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Tuesday, August 22, 2006
yesterday
Yesterday was, as C announced at the end of it, QUITE a day of "adventures". We went to Yosemite, just because we could (we haven't been able to since April, what with the landslide and all). We took T a nice lunch and then proceeded to the valley to take pictures and generally torture LT who swears he hates going to Yosemite and yet oddly enough has a great time while he's there. Especially yesterday, since, let's face it, yesterday was not just an ordinary day.
First thing I did was get pulled over. By a park ranger. For, uh, going the wrong way on a one-way road (hey, at least it was exciting this time. No measly speeding ticket for me). In my defense, the last time I was up there they'd converted that one-way road to a two-way because of road construction elsewhere. Still. Ahem. Big signs saying WRONG WAY DO NOT ENTER are generally there for a reason. I did not get ticketed but I did get a lot of ribbing from T (including a voice mail message with references to 'trying to raise the bail' and my 'one phone call'. Hardy har har) who of course knew about it as soon as the ranger ran my plates because it came over the Park radio system, and if they hadn't heard it on the radio he'd have known when the guys in Dispatch instant-messaged him about it.
Things were uneventful until we had parked in the day-use parking and ridden the shuttle bus to the Mirror Lake trailhead. We were hiking merrily along the trail, and I'm afraid I was not looking very carefully ahead of me when LT gave a little shriek when he saw this guy in our path:
(not the best photo. By the time I felt safe taking my eyes off him and got my lens changed he was pretty far away).
Just a bit of country-girl trivia: That is the first rattlesnake I've been near to in person, other than at the zoo, that survived the encounter. I may not be able to jump a car battery without reading the instructions over three or four times first by by golly I'm pretty good at dispatching venomous snakes. In a national park, however, that is Just Not Done. It was an interesting feeling to just let it slither away.
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Another snake we saw just tooling around in the water as we crossed Mirror Lake (except it's more like Mirror Stream at this time of year) at the dam:
(poor photograph because it's not so easy to focus when you're straddling a running stream on two boulders and your subject keeps moving)
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THEN we were quick-stepping back to the bus stop in order to be able to pick up T on time, and the trees parted to show us this:
Aah, summertime. Freedom and long evenings and of course forest fires. See the faint white line going down the rocks on the right-hand side of the picture? That is the August remnant of Yosemite Falls. It boggles my mind that people will scrimp and save and plan to come across the country or around the world toYosemite... in August. Or September. Dude, people, COME IN APRIL.
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And THEN... well, here:
Open LetterTo the man who shoved in front of me in line in order to take the last possible available place on the shuttle bus, avoiding eye contact and dragging along your twentyish son by the backpack strap over his fair and somewhat gallant insistences that we should be allowed to go first:
The fact that the next bus came in two minutes and was nearly empty, allowing us to sit and relax in comfort with our personal space intact, in no way exonerates you for your boorish behavior, since you couldn't have known. Jerk.
Cordially,
The harried-looking woman with the two dehydrated kids
So there was that.
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Then, thanks to the fire, T couldn't come home with us anyway, and narrowly escaped having to stay completely overnight thanks to his boss and his boss's hero complex.
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THEN I stayed up until 2 AM reading the new Marian Keyes book. Not that that's so much of an adventure, since I've been staying up till that hour doing Librivox stuff these days anyway. It's the only time the house is guaranteed to be quiet for any extended period of time.
Today's rather ordinary, so far. But I'm going out on the back porch to clean up eight months' or so worth of mess back there, so stay tuned.
Comments
In Oraville there is a place we used to go to. We called it Table Mountain, not sure if that was the name actually, but the school would go up there for kite flying. it was fun. The last time I went up there, I was about 10, I saw a rattle snake all curled up and it's head was doing this funky swaying back and forth. it was pretty close. about 10 feet. it was pretty scary.
Dont you hate it when people are rude like that on the bus? I am glad you got an empty one! makes the ride more enjoyable.
Posted by: debi at August 22, 2006 03:07 PM
Wow. I don't even know where to begin here. I'll do my best ;-) First of all RACHEL! The wrong way? I'm glad you weren't hurt. (Don't feel bad, I am notorious for trying to make left hand turns off of two way streets because I think they are one way...)
That snake's got a mighty big head.
Your open letter is very funny.
I really miss being able to stay up all night reading. Almost makes me want to get fired so I can collect unemployment and not work for at least six months.
Posted by: jenn at August 22, 2006 03:31 PM
Have fun with the cleaning!! I need to do the same outside. it gets sooo cluttery
Posted by: debi at August 22, 2006 04:54 PM
YOU KILL SNAKES??!!How?? They completely and utterly freak me out....
Posted by: Valerie at August 22, 2006 06:51 PM
Yeah, I want to know how you kill the snakes, too. Do you shoot them or just chop their heads off? Mom chops off the heads of small (baby) poisoonous snakes, but we're too scared to get close enough to the big ones to do that...
Posted by: Michael at August 23, 2006 06:30 AM
I love the letter. :)
I am surprised that you haven't seen more rattlesnakes. I know we lived in a totally different part of the state, but in the one measly year we lived in CA we managed to see two or three rattlers up close and personal while hiking. One time we surprised one, and when it rattled at us, we literally RAN as fast as we could in the way we'd approached! (As if the snake was going to run after us...)
Posted by: Kristen at August 24, 2006 06:45 AM
Oh, I've seen PLENTY of rattlesnakes up close -- probably two or three a year in my preteen and teen years, before I married and moved into town. I just killed those (by stoning, generally, Valerie, unless I was in the car and could run over them), so this is the first one I've seen so close that survived. It may sound cruel to animal lovers, and indeed I have a very granola aunt who names the rattlesnakes around her place and thinks of them as pets, but as far as I'm concerned, if something so hazardous is going to be hanging around close to where people and domestic animals live, I have no compunction about doing away with it. There's still plenty of land out there where people don't go.
Posted by: Rachel at August 24, 2006 08:35 AM
This is an interesting comparison to the next post. That twenty year old may well talk to his friends in bars about how picking up women, but I'd postulate that he's still got a pretty good chance to grow up a better human being than his jerk father.
Posted by: dichroic at August 24, 2006 08:55 AM
OHHH! I should have known, She-Ra! :D
Posted by: Kristen at August 24, 2006 12:20 PM
You must tell me which Aunt! that is just way odd!! Naming snakes. eew!
Posted by: debi at August 25, 2006 01:12 PM
