Elena's Legacy. Texts written by Elena, excerpts from texts she liked, her artworks.

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Yosemite National Park

4 million visitors per year – 1,170 square miles – Home of the giant sequoia. Yosemite National Park, CA.

Yosemite's majestic granite peaks, groves of ancient giant sequoia trees, and waterfalls, including Yosemite Falls,which at a height of 2,425 feet is the nation's highest inspired some of the earliest attempts at conservation in the United States. In 1864, Congress enacted laws protecting the valley. Journalist Horace Greeley, who once visited this park, noted that he knew of “no single wonder of Nature on earth which can claim a superiority over the Yosemite.” And naturalist John Muir, whose efforts led to the park's formation, said of the valley. “Not temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite.”

The enormous park occupies an area comparable to Rhode Island, with elevations of up to 13,114 feet.

Peak season tips: During the busy summer months, forgo the sights and splendors of the seven-mile Yosemite Valley, which attracts the hordes.

Camping: Of the 18 campgrounds in Yosemite, the 5 main ones in the valley offer “refugee-style camping” - over campsites crammed into a singularly unspectacular half-mile. For more space and better views, head for the hills and try one of the eight Tioga Road campgrounds. There also are five tent camps about a day's hike from one another on the High Sierra Loop Trail. Campers can obtain meals, showers, and cots there. Reservations via Yosemite Reservations are advised.

Reservations also are required year-round in Yosemite Valley's auto campground and for Hodgdon Meadow, Crane Flat, and Tuolumne, Meadows campgrounds. All other campgrounds are operated on a first-come, first-served basis. Camping reservations may be made up to, but no earlier than, eight weeks in advance through Mistix. Reservable campsites fill up quickly from mid-May to mid-September. Your best bet for snagging a spot is to start calling the Mistix reservation number at 7 a.m. Pacific Standard Time eight weeks in advance of the date you want to camp.

Best one-day trip: Avoid the congested route to Yosemite Valley. Instead, grab a tour bus and get off either at shuttle stop 7, for an easy half-mile, 20-minute hike to Lower Yosemite Falls, or shuttle bus stop 8, for a strenuous one- to three-hour round-trip hike to Upper Yosemite Falls. Other sites include the Native American Yosemite Village and El Capitan, a 2,000-foot face crawling with little black specks which, on closer inspection, turn out to be rock climbers.

In fact, the dramatic domes and soaring pinnacles in Yosemite make it one of the best places in the world for rock climbing. The Yosemite Mountaineering School and Guide Service offers beginning through advanced classes in the summer.

Nice park... Photo by Elena.

Friday, October 5, 2018

Grand Canyon National Park

5 million visitors per year – 1,904 square miles – the 277-mile canyon is nearly a mile deep in places. Grand Canyon, aZ 86023.

A Grand Canyon sunset is glorious, but even during the day, the canyon walls' many layers of stone refract hues of red, yellow, and green light. On a good day, you can see 200 miles across vast mesas, forests, and the Colorado River.

The park consists of three different areas: the North Rim, the South Rim, and the Inner Canyon, which is accessible only by foot, boat, or mule. The North Rim and the South Rim are only 9 miles apart as the eagle files, but 214 miles by road.

The different rims are located in entirely different temperate climate zones. The North Rim on average is 1,000 feet higher and is heavily forested with blue spruce and alpine vegetation. It is open only from May to late October. The more popular South Rim is closer to population centers and has the juniper bushes and Gambel oak typical of the arid Southwest. The Inner Canyon is desertlike; temperatures there often exceed 110 degrees in the summer.

Follow the trails! One-and two-day mule rides are a somewhat bumpy alternative to hiking the Grand Canyon. Avoid rides in the summer, when temperatures can reach 118 degrees. Two-days trips start at the South Rim. Photo by Elena.

Peak season tips: The South Rim is crowded all year. To escape the masses, take one of the many trails off East Rim Drive to a private spot overlooking the canyon, or try the North Rim. Which receives only ten percent of the park's visitors.

