Crossing the desert

I've come down from the mountains. All the way down. Sitting here in the town of Mecca California I am 180 feet below sea level. I descended into the Mojave desert. The driest hottest desert I've ever been in. I haven't crossed a stream or seen a lake in almost a week. Actually the Mojave is the second driest hottest desert I've been in. After a day of biking across a shadeless basin in Joshua Tree where temperatures climbed to 118 degrees I passed a roadside information sign that said I am descending into the "hotter and drier" Colorado desert. Well I can say that it is hot here too. Also there is a sea, the Salton Sea. It may technically be a salt water lake but with a name like Salton Sea it is rather confusing. 

The heat has not been unbearable though it tries to be. I've been drinking water like a fish and my clothes are now saltier than that sea but I've managed to stay cool. The nights here in the desert have been particularly rewarding. Sleeping on the sand under the stars with only a few ants to contend with has been amazing. 

I passed through Joshua Tree Park, and tied my hammock to two of those Joshua trees for a night. It was an interesting place. Joshua trees seem so confused as to where and which direction to sprout a limb. They are fun to look at. Rock piles punctuated the landscape. To me they looked like beautiful well crafted rock towers that had fallen down. Large boulders littered the area around the still standing bases. All the rocks were rounded, not a corner in sight, which for some reason made them seem smaller than they were. Only when a person could be seen scrambling could I get a sense of the scale. I miniaturized a lot of the photos I took of the rocks, it just seemed appropriate. 

 A couple of fighter jets

 Red Rocks Park. The cliffs were so intricate.

 I'm in the desert now.

 I hung my hammock in this tower for a night.

 Sometimes I just take pictures of myself giving peace signs.

 Joshua Tree cactus garden

 Camping in a Canyon

 A pretty canyon on my way to Mecca

 Another fine camping spot in the red morning light.

 Joshua Tree Hammockeering

 Joshua Tree Park

I don't know who put that rock up there.

Enormous trees, even bigger cliffs

The next stop on my way south was Lake Tahoe. The days getting to and around the lake were filled with lightning but not much rain. I so enjoy lightning storms, just not when I am on top of a mountain and they are overhead. Though every flash that I see still makes me smile. Tahoe was pretty. It is a resort area. I followed a bike path along the western coast. It appeared to be raining all day on the far side of the lake so I am glad I picked the west side. Getting away from the lake was actually more of a treat for me. I climbed over two amazing passes with equally amazing downhills. I camped high in the cool clear air. One of the greatest sunsets I've ever seen lit up the sky over Heenan Lake. 

I had one more pass to climb to get to the Yosemite. It was a big 3 hour climb which I ran out of daylight to finish in one try. I camped right at 9000 feet that night, in my hammock near a steam. The stars were wonderful. In the morning the pink light lit the mountain peaks around me. Like beacons in the distance I climbed towards the heights until I too found the warm sun. Tioga pass was at 9945 feet, the highest in the Sierra Mountains. Over the next 50 miles I dropped 6000 feet into the Yosemite Valley. 

The valley is the result of an unstoppable force coming up against an immovable object. Glacier carved granite so inspired, so supremely executed, and of such magnitude that no human hand could ever create its equal. I spent a day biking slowly into and back out of the valley. I hiked to the mirror ponds but they were dry, so too were the famous Yosemite falls. I hung my hammock in view of El Capitan for a night but saw no headlamps on it. In the morning I hiked to the base of it and looked up. The top loomed 3000 feet above me and the intervening rock looked quite impossible to climb, well, impossible for me. 

Three days after leaving Yosemite I arrived at Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks. The entrance to the park is flanked by giant sequoia trees. They are just so fun to look at. It seems unnatural, or maybe supernatural for trees to get that big. My first night in the park I slept on the stump of a giant sequoia logged long ago. Lying down I could not reach from the middle to the edge. In the morning two brothers, Tim and Dave, bought me breakfast at the park lodge. It was a buffet. I think I impressed them both with how much I ate. The next day I saw and largest tree in the world by volume. Truly a natural wonder. The size of these trees cannot be captured in photographs. Wandering among them, feeling small and in awe is really the only way that they can be fully appreciated. 

 Rainy sunny days

 Storm over Tahoe

 Lake Tahoe

 A cool ridge road at Lake Tahoe

 Heenan Lake sunset

 The view from Monitor Pass

 Heading down from Monitor Pass

 The climb to Tioga Pass

 Yosemite National Park

 The road down into Yosemite Valley

 Group sculpture

 Yosemite Valley, half dome in the back.

 The Cathedral in Yosemite

El Capitan 

 Smokey morning

 Climbing out of Yosemite

 Tree tunnel, it used to be for cars.

 Burned out sequoia

 Camping on a tree stump

 Thanks for breakfast Tim and Dave!

 Cool bike!

 I am always on the lookout for nice tree houses

 The largest tree in the world by volume

 The General Sherman Tree

 I've always wanted to hang my hammock on a sequoia.

 Sequoia have so much tannin in the woods that they don't rot away. Fallen trees might lie where they fell for centuries.

 Camping on Endor, my hammock is in there if you look closely.

 Camping with giants

 A proud hammockeering moment

 A winding descent

 A view from the top just before leaving Sequoia Park

Balanced rock lookout.

California Shoe Tree

I found my third shoe tree of this trip. It appeared late in the day as I was pedaling fast away from soggy clouds spitting fat drops of rain onto the arid landscape. The sun was setting on my right, a glowing ember dropping behind the near hill. The clouds on my left were beginning to capture the final rose colors of the evening. I was in ranching territory so I was in a hurry to find unfenced land or an unlocked gate to get away from the road. Then it appeared. Like a tiger from the mist it was upon me before I realized what it was. Shoe trees are sneaky like that.

I stopped to take it in. It was alone on the side of the road. It looked worn. The shoes dangled, its bark was covered in graffiti, the leaves fluttered in the wind and the branches creaked. A light rain caught up to us both, the tree and I. Then, because shoe trees are magic, a rainbow appeared which seemed to grow brighter even as the sky grew darker. The tree and I had a moment, standing there dripping under the vivid rainbow, before I finally left to find that unlocked gate and sleep in the barrens amongst the wandering cows.