camera stayed stowed most of the time.

Afterwards we stopped at a Thai restaurant in Berkeley, which had some really good curry. I also liked the seafood dish we got, but then I like food really spicy.

A very good day.

I got up a little late this morning- maybe something to do with travel, but probably me just being lazy and having nowhere specific to go. I went back down to the marina area, where there’s a little wetlands preserve. Got some pictures from the wetlands, but mostly from the bay, and people around it. Here’s a picture I snapped of a bee feasting on some flowers - not the best shot, but after playing around with it it’s not so bad.

Many of the pictures I took ended up being of the people flying kites in the rather strong breeze coming through the Golden Gate Bridge and on into the bay. Well, more accurately I took pictures mostly of the kites. Consequently, look at too many of them and they start to get really boring really fast (seriously, how many pictures of kites against the sky do you want to see at a time?). I was mostly using it for practice with the camera’s AI Servo autofocus mode, and the panning mode on my 70-200mm lens’s IS.

Part way through, I got a call from Albert. I’d tried calling him Yesterday, and actually stopped by his apartment both today and last night. He’d lost his phone earlier in the month, and so I’d not been able to coordinate anything with him about the trip. Anyways - he’s down in Hillsborough helping his aunt and uncle move into their new house, so I wander on down there - after a futile attempt to try stopping in Chinatown first. Again, I’m thwarted by the hideous driving/parking in San Francisco. Seriously, the next time I’m in this town I don’t want to touch a car!

I finally get to the house, although by this point I’ve discovered that California has no clue how to a) name streets logically, and b) label street names in any useful way. I missed two turns due to this. In Minnesota at least the streets are named alphabetically (well, at least on the Minneapolis side of the cities) or numerically (although I concede the idiocy of Minneapolis’s “3rd Street & 3rd Avenue”-style intersections). And when street signs are placed, they really should be both visible and readable before you get to the intersection.

Back to the house - Albert’s aunt and uncle are both very nice. The house is beautiful. And while helping someone move may not be typical vacation fare, I rather enjoyed it. Plus having a chance to catch up with Albert was good, regardless of where.

Got into San Francisco. Wandered around the Golden Gate bridge area. Took some pictures, although it was getting dark fast. Found this really brave heron, though, parked by the road. He wouldn’t budge even though as I walked up to get his picture there were two others with cameras coming to pester him, too.

I’ve discovered that I don’t like driving in San Francisco - certainly not at night. While I ended up on the right road to catch I-80 across the Bay Bridge to Oakland, the traffic was insane! And why are there street after street after street of “No Left Turn” - presumably somebody is going to want to turn left somewhere.

Finally get across the Bay Bridge and drive up to Pinole, where I’d gotten reservations (yeah, yeah) at the Motel 6. Not much, but at least everything is clean. I get the room in the corner, though - closest to the freeway. Ugh… Heavy truck traffic, or maybe that’s just my impression. Oh well - it’ll do.

So today I went and looked at yet another lens. Actually several lenses: the EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 IS USM, the EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM, and the EF 70-200 f/4L IS USM. I admit I looked at the f/4L non-IS, but after seeing all other ones with IS, that one was just too un-impressive (even though the glass would certainly be nice enough in good light).

I’m sorely tempted by the f/4L IS USM - to the point I’m not really even thinking about the 70-300mm anymore (decent lens, but I think I’d rather spend the extra money for a lens I wouldn’t mind keeping for a long long time). Oh, so tempted… Ah, well - B&H isn’t taking orders until Wednesday, anyways… I feel rather dirty checking out lenses at places where the prices are excessively higher than B&H. If they were within a reasonable difference, I wouldn’t mind paying out the taxes and price difference to support the local stores - but when I can get it for $250 under list price and without taxes…

After drooling over the lenses, I decided to put one of my current ones to good use before going home. Check out my St. Anthony Falls photoshoot. I’ve done some proofing of the images, but some still need keywords/captions, and the gallery needs some work - time to dust off my recollections of CSS…