Hiked Donner Again

Went to Azalea Lake with Dad for lunch on Sunday. Nice little alpine lake, not very big. Very pretty though. Nice and cool up at Donner Pass. It has gotten near freezing every night, but reaches 70'F every day. We ate lunch on this rock at the south end of the lake. The mountain in the distance is Castle Crags, which is volcanic and sits atop the granite which underlies most of the high sierra and is what most people are thinking of when they think of these mountain peaks. It is mostly granodiorite and monzonite, if you care. White granite with biotite mica. It runs with some chemical variations, for hundreds of miles south, and another 90 miles north to the Sardine Lakes at the Sierra Buttes, where it terminates at the Mohawk Fault and the Feather River. The Yuba River starts west of this spot around 5 miles away, somewhere.

 Interstate 80, which is about a mile north of this lake and you can hear if you listen hard, is a major artery. Due to a fire on Echo Summit, Highway 50, a smaller but tourist used road through the Sierras, was closed, causing a massive traffic jam over Donner Pass, which I ended up stuck in for 45 minutes for what should have been a 20 minute drive to highway 20. Then the brief speed of 20 was ruined by a caravanist towing an ultralight behind a slow Jeep and it kept dropping to 40 mph on a 55 mph road. We were 8 cars behind this bozo who ignored every paved pull-off and he finally turned down to Scotts Flat Lake. Every time I think I can warm to the idea of owning a trailer and pulling one, I get a nice road and see a jerk like that and it all goes out the window. Then, and showering. Your RV and trailer have about 20-40 gallons of water on board, and most have a 5 gallon water heater. What kind of shower do you take in a 5 gallon tank? When you are in high country, you get hot and sweaty and there's suntan lotion to remove because its sticky and itches after a while. I want my hot shower, dammit. Obviously, the answer is a proper house or at least a cabin, with insulation, a proper hot water heater tank, no need to carry tanks full of pee. I own a good tent, and a stove. If I want to camp in the woods I can do that easily. But I don't. It is uncomfortable. I don't enjoy wife swapping or junkies getting weird in the woods with shrooms or hash. I already know how to cook so sampling low grade mountain eateries with a spouse that hates to work isn't exciting for me either. At least I know, and I got credit for the research on RVs and I know how much it costs. And I agree that getting stuck in a crappy community sucks. But I need my 740 to 800 square feet and a 40 gallon water heater to be happy, and a full sized pantry and kitchen so I can cook wonderful food. I think I'd be happier with those, and possibly a 4WD for visiting interesting places with great views on the weekend, and a race car for ones that are paved, and still be very happy.

Pretty, right? 

See why people in Nevada are so happy? They like their outdoors. Most don't gamble. That's mostly for tourists. And yes brothels are legal, but they aren't exactly illegal in California since most aren't sought out or suppressed either. I'm told that the Nevada Highway Patrol likes ticketing California motorists speeding on their long abandoned roads, but I never had much trouble with them on my visits there. Then again, I LOVE the desert. I love the big open empty places where you can see for 150 miles and people are found near the green bits in the big brown landscape. Few people can find nice things to say about Nevada, but the people saying them are usually heading for some kind of green bit, often on the side of some sea. I think Nevada would be improved by castles built of stone to various classic designs, however they have a lot of small earthquakes and Nevada has more volcanoes than California does. They even generate power from a steam vent east of Reno along I-80. Since the steam is generated far from where it is harvested, this arrangement is stable, completely different from the Geysers in California, which are messed with a lot and are also venting arsenic in huge quantities and its killing the Jehovah's Witnesses welders who work at the plant who were told that protective clothing would be enough, not knowing that Arsenic turns into a gas when exposed to oxygen, also called Arsene Gas and is a deadly poison. And it absorbs through lungs and exposed skin. So no, protective wear isn't enough. Anyway, castles in Nevada would look awesome on those peaks. Rich loons should build them like monuments. And monks should build them. They would be hilarious. Give them battlements and arrow slits. Why not?

The drive back from my trip, despite all the traffic, had some interesting points. Hot August Nights car show in Reno ended on Sunday, so the hot rodders returning to California were driving on the same road with me, and there were lots. While I don't see the point of GTO copies with silvery metallic paints and no particular suspension (which is why there aren't very many of them left: they rolled back in the 1980's and the drivers mostly died). The cars that survived the 80's somehow got their engines fixed up and new paint and all shiny and they go to the Hot Rod shows like in Reno. Those which could be driven were in the same traffic as I was. And they looked pretty at 20 mph on 80, bumper to bumper. There was no actual cause. When we got to the end of the traffic after a 45 minute crawl down the pass, there was nothing to see. We just sped up and a Lance truck camper on a new $50K Dodge Ram 3500 truck who had taken I-40, which runs alongside 80 because it used to be the only road through Donner Pass 50 years ago, had to merge back into the same traffic again when their road ran out. LOLs. Oh well.

