Bakersfield, CA

Leaving Yosemite, certainly a line item on anyone's bucket list, we stopped at the Mariposa Grove.  I was excited to see this, the largest grove of Giant Sequoia trees in Yosemite.  We saw the grove, but it was tough.  First because of COVID the park service is not running the shuttle buses and they still will not let anyone drive to the grove itself.  So the only way to get to it is to hike uphill the 2.3 miles to the grove over the road on which the buses usually run.  Next there was a wind storm in 2021 (100 miles per hour) that has created havoc with the grove.  All the paths through the grove are closed but there are some service roads open to allow us to get a look at them.  The park service is working to reopen this area but there seems to be a lot of work yet to do.

Sandy pointing out the woodpecker holes in this sequoia.

This is the largest sequoia that we got close to.  The Grisly Sequoia which we did not work our way back to is not that much taller, but much, much wider.

We are spending the night in Bakersfield.  Many years ago when we lived in Wisconsin, I was on a business trip to Los Angeles.  It was the middle of the winter and Sandy was back in Fond Du Lac, shoveling snow.  I had come over the mountains to take care of some matters in Bakersfield.  That evening a freak snow storm hit the Tehachapi Mountains, the California Highway Patrol closed down the expressway through the pass, effectively snowing me into Bakersfield.  When I called Sandy and told her I would be getting home a few days late, because of being snowed into Bakersfield, she was not at all understanding.  She could see that it was 70 degrees in Bakersfield and 70 degrees in Los Angeles, and that she was going to have to shovel snow for two more days without my help.  This little incident has been a part of our story for some forty odd years, I'm hoping our little stopover here will finally clear my good reputation.