Camping: Lodging reservations South Rim, including Phantom Ranch, North Rim Lodging reservations. Recorded general park info is available.

Best one-day trip: The West Rim Drive offers wonderful views of the main canyon. In the summer, it is open only to buses, which can be taken from the visitor center. A paved trail runs along the South Rim offering an easy bike. All hikes into the canyon are strenuous. Of them, only the Bright Angel and the South Kaibab trails are regularly maintained.

Best experience: A raft ride down the Colorado River is a great way to enjoy the splendor of the canyon. Motorboat trips take 7 to 10 days, raft trips take 10 to 12 days, and trips on wooden dories usually last 18 days, though 3- to 8-days partial trips can be arranged. Write the park superintendent for a complete list of outfitters licensed by the National Park Service.

Great Smoky Montains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

10 million visitors per year – 800 square miles – Largest national park east of the Rockies – 107 Park Headquarters Rd, Gatlinburg, TN.

A world unto itself, Great Smoky Mountains National Park has over 1,500 species of flowering plants, 10 percent of which are considered rare, and over 125 species of trees – more than in all of Europe. In addition, there are 200 species of birds, about 50 species of fish, and 60 species of mammals, including wild hogs and black bears.A hike or divre from mountain base to peak is equivalent to the entire length of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in terms of the number of species of trees and plants – every 250 feet of elevation is roughly equivalent to 1,000 miles of distance on the trail. A quarter of the park is virgin forest, the largest concentration east of the Mississippi. Some of the trees are up to 8 feet in diameter.

In addition to its natural attributes, Great Smoky Mountains is one of the most interesting national parks in the United States historically, with farms, churches, cabins, and working grist mills left by the mountain people who moved away when the park was established in 1934. The park has been designated a United Nations International Biosphere Reserve as well as a World Historical Site.

Peak season tips

During the summer, in the lower elevations, expect haze, humidity, and afternoon temperatures in the 90s – and terrible traffic jams. Cades Cove, the less spectacular but more historically interesting section of the park, is generally less crowded in the summer.

Old and abandoned farms abound here. Photo by Elena.

Camping

Reservations are required May 15 through October 31 for Elkmont, Smokemont, and Cades Cove campgrounds. Contact Mistix Sites at other campgrounds are on a first-come, first-served basis. Stay of up to 7 days are allowed from mid-May through October, and up to 14 days the rest of year. Rarely filled are the Look Rock and Cosby campgrounds, which are in more remote parts of the park. Also of note is the LeConte Lodge, located on the park's third-highest peak (elevation, 6,593 feet), a six-hour hike from the main road. Accommodations are sometimes in cabins with no electricity or running water, but no include beds and hot meals. The lodge is open from late March through mid-November.

Best one-day trip

Entering the park from Gatlinburg, continue on US 441, and stop at the Newfoundland Gap, where there are spectacular views of the mountains. From there, turn onto Clingmans Dome Road (closed in the winter), which ends at a parking lot where there is a strenuous half-mile hike to a lookout tower atop 6,643-foot Clingmans Dome – the highest peak in the park. Back on US 441, continue to the Smokemont Campground where the easy, two-mile Chasten Creek Falls Trail meanders along a stream through a hardwood forest ending at one of the park's many waterfalls.

Best experience

The Great Smokies is one of the premier places in the East to enjoy magnificent fall foliage. The season lasts from September through October. Peak time: October 15 to October 31.

National Treasures - National Parks

Natural Treasures – National Parks

Getting away from it all in America's backyard

If the national parks were in it for the money, business would be booming. Last year, 273 million people visited them, and in the next decade that figure is expected to double! Today, however, roads are closing, gift shops are being razed, and new construction is at a standstill throughout the park system. That's because the National Park Service's previous strategy of luring visitors with resort hotels and new roads worked too well, resulting in the traffic jams, pollution, and honky-tonky resort accommodations that now plague many of the national parks.