I do understand this is the last hurrah of that generation, celebrating what they loved about an era of unprecedented wealth and debts handed down onto mine. They don't think about that, because they had jobs of their own. They think mine are failures because we are paying for all they took. They don't know they were stealing, and wouldn't believe you if you proved it to them. It will be one of those things for the history books to explain to the Millenials and younger generations. Our poverty caused by them selling us down the river. Inherited debt. Sigh.

800 Square Feet

My last apartment was 740 square feet. Unfortunately, I was married to a packrat, and she filled the place with a lot of crap. Once the crap was fully removed, a whole day before I moved away, it was surprisingly roomy. This was my misfortune, but I still learned that 740 square feet is big enough for my needs. The catch is I want my own garage, mainly because I can have a clean car that isn't getting spoiled by excessive heat and sunlight and pollen scratching the paint. This is important. A three car garage is probably ideal, since that leaves me room for a trailer, either for campground trips or with a small sailboat on it. There's some nice sailboats that weigh more than I can pick up by myself.

My best friend, That Guy(tm), recently measured the amount of living space he is using and its 800 square feet. His house is nearly twice that big, but his mortgage is less than renting a smaller space so life continues despite the irony. If he ever moves out of the area and has to buy a place he now knows how much space he really needs.

I know that the most common house type built and sold from 1970-1995 was the Ranch House, which is single story (in most cases) with a two-car garage hogging about half the front and a driveway leading from there to the street. It sort of dominates the house's looks.

After 1995, building lots got smaller and smaller, forcing homes to go vertical and narrower so the garage got even bigger from the street. These got the nickname "McMansions". Back yards became a spitting distance strip of dirt and a fence then another spitting distance and a neighbor. This was the approved high density housing method to cram as many square feet, which they charge for, into a house on the smallest legal lot they can get away with. Often, this is kind of miserable, though some places leave off the garage and cram them close and you get Balboa Island, which is slightly adorable for its close quarters craftsman bungalows.

Nevada City, the next town over and where I work as a volunteer, is crammed close like this, only its hot all summer because this is gold country, not the seaside. I think, in the future, most of the electric power will probably be going to seaside desalination projects rather than air conditioning in the valley, where few people want to live because it is farm country. I would not be shocked at all if more nuclear power plants get built to replace the ones being shut down due to old age. Billiard Ball designs are relatively hard to screw up and can't have a melt down. Smart engineering, after all.

The 800 square feet rule is largely true in Nevada City and Balboa Island, and works well for singles, but is a little tight for a couple. I suspect couples need 1000 square feet for obvious reasons. And every child after that, add another 400 square feet. Kids need lots of room, their own bathroom to share, separate from the folks. He's going to need a "study" and she will need a "sewing room" or hobby room. Somewhere to decompress. The space requirements get significant.

But a single person? 800 square feet is plenty.

Sailing on High Mountain Lakes

Decades ago I was a boy scout. We didn't have sex, as we were GOOD BOYS, so there was no debate about Gay boy scouts. This was before it came out that the founder was a Paedophile, btw. Despite that, as GOOD BOYS we camped and hiked and whittled wood with pocket knives. Nobody got stabbed. We had hatchets and built fires that didn't go out of control because we knew how to put them out properly. We could pitch a tent, and that was a thing you slept inside because we were GOOD BOYS, not inner city rape gangs. I went to several different summer camps, but the one I liked best was about 25 miles from here, up off Highway 20.

Chubb Lake had little sailboats to learn how to sail in, called a Laser. I got my merit badge in a Laser, which is a type of small 12 foot long sailboat in that little lake. I learned today that the Laser is an actual Olympic qualified boat. How cool is that? The secret to making a sailboat work is they are dirt slow and won't sink even if you flip them over. You have to get them half on their side to get much speed, and that's barely 18-20 mph. It feels faster because you're at an angle.

About a mile to the northwest is Spaulding Lake, which is considerably larger in a valley surrounded by granite, pine trees, and stunning views. Its below I-80, with its access off of Highway 20. The power plant there provides light and A/C power here, as well as primary water supply.

