By the end of this week, my daughter will come to visit for three weeks. I can't put in words you how very excited I am. As you can imagine I have a ton of things to do before that, so I will write only one blogpost this week and share it to the blogs of Bleubeard and Elizabeth, Rain and Nicole. Most probably I won't be much in blogland until well into the second half of February because I would like to make the most of the limited time with Kaefer.
Today I'm taking you to Yosemite, the place we like to call "the national park in our backyard". When Kaefer was little, we used to spend every MLK-weekend in Yosemite. It is around my birthday and I didn't want to get any gifts, just a weekend in the snow and some wonderful nature. We have visited Yosemite in every season, but winter remains my favorite time there.
Be warned: This is a VERY photo-heavy post! These photos were taken over several years and some of them were still made using film.
There are three landmarks that make Yosemite famous. One - and maybe the best known - is Half Dome. It is popular to hike up on top of Half Dome - every summer, cables are put up that make it possible getting up onto the granite dome. You actually need a permit for that and if you're not leaving really early, you will be stuck in a "cable jam" at the foot of the cables that you reach after an already long and exhausting hike. I have never done it - I prefer to keep some mystery about this beautiful huge rock.
The second landmark that is extremely popular with climbers all over the world is El Capitan, a sheer wall of granite that goes straight up. Almost always you can see some figures hanging in the wall, trying to scale it. Maybe some of you have seen the movie "Free Solo"? If not, here is the trailer with some impressive images of El Capitan. The movie itself is very worth watching.
Then there are the many waterfalls - landmark no. 3 - of which Yosemite Falls is the most popular one. With a total of 2,425 feet (739 m) it is the tallest waterfall in the continental US. It has three drops: Upper Yosemite Fall, Middle Cascades and Lower Yosemite Fall. In the following picture you can see Upper Yosemite Fall with its huge cone of ice and snow at the bottom of the upper tier. In the winter, sheets of ice break off the rock wall during the day and you can hear the loud boom throughout the entire valley.
In the winter, you are only able to visit Yosemite Valley (and Badger Pass for skiing), whereas the High Country is not accessible because snow closes Tioga Road that leads through the High Country. That part of Yosemite you can only visit from late spring to the middle of autumn. We once camped in the High Country in the middle of October and we ended up camping in the first snow of the season. Tent camping, by the way.
So we spent winters in the valley. I always loved the almost magical winter mood there, walking across the snowy meadows and listening to the booms of the ice sheets from Yosemite Falls.
Early mornings when the sun hasn't climbed high enough to reach into the valley provided some wonderful sights.
The white trees against the dark rock on the shady side created their own special magic.
The snow sparkled and there were so many beautiful ice crystals to admire. You just had to open your eyes and look for them. They were everywhere.
Little treasures were found in the snow.
I loved the snow caps on branches, wood and especially on the rocks in the Merced River.
There were beautiful reflections in the river - the Merced River can be pretty wild, especially in the spring, but in the winter I have often seen it very calm.
This little girl was extremely excited about the snow. We always brought her wooden sled with us (that we had bought in Germany when she was still a baby) and she enjoyed sledding down the hills so very much! I share this with Nicole's Friday Face Off.
When evening came, people gathered on Sentinel Bridge to take pictures of the setting sun on the face of Half Dome with the reflection in the Merced River. Later, the full moon would climb up in the sky.
Of course there is quite some wildlife in Yosemite. The Yosemite Black Bears seem to be the smartest of them all. Not only are there bear-proof trash bins and food lockers everywhere, you are also not allowed to leave any kind of food or smelly stuff like toothpaste in your car. If you do, you pay a heavy price since these bears know how to break into cars and you get fined by the National Park on top of it. Even the smallest candy wrapper can be "smelled out" by the bears. If you want to leave your car in a parking lot and leave for a hike, you need to store your food in the food lockers provided at every parking lot. We sometimes saw bears strolling through campsites in bright daylight, looking for food and trying to get into trash cans (that they haven't figured out - yet). The deer are plentiful and not shy, neither are the ravens of which there are a lot (if I'm not mistaken - I hope David doesn't tell me that this is not a raven, that would be such a disappointment), and of course I have a deep love for the coyotes. If I have something like a spirit animal, it would definitely be the coyote.
All of this is even more beautiful because I was able to experience it with these two people. Can you see the pink scarf around Kaefer's neck? Rain's prompt is scarves this week!