To save off the major ecological threat that tourism has become, the Park Service is putting the brakes on all environmentally degrading tourism and instead focusing on preservation. The urban ills that the Park Service is attempting to eliminate are especially prevalent in the more that 50 America's national parks, which account for more than half the system's visitors.

That means that finding a spot to pitch a tent or hook up a trailer is not always going to be easy, especially during the summer. Some campsites are on a first-come, first-served basis. For others, you may need to contact the park directly through the National Park Service's Mistix system. The services ranks national parks by popularity and always offers a description of the more interesting tracks they have to offer – beaten or otherwise.

Quarry Lake. Photo by Elena.

Sure ways to beat the crowds

Travel in the off-season has its own rewards – and its own peril

Traffic on the main roads slows to a crawl, people are everywhere. Morning drive time in New York City? No, it's the summer rush to the nation's most popular national parks. Traffic has gotten so bad at some parks that tourists can spot wildlife simply by looking where other cars have pulled over to the side of the road to gawk.

The surest way to beat the crowds is to visit in the off-season. From June through October, Great Smoky National Park typically gets over a million visitors a month, but roughly half that number visit in the months between November and April, when temperatures in the lower elevations average about 50 degrees and occasionally reach in the 70s – perfect hiking weather, in other words.

There are other off-season rewards, too. At Rocky Mountain National Park, the bighorn sheep come down from higher elevations in May to feed on the mud deposits, and wildflowers there are spectacular in the spring. Yosemite National Park's waterfalls rush from the melting winter snows. In the fall, the foliage in many parks is absolutely superb. September is the sunniest month at Rocky Mountain National Park. And Grand Teton National Park is open all winter, allowing access to excellent cross-country skiing.

Of course, seasonal difficulties abound. There are, for instance, sudden snowstorms at Yellowstone National Park as early as September. And spring weather at Zion National Park is unpredictable; flash floods are not uncommon. Mammoth Cave can be especially dank in the dead of winter.

If such perils are too daunting for you, it is possible to avoid the masses in the summer simply by venturing into the backcountry. Most visitors don't wander very far from their cars.

Rosedale - Part III

South Rosedale was first settled by Sheriff William Jarvis and his wife, Mary, in 1826 after Jarvis inherited his father's home there two years earlier. Mary Jarvis, the granddaughter of chief justice and loyalist William Drummer Powell frequently walked and rode on horseback around the trails for that formed Rosedale's meandering streets (which are one of the area's trademarks). She named the estate "Rosedale" as a tribute to the abundance of wild roses that graced the hillsides of their estate. The Jarvis estate was subdivided in 1854 and became Toronto's first "garden suburb". The Jarvis Family sold the Rosedale homestead in 1864, which led to the residential development of the area soon after, including the extension of Cluny Drive.

A noteworthy piece of Rosedale's History, is that it was home to Ontario's fourth Government House. The house was called Chorley Park, and it was built for the Lieutenant Governor in 1915.It was demolished in 1960 by the city of Toronto to save money. It is now a public park of the same name.

Park in Rosedale. White, yellow flowers in Rosedale Hot pink flower with yellow middle. White petals, yellow middle flower in background.

Chorley Park Tulips.

Rosedale rues.

Morley Callaghan (22 February 1903 - 25 August 1990). Morley Callaghan wrote 18 novels and over 100 short stories, all about Canadians. Critically acclaimed around the World, he has been compared with Chekhov and Turgenev. He sold his first story while attending Riverdale Collegiate and worked as a reporter for the Toronto Star during his student years at the University of Toronto. In 1928 he published his first novel, Strange Fugitive and in 1929 he married Loretto Dee. They lived in Paris - where they were befriended by Hemingway, Fizgerald and Joyce - then in New York and Pennsylvania until the early thirties, when they returned to Toronto. Callagahan moved to Dale Avenue in 1951. Neighours often saw and talked to him as he crossed this bridge with his wife and dog, Nikki, then with his dog, then alone until he died in 1990.