Lake Spaulding has some serious potential for lake sailing. And fishing. Its above most of the gold mining so there's no poisonous Mercury in the water. You can eat the fish in there. So it is worth catching them. There should be plenty of trout. You sail to a good spot, drop a line over and see if you get a bite. I like Bass, and Trout. Sailboats, small ones, are light weight. Some can be put on your car roof, they are so light. The Pico is interesting that way, but I'd want to try one before I bought one. They're about $3K new. The Pico doesn't require a trailer like the full sized Laser sailboat does. As I'm likely to use it solo, having something I can lift by myself is important.

In the wide area that isn't exactly flat on the plateau around Truckee, which is an old logging town north of Lake Tahoe and is a major ski resort spot. Lots of places to stay. It is lovely there in the summer. I would live there, in the summer, in a trailer. The weather is really nice. There are several lakes around it, some of them natural. All of them are water supply for Reno, eventually. Donner Lake is carved by the glaciers off of Donner Pass. It was the source of ice blocks put on an express train for ice boxes in San Francisco and Sacramento, 100 years ago. The sawdust used to store the ice until summer poisoned the ground and you can still find it next to the rail yard east of Truckee's downtown.

Donner Lake is damned cold. Despite this, people use it for boating. Its very popular with skidoos and those stand up paddle boarders, none of whom look to be having much fun. It is about half a mile across and around 3 miles long. And just above freezing in the summertime. In the winter it often gets feet of ice. I hike a few miles west of the lake, up on the Pass itself. The road down (Old Hwy 40) is getting used for an Acura commercial these days. It is very scenic, and narrow, and slow, so is used by tourists. Near the top there's several ski resorts, including Sugar Bowl and Boreal and Soda Springs, and in the summer there's a fair bit of rock climbing there on the granite. It is steep and gives reliable handholds. The granite doesn't break off that frequently.

Scotts Flat: a couple miles across. 

Closer to home, and the place I'd likely use a small sailboat the most, is a lake contaminated with Mercury so don't eat the fish, but has a couple convenient boat ramps and an official Yacht Club. One that shares membership with the official ones like in San Francisco. Which only matters if you can keep it from being stolen. So not so valuable. Not as useful as being able to put your boat on the roof of your car, and lift it down solo. I can see some value there. Its about a mile across and a couple miles long. I'm currently leaning towards the Pico as a first boat due to convenience and storage options, and because what I really liked about the Laser was a light breeze would lift it up on its side and it FELT fast, even if it wasn't.

They look so cold. The lake waters are very chilly here, but mostly at the higher elevations. Down here they get a couple feet of warmth. So yeah, possible recreation there. If I decide I am willing to deal with a trailer, then the right answer is probably a Laser Bahia, as those are about 400 pounds and thus light to tow, and probably would store in the garage near the ceiling. Or under the house, if two people carried it there. Not as convenient as a baby boat. But able to actually carry people, and can use a motor, and even oars if need be. Nothing to dislike there. Some of the lakes worth fishing are too narrow and deep to visit without simple oars. Even after the big rains come this fall and refill all the lakes. Learning about boats and the local lakes is interesting. I'm not sure I will really throw any money at this, but at least I know.

Smoke blew in last night, starting at 10 PM. Got strong and was heavy by this morning. Didn't really blow away until noon, at which point it was hot again. So kinda miserable itchy night followed by a smoky hot morning. It finally blew away enough we could air out the house, when it was 85'F outside, and required a good hour for the stench to go. I managed my walk then, though I got sweaty in the process. Now we're back with A/C again and its 89'F outside. I hope that they get the fire out in the next couple days, but they are predicting 4 more days of this. Sigh. The local news is referring to You Bet and Red Dog as towns, but they're just roads that lead past old mining sites with no people, no buildings, no foundations. Nothing by mine scars. This is where they did hydraulic mining with fire hoses. This is where it was banned in the USA. Looks like most of the fire is out, from the pictures they just showed on the live news out of Sacramento.

Improving On Top Gear Mistakes

Part of the charm of Top Gear, which won so many fans, is they commit many yahoo-level mistakes. Bubba type mistakes. The kind that result in hilarious darwin awards. As Top Gear are serious car enthusiasts, who pull no punches when a car sucks, and wax rhapsodic when they are good, it is often a good idea to see them get reviewed. If you believe in your vehicle, you may get a lot of sales. The Ford Fiesta and Focus both got very popular due to Jeremy Clarkson liking them. There was a chase through a shopping mall. And a marine amphibious landing on a beach.

Clarkson, May and Hammond have participated in some funny contests where they buy and modify a vehicle to some task they've been set by the producers. They hate trailers (what they call Caravans) and slow RVs so they built fast RVs out of cars they've modified. And it might have been okay to work if they hadn't opted to utterly mock the entire thing. Blessed comedy that it was.

