lambertiana
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2000
- Messages
- 9,411
After doing some errands with my wife this morning, I had about half of the day free. I've been itching to get to moving water, but at the same time I wanted to take my wife along. This limits my options because she is still recovering from open heart surgery and has very little endurance. Couple this with the fact that she has never shared my interest for hiking, and I had to find a place that only involved walking a few hundred yards at most.
My first thought was to visit Dry Creek, just a few miles east of Visalia. Normally, it has decent flow in early May, but this is an extremely dry year. Looking similar to the Nile in Egypt, the channel of Dry Creek offers the only green in a sea of dry brown grass (which is normally still green and full of wildflowers in early May if we get normal precipitation). This looks more like mid to late summer than early May.
The creek itself is getting close to living up to its name
Since my itch for flowing water was not scratched, I then headed a little farther east to Sequoia National Park. I didn't have time to go up high, so we stopped just beyond the entrance, still in the low elevation foothills. There, the Middle Fork Kaweah enters the valley. Since the Middle Fork Kaweah has its headwaters in the Great Western Divide (above 12,000', which is 12,000' above the valley and 10,000' above the park entrance where we were), it is fed by snowmelt and still has decent flow. This definitely took care of my desire to visit cold flowing water.
If found a perfect picnic spot - a large flat boulder by the stream, with good shade (being at the lower elevation, it was hot)
There were a number of kayakers running the river today
And on the way out, evidence of earlier inhabitants. There were a fair number of these bedrock mortars, where the original inhabitants ground their acorns
Now I feel better. I only wish I could have stayed there longer watching the water go by. It was so refreshingly cool right by the water. However, my wife was getting hungry....
My first thought was to visit Dry Creek, just a few miles east of Visalia. Normally, it has decent flow in early May, but this is an extremely dry year. Looking similar to the Nile in Egypt, the channel of Dry Creek offers the only green in a sea of dry brown grass (which is normally still green and full of wildflowers in early May if we get normal precipitation). This looks more like mid to late summer than early May.
The creek itself is getting close to living up to its name
Since my itch for flowing water was not scratched, I then headed a little farther east to Sequoia National Park. I didn't have time to go up high, so we stopped just beyond the entrance, still in the low elevation foothills. There, the Middle Fork Kaweah enters the valley. Since the Middle Fork Kaweah has its headwaters in the Great Western Divide (above 12,000', which is 12,000' above the valley and 10,000' above the park entrance where we were), it is fed by snowmelt and still has decent flow. This definitely took care of my desire to visit cold flowing water.
If found a perfect picnic spot - a large flat boulder by the stream, with good shade (being at the lower elevation, it was hot)
There were a number of kayakers running the river today
And on the way out, evidence of earlier inhabitants. There were a fair number of these bedrock mortars, where the original inhabitants ground their acorns
Now I feel better. I only wish I could have stayed there longer watching the water go by. It was so refreshingly cool right by the water. However, my wife was getting hungry....
