Yosemite National Park

So a week ago, more or less, I spent the week-end at Yosemite National Park and it was totally amazing, so I'm really excited to share the photos of the trip with you. I went as part of a tour with Bug Bus, which I must say was incredibly well organised, with tour group no bigger than 9 people at a time, really knowledgeable guides and excellent hiking! I was very impressed and I wholeheartedly recommend this organisation if you ever happen to want to go and explore Yosemite. Apparently they also organise snow boot hikes in the winter and I think that would really be something!

The Bug Hostel

As part of this week-end tour, we got to stay at the Bug Hostel, which was the best hostel I've ever stayed in. The beds have memory foam mattresses which beckon to you after a long day hiking. The food is amazing and apparently has quite a reputation with the locals who come to eat there as a treat. And as part of our tour, we got free entry to the hostel's spa with its sauna and hot tub at the end of the first day hiking! What more could you ask for?

On our first day of hiking, we started out in Mariposa Grove, where we got a chance to see some of the sequoias. They were pretty amazing in terms of size, although this grove doesn't have the biggest by far. Apparently, in terms of solid mass, sequoias are the biggest living organisms on Earth as opposed to the redwood trees which are the tallest...

This is the root system of a sequoia tree which fell down 200 years ago and is still perfectly preserved due to the tannic acid in the tree's sap. All the sequoias apparently have these rather short root systems, which leads to their greatest fatality rate, when the roots can no longer support the size of the tree, causing it to simply topple over. It's a bit as if the roots one day just said:"That's it! I'm done here! I'm giving up! "

The best way for sequoias to survive the threat of toppling over is to grow close together and over time merge their roots with the other trees, so they can balance each other out.

To give you an idea of the size of these trees... This sequoia was carved out as a tourist attraction in the late 1800s. The Park Rangers no longer allow this sort of carving out, because it puts the trees at even greater risk of falling over by depriving them of some of their roots. There used to be a carved out sequoia large enough for a bus to drive through it, but it fell over in the late 60s.

Engravings inside the trees dating back to 1926

While we were in Mariposa Grove, we got to see quite a lot of wild life, all pretty indifferent to us as, I guess, they must be pretty used to people hiking and visiting the area. I was quite grateful that we never came across any bears or mountain lions, which also live in those parts, although I'm told that the bears aren't as dangerous as we're lead to believe...
 I did learn some useful information on how to deal with both bear and mountain lion attacks. Apparently f you're attacked by a bear, you should into a ball and play dead, because they might maul you a bit, but they have a short attention span, so soon they lose interest and move on. With mountain lions, it's the opposite, you should start by making yourself as big as you can, but if they still attack, you should punch them in the chest and in the face, where they have their most sensitive pain receptors. I bet you're now glad I shared this bit of information to prepare you for your next bear/mountain lion encounter...

Cute dear...

Woody Woodpecker

Did you know there are more than 5 different species of squirrels in Yosemite alone? I thought there were only red ones and grey ones...

We then went for a hike up Glacier Point, at the top of which you can look across the whole of Yosemite Valley, which is the viewpoint from which the early settlers first discovered the existence of the valley. It's a view that literally takes your breath away!

Remember the waterfall in this picture, it'll help put in context one of the waterfalls you'll come across in some of my later photos...

Half Dome

El Capitan

After lunch, we went hiking up the Vernal Falls, which you could see in one of my previous photos. The trail to these falls is very popular, for obvious reasons, and is called the Misty Trail because it's so close to the waterfall, that you get covered in mist as you approach the top.

No matter how you take these pictures, they never do the waterfalls justice! They always look smaller than in real life...

On the Sunday, after spending the night by a camp fire and going to look at the stars, free of light pollution, we went hiking at the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. This reservoir is where a large portion of Northern California and all of San Francisco's water comes from, which is a little awe inspiring! But also, it's a great hiking spot because very few tourists venture out there, as opposed to the previous day's hike.

The Hetch Hetchy Dam

The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir... Once again, size is quite deceptive...

During our hike, we had our first and only encounter with deadly wildlife, a rattle snake! And as all good tourists that we were, our first reaction was all to try and get close enough to it and snap a picture! Thankfully, it looked like it'd been in the shade for a while and wasn't too lively, but it was quite surreal!

More Awesome waterfalls!

I hope these photos managed to convey at least a 10th of the incredibly beautiful landscape available in Yosemite and I really recommend it to anyone in the area! It is so worth the detour!

