John Muir Yosemite Valley

Here are a couple of pics of John Muir and Muir pictured along with Teddy Roosevelt. He helped found the Sierra Club and "natural conservation" before urbanization. Thankfully, we have the results of their movements and a treasure trove of national forests in this great nation. How long they will last is up to posterity. And today, it's still a battle between privitization and conserving/protecting nature. This also be true in the continued process in globalist pluralist capitalism in the future.

Another pic is of Yosemite Valley. Here's a color version and a black and white. Yours truly last went there in summer 1980...amazing place and the hiking trails exquisite going through there. One fall, I believe Bridal Veil fall, drops an amazing 2600 feet down off the glacierized mountains. Muir had theories of glacialization of the Yosemite Valley and eastern Sierras and what may have been say 10 million years ago. Half Dome and El Capitan are results of the Glacial meltdown over a million years or so (??)

Bodie

Here's the ghost town of Bodie. This is way up I 395 near Bridgeport. (not too far from the Bristle Cone Pine Preserve). Yours truly saw it in 1976. Amazingly much of the town still intact and one can see what it looked like in the 1860s. There's the mine, hotel, saloon, school, church and so on. When you look in the buildings, it's like time stopped and everyone just left (except the apparitions checking and maybe influencing the visitors!).

Various pine trees

These will include pinus ponderosa, p. lambertiana, the canary island pine (common in Los Angeles), bristle cone pine. The former two may grow to 200 feet above the ground with 18 foot trunk circumference. Trees may live 500 years or more. The canary island pine from the Atlantic but does well at lower elevations and mediterranean climates. This pine grows to 100 feet in height. The bristle cone pine is amazing in that it is the oldest living thing on earth...trees have lived about 5000 years. Very slow growing and they are at high elevation...Bristle Cone Pine preserve off I 395.

The ponderosa pine is distinctive in that it has large red plates in the bark. (like the trees around "Bonanza")

Ca "prickly pear" cactus and chollas

These need to be given a lot of sun ideally (6-8 hours/day or more). Not much water but enough to keep it going. The flowers come out in May typically and fruits by September/October. The fruits are edible and can be made into jams and the milk can be drank. Handle with care. It's no fun to thoroughly run an arm or finger into one of these. The spikes get into the skin by the hundreds and it takes hours to get them out. Often, the pear shaped leaves fall off the plant periodically...one can scoop these up and plant them in the ground (with fertilizer). They will root right off (like the jade plant). Mature plants can be 20 feet across by a good 3 feet high.

Top of incline terminal to Echo Mountain Hotel

White City in the Clouds

Here are pics of Echo Mountain in the early 1900s. The city included a big hotel, tennis courts, observatory and a small zoo.

McPherson Trestle and Circular Bridge

Here is what these engineering feats of the Mt Lowe Railway looked like.