Logging at 6 am and other stories

From Thursday June 4th to Thursday June 11th there was only one night that we didn't spend in a tent - Monday, I think. We became intimately familiar with every angle and bump of the place where our tent was set up at Kowana Valley; although it was almost flat there was a slight incline downhill which meant that if William went to bed before me, I would come back and find that he had slid down towards my side of the tent. The good news about this was that we were able to get almost all of the water out from under our tent that had accumulated on the groundcover tarp during the rain - we got a long stick and lifted up the floor of the tent until the water came out on the downhill side. Also, we learned to set up the tarp properly instead of just throwing it down and plopping the tent on top of it. Very useful information. When we got to Dimond-O, we found that they had level tent pads built into each campsite, and we set up our tent with a sigh of relief. I'm still fairly convinced that there was a slight incline which put our heads about a centimeter lower than our feet, but I could have been imagining it.

So, the campground was quiet on Tuesday night, with everyone near us keeping well to themselves and no loud music or partying that we could hear. I woke up in the middle of the night convinced that I was hearing a bear, but further listening assured me that it was the gentleman sleeping in the site next to us because I don't think bears snort in such a rhythmic fashion. And then dawn...and the loggers...arrived. Evergreen Lodge is apparently building new cabins, and the trees are apparently in the way, and what better time to cut down trees than at 6 am? We could hear trucks, chainsaws, the falling trees, and an occasional exuberant whooping sound from the loggers, and as it was still too cold to get up, we enjoyed the aleatory reverberations until about 8 when everything stopped and presumably the loggers went home for the day. Nice work if you can get it...

We spent 2 nights at Dimond-O and it was cold at night (low 40s) but pleasant during the day. We decided not to go into Yosemite as we didn't feel like we would spend enough time there to justify the park entrance fee, and we've already been into the main area of the valley so our plan is to come back sometime and spend a week or so exploring. We walked down to the creek near the campsite on Tuesday afternoon after we got set up and took a nap, and on Wednesday after the previous blog post we went to the Carlon Day Use Area to attempt to find a waterfall. We didn't find it - turns out we were on the wrong side of the river - but we did see lots of wildflowers and a lovely scrap metal heap in the middle of the woods. That night we made a fire (after many attempts) and played tunes and contemplated the marvelous thought that this would be our last night in a tent for a while.

Thursday we went back to the Bay Area to run some errands and have our last cup of Barefoot Coffee for a while. We spent the night in Berkeley and drove to Portland on Friday. I think I'll save the details of those two days for the next post.