BLDGBLOG and the Blue Angels

     You can really see that my studies are slowly starting to eat up my time as I'm slowly posting later and later... Sorry for the delay on this one, it's a good week and a half late... I haven't posted since my birthday, cos things had slowed down a little bit, giving me a well deserved break, but suddenly lots started happening and I don't know where to start...
 
     So first, let me tell you about my astronomy classes, which are going really great! In particular, in the last few weeks, our tutor's been taking us to SF State University, where he teaches the "real" astronomy students. We've had a few sessions in the university's planetarium which has been a real treat and a great way to understand astronomy better in situ. But this last time was even more exciting, as we were allowed into the university's observatory where they keep all the big telescopes. A few astronomy students were there, hard at work, star gazing and they very graciously agreed to show us some stars and other stuff. It was amazing! All we had to do was name a celestial body and after inputting some data into some computer, the students would get their telescope to swing round in the desired place and give us a peek at in in the telescope. We got to see the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn (which you can never normally see with your naked eyeball...), the twin star system which forms the head of the Cygnet constellation and more! Jupiter completely blew me away, it was so beautiful in all its layers of yellow and orange. The students were really great, I think this was probably the first time they'd ever got the chance to show off to people with such limited knowledge of astronomy. They were eager to answer any of our questions! I really only had one question... How much for one of these bad boy telescopes and could I please add it onto my Christmas list ??? ;-)

     This week was also fleet week, some sort of big army recruitment event, during which loads of military personel suddenly pile up in town, military boats are on display in the harbour and the Blue Angels prepare for their yearly airshow with fighter jets. All this is in preparation for the big week-end event where there are military parades all the boats in the harbour take to the sea and the Blue Angels treat us to a hell of a show. This is obviously a great attraction to all the tourists and the average population in Fisherman's Wharf suddenly quadruples for the time of a week-end. The school being close by suddenly becomes much harder to access, but it's worth make it there as it provides front row seats to the air show. As an aviation buff, I was so excited to see these fighter jets whizz about and create beautiful shapes in the sky, however not everyone was of this opinion. San Francisco being such a staunch libertarian city, there was a very clear divide between those who were looking forward to the show and those who thought it was another imposition from the armed forces showing off their might and imposing their presence on a population who considered them unwelcome. One of my friends Sam, also new to the city, was just as psyched as me, but said she had a distinct impression that she had to be careful who to speak to about it, because she was made to feel that she was somehow betraying her liberal ethics by enjoying the airshow... ^^ One of my tutors actually said that he felt that the passage of the fighter jets was an invasion of his privacy. Personally I think you can be a liberal and still see the beauty in the spectacle of a skillfully controlled plane and my enthusiasm for avionics doesn't stop me from being anti-war either. although, I must admit that I'm only a visitor in this city and if I had to put up with the aggressive sound of these jets year in, year out, maybe my patience would wear a little thinner...
 

     Next exciting event of the week, was the visit of Geoff Manaugh to SFAI. Geoff Manaugh is the author of BLDGBLOG, a blog which looks at architectural conjecture, urban speculation and landscape futures. I really recommend this blog to anyone who's interested in the language of architecture outside of traditional architectural academia or simply anyone who has been seduced by urban landscapes and all its opportunities for expression and whimsy. While Geoff Manaugh was visiting, I had the opportunity to take part in his workshop on blogging, where we discussed the opportunities that keeping a regular blog on a clearly defined topic and establishing a voice of authority on this given topic can open up in someone's chosen career. It was very inspiring despite the somewhat unorthodox format of the workshop, which started with a discussion on the idea of keeping a blog on the Blue Angels using sky writing to the possibilities of writing ads on the moon that would be so small that they could only be read with the correct level of magnification of an advanced telescope...

To finish off the week, I was invited to go to Auckland to the Oakland Art Murmur, where all of Auckland art galleries and artist studios open their doors for free on the first Friday of every month to the general public with an opportunity to buy affordable art direct from the artists. Apparently, since rents in Oakland lower, a lot of artists choose to relocate their studios there rather than in San francisco, which has led to a thriving art community. It was a great night, with throngs of people making their way from one gallery to the next. Alcohol was for sale in all the venues and there were some food trucks offering all sorts of delicious food. I got to taste my first tamale courtesy of my friend Gregg. If you've never been to Oakland, the first Friday of the month is the time to go!