Yosemite the other Yellowstone
June 19th 2007 10:13
Wow, talk about a mind numbing double take.
While cruising through the Orble Home pages, I ran across Ian's post about Yellowstone National Park. My eyes read it correctly but my brain thought for sure that he was talking about Yosemite National Park; it's due in part to the pain from my never ending toothache.
Adding to this pain induced dementia, is the confusion resulting from his selection of photos; one of his photos appears to be the half dome rock another, the pristine valley with the deer is in Yosemite Valley and the final choice is the Yosemite Valley Chapel. All features are located in Yosemite National Park in California, not Montana's Yellowstone National Park, but I believe they are a part of the three major volcanic calderas in the US. Other than that, the photos are excellent. And because I said I would tell a story related to my experiences in the area, it follows.
The Merced River flowing out of Yosemite is a great place to dredge for gold, historical artifacts and to catch trout. It is also the place my former dredging partner, porno Jim and I had an encounter with big foot, or one of his stinky cousins.
This dredge pic is from the Keene website; ours was a 5 inch Keene dredge.
We chose the area because of the possibility of finding gold, the scantily clad girls coming downstream in rafts, the history of the railroad pad that had been dug by Chinese laborers and the fishing. We didn't really expect to find much gold, but during the first few days we were there sniping (sampling the area for gold), a raft over turned and a hot young lady in a bikini went over board getting her foot trapped on some underwater obstacle. I was diving a few yards away and was able to lend a helping hand. Motivated by the event, we spent the summer there.
When we are working with these dredges, we work into the current, and it isn't unusual to dig a hole 20 ft deep and 30 to 40 ft in circumference. At this site, we were near a convenient bridge, which the California department of Fish and Game used to stock fish into the Merced River.
On one occasion, when our dredge hole was fully developed, I observed an unusual number of fish whizzing by my face mask. When I started paying attention to the situation, fishing lures of all types were whipping through the water near my body and panic'd fish were everywhere. I noticed a fish about 10 inches long slowing swimming by with something dangling out of its mouth. Intrigued I reached out and grabbed it and holding on to it started my walk out of the water. When I breached the surface, a lady and her friend fishing there nearly fainted, they hadn't realized that I had been there the whole time. The vehicle from the state was just completing it unceremonious dumping of the trout into the river, and fishermen had followed the truck to our location.
The view under water.
I wonder what they thought the loud machine with the hose attached to it was doing there, let alone what the source of all the underwater commotion and bubbles was about. Anyway, when I appeared like the monster from the Black Lagoon, the ladies quickly fled. Porno Jim and I used the dredge to suck up a few more fish for our dinner and, we along with our two German short haired dogs, feasted on trout. The dogs were teens in dog years and not all that diligent when on guard duty. But they did have eating down to an art form.
After dinner it was our custom to secure the equipment, brew up some coffee and then sitting by the fire as it crackled and popped, we'd listen to old radio broadcasts aired from Sacramento. It's amazing how quickly you can get sucked into the moment under those circumstances. On this particular night, outside of our immediate bubble, it was quite except for the sound of running water.
Now the young dogs were never clear about their role as guards, but on this night, they were clearly nervous and on edge. These animals knew every bird, wild goat, porcupine, rat, bear and stray dog or other wandering critters in the area and were fast friends with most. Well there was an ongoing dispute with a family of raccoons that'd heat up once in a while, but usually peace was the order of the day and night.
Jim and I were becoming engrossed by the ghost story playing out over the radio and were becoming hypnotized by the flames from the fire and the warmth in our bellies from the coffee and trout dinner. As we were lounging in that semi hypnotized state, I noticed that the dogs were acting really odd.
Our camp was located in a very steep valley, outside of Yosemite National Park, just below the bank of the old rail bed, on ledges we cut out of the river bank. Jim had a tent upstream, mine was down stream, the cooking and gear area was in the center. That was where we were resting at the time.
The dogs had jumped to their feet and were facing uphill like a pair of weather vanes. They weren't growling but had started whining and backing up. Their body language showed they were following something moving, that they could see it clearly and that something was moving slowly. It was moving down the hill, up stream and upwind of us. It clearly disturbed the dogs, the hackles on their necks and backs stood straight, their bodies were quivering and when they backed up through the fire without yelping my stupor vanished. The hackles standing up on my neck and back pierced my clothing; I was definitely on alert.
A bigfoot family photo, I think dad was foraging for pizza.
I went to my tent, gathered my old 30/30 rifle and Jim grabbed a stick of dynamite, not that we were alarmed or anything. We just wanted to err on the side of caution. The odor in the air wasn't like a bear, wolves or and other animals I have encountered, but it was distinct. We regrouped at the fire. And intently watched the area on the other side of the fire's sphere of influence, where we could see something shadowy moving down the hill, across the Merced and head downstream away from us. The object was between 7 and 9 feet tall from what we could surmise from the landmarks we checked the next day that the critter had passed in front of. Interestingly, it passed by in silence, probably embarrassed by the commotion we were raising.
A semi genuine bigfoot trap of unknown origin.
Why the animal came so near to our camp is puzzling, it may have been the smell of our cooking or the coffee scent wafting through the air. But then too, I had just changed body cologne from Octane #87 (a Petrol offspring) to a more subtle Sweaty Wetsuit #9, the change over may have proved more than mr/ms Bigfoot could resist.
BTW, after a full summer of dredging, if the gold we found was worth $200 an oz, it cost us $300 an oz to find it. Hahahaha, but the gold I was seeking never glittered anyway. Jim was a tad cranky about it, but never let it keep us from a gold seeking expedition.
Well, there it is, gold dredging, fishing and bigfoot in one sorta neat package.
Take care, Raven
| 42 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
Comment by Terry
MysTerry's Mansion
Theatre of the mind
Hurdy Gur
Terry
Comment by tlcorbin-raginravensview
Coffee Quip
I should have tossed in a few bikini clad booties, before the dredge pic.
Ha, I'll use the wood sprite picture.
Raven