Pictured is clarkson's 3-story tower on wheels. A terrible idea, but it does make a comedic point about the absurdity of some RVs being too tall. Hammond's was the most realistic, yet fails utterly because it was mocking expansion panels (slideouts) taken to extreme. May's was too small, but he did make the point that there is such a thing as too much minimalism. May's would have worked better with some curtains, and Hammonds with a couple tent pop outs for his bed rather than panels that fell down. None of these was a truck camper, after all, which would have been perfectly fine, and able to move at proper traffic speed without any trouble. Showing one of those would have proven their point that there is an RV type they don't object to.

In later series, such as the Africa challenge they do a variation of minimalist RV conversion, turning their station wagons into RVs rather than stay in really horrible African hotels. Its fairly reasonable considering how little space they have to work with. They do this sleeping conversion again with big trucks for the Burma special. They'd gotten better at it by that point, though Hammond would have been well served to remove about 4 feet of metal railing and about 1500 pounds of dead weight from his truck. It would have helped with the speed too. Poor May didn't realize how fragile his truck was, and while the crane was really important later, he needed to fix up the suspension and transmission more than it needed to be painted yellow. Live and learn.

They once got told to build amphibious cars and then cross 2 miles of water on a reservoir. That doesn't sound that hard, but they forgot that you still have to cool an engine, as well as get a metal car to float on water. Floating works by displacement, of the density of the object in the water displacing enough water that the object weighs less than the water that was there. This is why things can sink in the Sargasso Sea (Bermuda Triangle). Top Gear forgot that just because you welded some doors shut, or sprayed foam in, you don't necessarily displace enough water to float. This was unfortunate since James May had a good idea, with the sailboat. Being a music major rather than an engineer, he did not know he needed a keel, and did not realize you can install one with a tall slat for it. Its pretty trivial. Looking at that video most people can see ways to improve it.

Most people can think of ways to make a car that floats well enough to cross a lake. Probably better than this. And its a good engineering challenge, too. When Top Gear drove across southern Africa, in the Botswana special, they did it in cars without 4WD and the real lesson there is that 2-wheel drive is enough if the cars are light enough weight. The power is a lot less important than the weight.

I mention this because Clarkson revealed in Australia during an interview last week, that he's in talks with "an American internet company" and while he can't say which one, Netflix has the money to pay for his budget and let him work without the hassles of the BBC. He will have to drive more Japanese cars because we don't have French ones here. And Fiat only sells the 500 in this country. He may need to find nice things to say about Lexus because we don't buy silly english-german royalty cars here. I suspect that when he drives a new 2016 Corvette Stingray he may have to admit is a good car. Clarkson discovered that driving American trucks is actually both comfortable and fun.

And cheap. Compared to the sort of muscle cars he's used to, American trucks are very affordable. This baffled him because he didn't want to like them, but he did anyway. It might be good for Clarkson to drive on the best roads, the ones he missed on prior short visits to America, and maybe tour the Pacific Coast Highway, since he's never mentioned Big Sur. He's never talked about Highway 395 from Mohave up to Bridgeport. Very pretty, though the southern bit is a different highway. 395 goes through the middle of the desert before meeting I-15 out near Barstow. It follows the back of the Sierras at Owens Lake junction north. Fantastic views and scenery, and no lions try to eat you. You don't get kidnapped and beheaded like in Muslim countries. Its perfectly safe as long as you have water and a cellphone. There's a lot of highways he could review, with nice fast speed limits and changing radius turns that will wreck bad drivers. Even north 49 is like that. Clarkson and company would like driving that road. And maybe he can do some more comedy with RVs and such, with his mistakes up against something modern as a competing vehicle. Sort of like the VW bug in Africa. The one that went everywhere, unmodified, and never broke down. I'd love to see Top Gear do the Baja 1000 in an unmodified "Hitler-mobile". They have a class for that, btw. No kidding. It would be hilarious to see the Top Gear guys deal with that. Whatever they end up calling the new show. BBC owns Top Gear as a trademark.

I hope they'll show more of America off in the new show, and maybe taunt American car companies into raising their standards. Ditch the straight axle. Go wishbones all around. Halfshafts to correct torque steer on front wheel drive cars. Make Clarkson take part in a fuel economy race, just to hear him curse about it. He's funny when he's mad. I expect the various US internet companies have the sort of money needed to get him and his co-presenters back to work again. And maybe with more programming than the ever-shorter seasons under BBC. We'll see.

Smoke

There's a wild forest fire east of here, close to I-80, along a road called Lowell Hill. That road runs along the Bear River's north bank all the way up to Highway 20. That's ghost town boonies. Nobody much lives out there.

