Restoration

Well, with the preoccupation with the VW Bus restoration...which is 'postponed' (have purchased new desktop PC to keep up with pics and clips!)...and thinking on the Plan last night...I was taken with the sign Raven was sitting on...Cook's Meadow Restoration..it begins...

Open Range on again...the gunfight...then the Green Berets in Afghanistan...roadside bombs and gunfights...I think we just miss the Old West..which the indigenous over there seem to have their own appreciation of!!

Drew on now with improvs...

But, the restoration of the Valley..not over there...here...

I'm content with the way it is...it's a hodgepodge of facilities, each meeting some need over the years...as they run down, or fall down, they'll be replaced, or modified.

I'm a tourist too after all!!

But I thought on what could be done.

Now, the High Camps are just tents..a mess tent..and pit toilets...and a shower for the paying guests. The only way people can reach them is on foot or mule and horse. In the mess tent they're are a few souvenirs and snacks.

The one that used to be by Tenaya Lake is gone. Now, there, there is just day picnicking.

Day picnicking, and that's all for the Valley?? Bring your own food. Pit toilets provided. And that's it? Well, that IS Little Yosemite Valley. Backpackers can spend the night of course...anywhere.

That's too extreme, I would guess, for a Plan.

Tent facilities, like the High Camps? That's White Wolf...which also has car camping facilities.

Can that be the Valley Plan??

Add a grocery store, stable, gas station...with the tents...a bus shuttle service to get about...close it all in the Winter.

Would that work for the Valley??

That's Tuolumne...

Well, what the Valley has now is all the comforts of a small resort town...campsites...tents...rooms...the Awhahnee...Badger Pass...

That's Mammoth!!...just minus condos and such.

With out the brakes put to the early Valley development, it would be like Mammoth...or...dread to think...Tahoe.

Sigh..the Awahanee doesn't need to be in the Valley...or the souvenirs...or theater...or restaurants...or shuttle buses..and all that...all anyone really wants to do here is walkabout and see things...and be with their friends and family in the outdoors.

For creature comforts and entertainments...there's Tahoe.

White Wolf, I dare say, is likely the model...open from Spring to late October...closed in Winter.

Some people of course need some comforts...the elderly, handicapped, very young.

But they dont need dramatic luxuries like the Awahanee...

In a way, I'm too handicapped to see the Valley through the Awahanee experience...I'm poor. I thought on that today...there's places all over the world, and things to do, that I'd like to go to, and experience...but I haven't the cash for all that!!

I thought on this, as I dont want to see the Valley off limits to handicapped folk..either by age or infimity...which more primitive facilities in the Valley would do...Voglelsang is a difficult place to get to!

And the "handicap" of being poor ought not to keep anyone out...which I'm afraid the money making end of the Valley is doing.

The National Parks have a mandate not to allow any private exploitation or development take place with in their boundaries...Hetch Hetchy damn an example of when and where that boundary was breached.

Well, the facilities in the Valley are like the Dam...they make money and are exploiting the Park...within Park boundaries.

Now, the Park has come up with a notion to justify much of it...it is an effort to educate the public about the wilderness...and provide a wilderness experience...not a Tahoe experience...which the private business world has developed...but somekinda science thing.

Well, the Japanese are justifying the Humpback whale hunt (see dancingdolphin widget) as a scientific expedition.

Well, enough rant...oh, one more...hiking up the Valley sides...one shouldn't hear..anything..save the Falls when they're full...and the calls of Hawks and Owls and Wind and such...make that a parameter..and the rest will follow.

Sometime.

Tomorrow, a special and sacred place and how it deals with tourists, now, and two thousand years ago.

DavidDavid

Tree in the Door

Nov. 20, 2007