Yosemite and Kings Canyon Sequoia

 California's San Joaquin Valley is an inhospitable place. Flat, hot, dry, and full of tumbleweeds in its natural state, now its mega farms produce most of the country's tomatoes, grapes, lettuce, carrots, strawberries, almonds, walnuts, and pistachios. Unlike the rest of America's farmland, where farmers and farmhouses are interspersed with the cropland, here in California it seems to be all industrial. Take this tanker carrying molten sulfur. It took me by surprise I must say, when I found out yesterday, I heard it's used to control powdery mildew on grapevines.

Where else but in Fresno could you find 5 different varieties of California raisins?

 The strawberries were absolutely fantastic

Right before our visit, the Ferguson fire raged for a month in the Sierras, shutting down Yosemite, and was only fully contained the week before our arrival.

 Yosemite Valley is as majestic as its reputation. Because of the fire and the fact that California schools were in session, the park was filled with half the usual visitors, many of them European.

 In the Park, we rock scrambled,

hiked 

chillaxed 

creekstomped

painted

 observed wildlife

and one of us even took a call for work 

 On the other side of the Sierras, the ski resort town of Mammoth Lakes turns into a downhill mountain biking haven in the summer,

 but we hit the trails on more old-fashioned transportation

 Tessie was so excited for her first ride

Devil's Postpile National Monument is only accessible by bus from Mammoth Lakes. Remember, on the bus please don't force the word OUCH to come out of your hands

 The Postpile is a rare formation of rock pillars formed by slowly cooling magma during one of the many random volcanic eruptions in California's recent past.

 The top of the Postpile looked just like a stone patio. Note the proper footwear on one child and inappropriate footwear on the other.

After receiving our Junior Ranger patches, a Ranger warned us of a bear approaching the visitor center, and we were one minute from seeing it when the pickup bus arrived and scared it away.

 Mono Lake, the great salt lake of California, is beautiful and deathly quiet

Its visitor center was the most entertaining of any on our trip 

 We found the most expensive gas in the country in Lee Vining 

 Tuolumne Meadows was picturesque

On the way back through Yosemite we drove through the fire zone. That's a helicopter surveying the area.

Highway 41 was the containment line for much of the east side of the fire 

 They sprayed a red fire retardant that apparently makes the vegetation sticky and less combustible

 On our flight home we could see the fire retardant spread across entire ridges

In one spot the fire jumped the road

 and we got out to see the ash and ruin. The ground radiated heat.

 I think they'll be modifying this wayside to reflect the recent devastation

 Now in Kings Canyon National Park, where there are rivers of pinecones

but you're not supposed to climb the fences 

The giant sequoias were probably our favorite sight of the whole trip. Exclusively found on the western slope of the Sierras between elevations of 5,000 and 8,000 feet, they are the largest organisms on Earth in terms of above-ground volume. The groves tend to be in relatively open woodland without poison oak and among oodles of climbable rocks. The perfect playground! 

That's the General Grant tree, 107 feet in circumference, 268 feet high, and #2 on the list of largest living things on the planet 

That's the General Sherman tree. At 103 feet in circumference and 275 feet in height it takes the crown as the biggest tree in the world

 On the way out, after crossing the Central Valley, we took John McPhee's advice: "Of the two most direct routes from Southern to Northern California always choose the San Andreas Fault. If you have adequate time, it beats the hell out of Interstate 5." And so we did for 100 miles on our way to our last hotel, south of Santa Cruz. We chose this location because in this area the fault is not stuck and actually continuously creeps along a few millimeters a year. As a result, there is minimal risk of large earthquakes.

The air in Gilroy does smell of garlic 

Good advice 

San Francisco melange

 We started our California trip by visiting old friends Ryan and Carolyn in Palo Alto

Excellent advice 

Our first stop in the city was the Golden Gate NRA and this fabulous overlook of the bridge 

Apparently August in SF is cold fog season

Fort Point NHS was happily saved from demolition during construction of the bridge. Check out that pier of the bridge sinking into the serpentine rock. The entire south end of the Golden Gate is composed of serpentine and the engineers had no choice but to build onto this rock with a reputation as treacherously prone to landslides. But the engineers knew what they were doing and sunk the piers deep. In the 1989 6.9 magnitude earthquake, the bridge came out unscathed, and recent modifications have made it safe even for quakes above 8.0.

Thanks to the "I Survived" series of early readers, Erin harbors many fears of natural disasters, especially earthquakes. Delving into it, I learned that not all ground in the SF area is equally at risk of earthquake violence, and thanks to the handy map above we opted for hotels in areas where foundations lie on sturdy bedrock outside of the fault zones. While it is true that California building codes will protect many people when the Big One comes, homes will be damaged. With the Bay Area having the highest property values in the country and 7/8th of homeowners without earthquake coverage, there are going to be a lot of techies hurting in their wallets. After all, the geologic source of Silicon Valley is the San Andreas fault!

Fort Point was, as usual for forts, a blast to explore

 love that International Orange color

 On the other side of the Golden Gate, only Dave was thrilled to see this beautiful hillside of ribbonized chert. This chert is made from the 100 million year-old fossilized ooze of radiolaria skeletons, which are a type of zooplankton that have lived in our oceans from the Paleozoic Era until today. Chert is a beautiful rock, smooth and hard, good for arrowheads and peace pipes.

 Dim Sim in SF was exceptional

Maritime museum at Fisherman's wharf 

Only in California does the back to school aisle include bubbly 

Since Cali kids had been in school for 2 weeks, we loaded up in foggy Marin County 

After picking up new headgear in SF we were ready for Muir Woods

This relic of the pre-wireless age is still needed because of the rugged topography

and although beautiful, the steep terrain and fog diminished the majesty of the trees

 Point Reyes National Seashore was sunny, beautiful, and empty. Also smack on the San Andreas fault, the kids didn't appreciate how cool it was to zig-zag back and forth from the North American plate to the Pacific plate

 Aaaah, the needle is spiking!! No, turns out it wasn't working.

 and then back to the Bay, where a site at the Richmond shipyards celebrated Tessie the Riveter

The John Muir NHS is probably the only NPS site found across the street from a 7-Eleven, but it's a gem.

After his days tramping around the Sierras and Alaska, Muir settled outside SF and ran an orchard

 that earned him a fortune, which gave him the freedom to devote his later years to founding the Sierra Club

 and lobbying California, Congress, and Teddy Roosevelt for federal conservation efforts,

which led to the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, two years after his death.

Thank you John Muir!

Miwok village at Point Reyes

These boots were made for dancin'