Without any more words from me, here are a few more atmospheric images of Yosemite:
Since I mentioned that I'm sharing this with Bleubeard and Elizabeth, I need a drink for T Tuesday - for me, the best drink in winter is hot chocolate. If it has whipped cream on top, even better. And look at my new cat mug!
For Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date I'm sharing a recent dinner I cooked - fusilli pasta with Italian sausage, carrots and fennel. I didn't use a specific recipe for this - just browned the meat, sautéed the carrots and fennel with some herbs, and then threw it all together. It was delicious and the leftovers will be turned into a different dinner.
I leave you with the famous Tunnel View over Yosemite Valley at sunset.
Last Monday wasn't only Martin Luther King Jr. Day but also my birthday. It was also the first dry day in a long time when even the sun made a re-appearance. You have probably heard about the horrific weather we had in California. Since the beginning of the new year we had been inundated with rain. There were several atmospheric rivers following each other, but it actually felt more like an atmospheric ocean. The rain came down in sheets, and not only for a few minutes but for hours. It was wild. We personally were doing fine and didn't even lose power, but there were people in our county who were less fortunate. We had flooding, landslides, sinkholes, fallen trees and unfortunately a few fatalities. Vineyards were submerged in water and roads were flooded so much that they had to be closed. It was worse in Central California, especially around Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara. Tonight we'll have some more rain, but then we are supposed to have a dry spell at least until the middle of next week. As much as we need the rain (we're still in a drought), it would be nice if these atmospheric rivers would be spread further apart. I'm not sure how anyone can still deny climate change.
Since it was such a nice day we decided to go out to the coast. First we stopped at our favorite bakery, got several loaves of their fantastic rye bread and this Gouda flat that was going to be our snack while at the coast. It was delicious.
While waiting in line - this is a very popular bakery - I fianlly took a photo of the barn across the street; this has been on my list for a few years!
I wanted to go to Goat Rock Beach which is our "go to" beach. However, because of the damages at the coast caused by the weather and the high surf, the beach was closed. We parked on top of the cliffs and just looked over the ocean. You can see the muddy water from the Russian River spilling into the ocean.
There are many rocky formations at our coast, but Arched Rock is definitely my favorite. It almost appeared in black and white against the glare of the sun on the water.
We took the trail down to Blind Beach - it's a steep climb and at the bottom, the ladder that leads to the beach was - gone. Taken away by the waves and the remains were just useless.
Some younger folks were brave enough to climb over the rocks, but I certainly didn't feel like it. Thankfully the Geek didn't insist on going down (he probably would have done it, dare devil that he is). So we just watched the birds and the waves and then climbed back up again. It was extremely windy at the coast, so I was glad when we were back in the car.
We stopped at several other spots and then slowly made our way home along the river. While it was very high, it was by far not as bad as the flood in 2019. We passed completely flooded vineyards and downed trees and everything was wet and very muddy.
The Geek ordered dinner from the German restaurant that we like to support. We had a lovely schnitzel and fries, it was so tasty. The schnitzel are so big that we keep half of it for the next day.
As drinks we had freshly squeezed blood orange juice topped with bubbly from a local winery - our own way of mimosas! Of course I'm sharing this with Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date.
Do you keep track which books you read or listen to throughout a year? I started doing that 15 years ago and sometimes I look back what books I read and which "ranking" I gave. My ranking changed over the years - in the first years I gave one star for books I really liked. Eventually I introduced two stars for books that spoke even more to me. And in 2021 I added a third star for exceptional - it went to Nora Krug's "Belonging". No other book since then earned a three star rating.
When I look over my notes of last year I realize that I was very hesitant in giving any stars at all and only four books earned a two star rating - "The Midwife of Hope River" by Patricia Harman which was very atmospheric and brought the Depression era in Appalachia to life; "When the Moon is Low" by Nadia Hashimi who is a favorite author because of her description of the life of Afghan women; "The Storyteller of Casablanca" by Fiona Valpy which describes the life of Jewish refugees in Casablanca during World War II and is interwoven with the life of a woman in contemporary times. Having parallel stories in the past and the present seems to be a very popular way of novels these days and I don't always enjoy it, but in this novel it was well done. This book I actually listened to and enjoyed the narrator, Elizabeth Knowelden, very much.
