Hisstology - Scientific study of snakes, cats, and leaky tires

I figured out why I could not see anything the evening before when driving to the camp site. I was in the deepest canyon in the United States. I woke up to see a continuous valley of never ending cliffs that were thousands of feet high. Umm...wow! I headed to the road's end so that I could get a head start on the day hiking crowd towards the Misty Falls. As I was hiking along, minding my own business, I suddenly caught some movement and looked up to see a doe heading down the trail, seemingly in his own little world, not more than 15 feet from me. We just glanced at each other for a while as I slowly slid my camera from the case. Like the previous deer encounter, it seemed to determine quickly enough that I wasn't a threat and simply trudged off to the side to nibble on some of the local flora. I watched it for about 10 minutes as I took some pictures before decided to continue on my way. It was about four miles from the trail head to Misty Falls, but it was pretty enjoyable and a offered great views of the towering canyon walls. The falls were indeed aptly named since there was a continuous spray come from the lower section. I hiked up to the top and sat right on the river and watched the water go by for a while. I don't know why, but even after seeing so many water falls, I still do not get tired of them and can be still for a long time and just enjoy the sights and the sounds. Maybe in another life I was just an oxygen and couple of hydrogen atoms.

Not too far from the spot where I saw the doe, I came across a fawn that was heading up the trail as I was heading back towards the parking area. Like the encounter I had in Grand Sequoia National Park, the little guy was skittish and didn't hang around long enough to get too many shots, but it was still cute to see it nimbly bunch among the boulders. The thing that wasn't cute was my next animal encounter. I was walking along a wooded section of trail and heard something that immediately kicked in my adrenaline. It is mazing to me as how time can seem to slow down and one can have full thoughts or debates with oneself in a span of a second. What I heard was a quite distinctive rattle somewhere to my left. I later found it funny when I realized that my first thought was 'That is a red dot animal!'. When I was at the St. Diego zoo, I spent a little bit of time in the reptile house. Among in the display cases that were interpretive signs that described the animal inside. Some of the signs had a red dot indicated that animal to be poisonous. At this point I have no problem admitting that my first reaction was to quickly jump to my left onto a large rock like an old lady would if there was a mouse in the room. it took me a few moments to locate the rattlesnake as it was sitting less than three feet from the trail. after getting a few shots, I headed back and took the footbridge across the river towards the Bobbs Creek Trail. Just on the other side of the river was a trail that paralleled the one I took up. It was devoid of any other hikers; which was enjoyable since the falls trail was starting to get busy. The whole trip was only about 8.5 miles and offered some outstanding views of the valley meadows. Since I was only a hundred feet or so from the base, there were several massive rocks, some literally larger than my house scattered throughout the trail that at one time had fallen from the towering cliffs. One the way out I stopped by the Roaring River Falls (which looked more like a series of chutes than falls) and Grizzly Falls.

The last stops in the park were the Chicago Tree Stump and the General Grant Grove. It is a bit sad that the stump is all that remains of a 3200 year old giant Sequoia that was cut down in the 1890s and taken for displaying to the Chicago World's Fair. This was done since no one would believe, at that time, the stories of how large the trees of California could get. This act even seemed to be in vain sense most people reportedly, even after seeing the reassembled tree, assumed that it was still just a hoax. It is a shame that any of these trees were ever cut down since the wood is too brittle the even use in construction whereas barely 50% of the cut wood even making it to the mill. On the way back to the car, I had my second rattlesnake experience of the day. After the previous encounter, I was keeping a much better eye on the ground and was able to spot this large snake sitting just to the side of the path before I reached it. I'm guessing that it was probably about twice the size of the previous one and decided to wait quite a while before attempting to run by. I am glad to have gotten exposure to some of the wildlife during the hikes so far, but there are still a few animals that I could probably do without getting too close. The General Grant Tree is the second largest tree in the world and was even given the distinction of the nation's Christmas train in the 1920s. The rest of the trees along the nature walk were just as impressive and it was nice to get a last good look of these majestic guardians of the valley.

After leaving the park I decided to head over to Yosemite which was about 120 miles away. Unfortunately, that involved driving up and down a lot of very windy roads as well as going through Fresno. I'm not sure if anyone had been checking out the news recently,y but that area of the state had been having some of the highest temperatures ever recorded over the past few days. Even when I was driving through around six o'clock in the afternoon, the temperature was 106°F. It was quite a change win the highest temperatures I had recently seen in the mountains was about 86°. I stopped just long enough to hit a buffet since I was pretty hungry after hiking over the past few days and to get some fruit and water for the trails.