Carl Henning

The Great Basin encompasses all of Nevada and part of Utah. But the Great Basin National Park is smaller. We were two of the few visitors at the park on this particular post-Labor Day weekday.

Thar’s gold, not in them there hills, but in the sawmill water race at Sutter’s Mill. Discovered in January 1848, the word eventually spread East to start a rush of gold seekers, the 49ers.

Content warning: this is an engineering-related post. We were in Folsom, California visiting friends – no, not at the prison. Time did not permit visiting the Prison Museum with its Johnny Cash memorabilia. But, even better, was the Folsom Powerhouse State Historic Park.

I said in yesterday’s post (Yosemite) that our accommodations in the park were primitive. I should have used a marketing term like “old-fashioned” or “quaint.” I made the Wawona Hotel sound horrible and it was not really, just quaint. The lack of elevators was no treat for older guests, but we never turn on a TV, use the phone, or even the Wi-Fi. So we didn’t miss those. A little air conditioning would have been nice though.

We stayed in Yosemite National Park, although the accommodations were primitive (no elevator, no TV, no phone, and no Wi-Fi – except in the lobby). I took hundreds of photos, then in the last gift shop spotted the book How to Take Photographs in Yosemite.

Sequoia National Park is home to some big trees. It’s hard to do them justice with a camera because you can’t get far enough away easily to take the picture. I tried with the discontinued Photosynch app but it has…

Kings Canyon National Park is administered with Sequoia National Park and they abut. But the real first question is “Where’s the apostrophe?” I thought it should be King’s, but based on the Spanish translation I saw (cañón de reyes) it should be Kings’. Regardless, the apostrophe is missing in the official name. Well I’m glad that’s settled.

The San Francisco Giants baseball stadium is Oracle Park. This is my 14th visited ballpark of currently used ballparks. I don’t know when or how it happened but I have a goal of visiting all Major League Baseball ballparks. Sixteen to go.

We came across the Pigeon Point Lighthouse quite by accident. The GyPSy Guide was finished by the time we got this far north.

Author John Steinbeck was a native son of the Monterey peninsula. There are a lot of references to him in the area. We opted for the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. We were uncertain if this would be worthwhile. It was. Of course, we were aware of some of his novels (and the resultant movies), but there was a lot we didn’t know. Did you know his first wife (of three) was Carol Henning? We didn’t.