The fourth two-star book is "Leave only Footprints" by Conor Knighton. Starting with a sunrise on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park on January 1, he travels to every US national park within a year, ending with a sunset at Point Reyes on December 31. While he is not describing every national park, he highlights less visited places (without forgetting popular destinations like Yellowstone etc) and tells interesting tidbits. He writes about the recovery program of the Channel Island fox that was connected to the disappearance and eventual re-introducing of Bald Eagles - fascinating. He describes the problems of Big Bend right on the border to Mexico. He went to American Samoa and what he writes about this national park - the least visited because of its location - made me want to go there one day. As someone who has visited many of the American national parks I recognized much of what Knighton wrote, I learned a lot and most of all I was fascinated by his description about the people and nature.
He also writes about star gazing in Nevada's Great Basin National Park which is an International Dark Sky place (remember when Erika wrote about it?). That leads me to another interesting book I read last year - "Under the Stars" by Matt Gaw.
Even though it says "A Journey into Light" on the book cover, it is a journey into night - with all its natural light sources of moon and stars. He talks about light pollution and its consequences and then visits several designated dark sky places in Britain. He describes his walks in darkness and his fears at the beginning of such an outing, only to become familiar with the darkness and embracing it. It made me curious about these designated dark sky places and I found out that right here in my area there is a place that is on its way to becoming a dark sky place - Point Reyes National Seashore.
I love to read mystery novels. Of course there are the popular ones that everyone seems to read like Elly Griffith's Ruth Galloway series which I enjoy a lot. But I found a few Northern European authors whose kind of dark crime novel speaks to me - Viveca Sten wrote an entire series that takes place on Sandhamn outside Stockholm, but her "Hidden in Snow" is not part of this series. Its setting is further up north in the mountains of Sweden close to the Norwegian border. This book is much more atmospheric than the Sanhamn murders (which I think have been made into a TV series). The other authors are Icelandic Yrsa Sigurdarddóttir's "The Silence of the Sea" (very dark) and Eva Björg Ægisdóttir's "The Creak on the Stairs" which is the first book in the Forbidden Iceland series. Before this book I wasn't familiar with the term Nordic Noir, but now I am. Dark and chilling. At the end of the year, I read on Elle's blog about the DCI Harry Grimm series by David J. Gatward and read the first book in the series. It's not your typical detective novel but rather unconventional written with a lot of humor - and boy, they do eat and drink a lot there!
Of course I also read German books - thankfully every year we have a book sale at the German School where I teach, and this year I found quite a good selection of interesting books.
crim
One genre that seems to be very popular in Germany is crime novels that are located in the North of Germany, mainly Ostfriesland (Northwestern Lower Saxony) and Schleswig-Holstein, the Northern most state in Germany. Of these books I especially like the novels by Anette Hinrichs. Her main characters are two detectives, a female from Flensburg, Germany, and a male from Padborg, Denmark. Since their regions are so close to each other, they often work together on cases that involve both Germany and Denmark. What I like about these books is all the background information about this particular region that has a Danish minority population that brings its own difficulties. One of Hinrichs's books deals with the refugee camps in Denmark at the end of World War II where thousands of Germans (including my paternal grandparents and aunt) landed after fleeing East and West Prussia by ship. It was a highly interesting read.
Of course there are a lot of gardening books that I read in 2022 - I never get tired of these. One of the most interesting and eye-opening books was Douglas Tallamy's "Bringing Natur Home". This year I want to read his "Nature's Best Hope" and learn more about his "Homegrown National Park" movement.
While reading, I often enjoy a glass of wine, plain water - or a nice hot chocolate; whipped cream on top doesn't hurt. This is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday - I'm so glad that Elizabeth is hosting this year - the 10th! - again.
Thank you to everyone for joining my giveaway and voting for their favorite photos. As I promised last week, today I will show you which photos received the most votes and of course I will reveal the winner who will get a set of photo cards of the three images she or he voted for.
But first the photos. Let's start with third place - here we have a tie, because three photos received the same number of votes.
Frosty Leaf
The Labyrinth
and Shutters and Roses.
The second place goes to Kaysersberg, Alsace.
And this is the winning photo - Feathers on Stone.
I am very happy with your choices.
But now you want to know who is the lucky winner. I wrote the names of those who voted on a strip of used paper, folded it several times and put them in the little bowl you can see at the top, gave them a good shake, then closed my eyes and pulled one strip. And the winner is -
Congratulations, Andrea. I raise my glass of bubbly to you - this is also my reference drink I need in this post for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday.
Andrea will receive a photo card of the winning photo and the other two images of her choice, Obersee, Bavarian Alps and Pacific Sunset.
Andrea, please let me know your address, so I can send you the cards - my email button is in the sidebar.