The smoke billowed up in a huge plume yesterday, when it started, and then drifted down here last night. Sore throats from the poison oak smoke and manzanita burning everywhere. It is not very nice. The breeze finally came up, but its burning from the south so there's still a fair bit of this smoke around.

Containment is only 5% last I read, and its only about 3-4 square miles. Which is around 1700 acres. There's 640 acres per square mile, which is why square miles are a far better way to measure forest fires. Hell, they show them on the maps. They are called "sections". That measurement system is over a century old. Very useful, though. It is easy to divide and subdivide. All property deeds require recording the correct section your property is part of, at the assessors office, in order to be legal.

I wish it weren't burning. It wasn't nice sleeping with that floating around. It got bad enough to wake me up and shut the door. Then I had to breathe what was in the room afterwards. Not very nice. This is a big downside to living in the mountains. The wildfires make smoke for weeks, and the fire season lasts for months.

This one was started by a white lifted Jeep with big tires and a black roll bar. A bit generic description. All it would take is them pausing or dragging the hot tailpipe past some grasses. That would do it.

Home Layouts

In the old days, you could buy a Craftsman Home Plan from a Sears-Roebuck catalog for a small fee which taught you how to build a house in specific steps, from digging and constructing the concrete foundation to the plumbing, walls, electrical wiring and drains and then bathrooms, siding, interior walls, roof beams and shingles and all the windows. It tells you how to do this and when to call each inspector to sign off on your work.

You will notice something about each of these. There is no garage or driveway  in front. That is because in those days, before automobiles, people got around on foot, caught a horse-drawn trolley which ran on rails with street on either side, or via a buggy if they owned a horse, which was smelly and a lot of trouble compared to those new-fangled bicycles. Pity that streets were rarely paved, but every bicyclist was clamoring for pavement with smooth modern concrete. A bicycle could really move on concrete, far faster than cobblestones.

There were rumors of new Safety Bicycles, which wouldn't stop on a dime and flip you into the ground like a speedy Penny Farthing. If you had a carriage house, it would be around back so the stink wouldn't drift to your front porch or parlor where you entertained guests or caught the evening breeze because air conditioning wouldn't be invented for decades, and swamp coolers only work in places with really low humidity. This was between 1900 and 1928, essentially, that Craftsman houses were in their greatest popularity as the modern, self sufficient thing. Pre-depression houses were either these, the ultramodernist kind which leaked, or Victorians. Each of their appeal.

Victorians have more room, for bigger families, and tend to be tall, with basements and parlors and up to three stories with a seriously large floored attic with dormer windows. People don't often build like that anymore. These are presentation homes, indicating those living there are civilized, proper, and not criminals or poor people. Or Irish immigrants fresh off the boat.

The important lesson is that in modern times, for couples without kids, a bungalow is big enough, without wasting lots of space (which is taxed by the square foot), and in a post-oil economy, having your garage in the back is a good idea. It is going to become rather optional in coming years. Why dominate the front of your house with a place to park your car when you don't have a car anymore? Because mining oil is illegal (fracking has been banned in half of California already, and most of the counties with oil under them), and electric cars cost more than a house. In the post-oil economy, because there's no fuel for commuting, house prices will plummet to the going rate for all the minimum wage jobs around where you live, which isn't much. So houses are going to drop down to about $80K, which is still double the cost of materials. The thing about a bungalow is they're around 500-750 square feet inside. A smallish apartment. Not cramped, but not the sort of place to encourage you to to have a bevy of children. Bungalows are for more responsible people, or those who haven't married yet.

After cars replaced carriages, the stable stalls were replaced by gravel parking spaces for a car, and swinging garage doors behind the house. The alley which ran behind the houses, facing the back gates and carriage houses of each bungalow, was the place to slowly drive your automobile down and carefully open the gates and garage door, then drive in, then shut them both. A bit of a hassle in the rain. Large parts of Los Angeles is still built this way. Unfortunately, that alley is an excellent place for a gang of hoodlums to burglarize any unlocked gates or garages. It is easy to get in because few homes have many windows facing that way.

Modern high density housing ignores the alley, and instead reverses the house. The back garage is all you can see from the street, and the house faces its postage stamp back garden. If it has one.

In cases like this, they cram these as close together as possible, for maximum profit. This is unfortunate since if there were space on the side, there's a method for a side-drive gate that passes by the kitchen and retains the carriage house as a separate building facing 90 from the street, behind the house, out of sight.

This also makes it a very convenient workshop in exchange for a garden or having a back yard or back lawn. