Diggin' it

Aimee and I finally took Nadine to Yosemite last week. She loved it. Or at least it seemed like she did. She was so relaxed - she didn't even wake up when they chased the bears through the campground in the middle of the night. Her favorite thing was staring up at the trees in the evening as they swayed in the wind.

For my niece,

Buffalo Soldiers

Can't say I envy the Buffalo Soldiers. First they had to fight the Native Americans, then the Spaniards, then the Filipinos and finally the great Pancho Villa himself. At least they had one stint that was envious. Nine of them were stationed in Yosemite in 1899, where they served as the park's first rangers. Dig this litte webite project dedicated to them.

Stroke My Erect Ear Tufts

I've been spending quite a bit of time in Yosemite lately and man, you just gotta love that climbers' sense of humor. Here's an utterly incomplete list of route names in Yosemite: Dressed to Kill, Color Me Gone, 666, Short but Thick, Bachar's Ring Job, Health Insurance, Pussy Whipped, Satanic Mechanic, Sherrie's Crack, A Boy and His Knob, Pink Banana, The Gerbil Launcher, Sloppy Seconds, Mongolian Clusterfuck, Shit on a Shingle, Champagne on Ice, Renus Wrinkle, The Buttocks, The Girl Next Door, Aqua Vulva, Bulging Puke, Jesus Built My Hotrod, Realm of the Flying Monkeys and - my favorite so far - Stroke My Erect Ear Tufts.

Chinquapin Shakedown

Man, I knew big trees grew in Yosemite, but I had no idea big cannabis plants did too. I thought that was just in Sequoia & Kings Canyon . But they do -- or did. At least until all 7,428 of them got yanked out by park rangers on Tuesday. I wonder what they'll do with them. They should sell it all to the tourists to pad the coffers of an underfunded park system. In fact, if they did this at both parks, they could undercut the the illegal growers and fix the funding problems at the same time. And it would surely stop the decline in visitor numbers (not that we really want that).