Again, yesterday, we saw deer in the Yosemite Valley. My brother Theodore shooed one away from a foot-path where it was nonchalantly nibbling a mushroom. Deer are very tame in the valley.
The Yosemite Falls, seen at their best on Sunday, May 23, 1948, with Yosemite creek in flood from melting snow, did not look to be 2425 feet in height; not until we got up close enough to be sprayed — good. Even the foot-path through the grove seemed to grow in length, as we walked toward the Falls.
Many, many years ago, I heard Eugene May lecture on the beauty and immensity of Yosemite Valley at the Methodist Church in Wetmore. When it came to describing the Falls, he got up on his toes, reached for the sky—literally soaring up, up, up, in an unbelievable manner. Now I find the Falls and other notable sights in the valley all that May said they were—and then some. There are six separate falls pouring into the valley.
Nothing looks its size up in the High Country. The far famed tunnel drive through the big Sequoia tree in the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, is deceiving. It looked as if it would be a tight squeeze for the car, but after passing through with room to spare, I could easily believe a cattle truck might pass through it.
While driving in the Grove, with the big trees standing surprisingly close together, the Doctor said he had been pretty much all over the world, and had seen nothing to compare with this wonderful Grove. Just imagine a tree 33 foot through standing 300 feet high.
When I first went up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, years ago—when automobiles were first coming into general use—trees were hitched on behind the cars to hold them back while coming down the mountain. And there was a sizable wood-yard at the foothills—product of those drags.
Five years ago, I came down from the Sequoia National Park with Major Tavares, when he put the machine in low gear and eased it down ever so gently. But now, with everything in California moving along in high gear, the tendency is to open ‘er up, and let ‘er drop down at an alarming rate of speed.
Last Sunday the Doctor—yes, it was the Doctor now — brought me safely down from the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, at a fast clip—a drop of nearly 8,000 feet in 65 miles of winding hairpin curves, done in less than that many minutes, the speedometer showing 65 to 70 miles all the way. And I had been told that his wife Alice was the best driver in the San Joaquin valley.
The Park roads are really wonderful—built at the right pitch for safety, at every turn.
The Doctor, with Alice and their two children, Clemie, eight, and Myrna, three, plan to fly in June to Honolulu—the Doctor’s birthplace. He is not Hawaiian, however. Alice has invited me to accompany them—but as I have always believed air travel unsafe, I declined, with thanks.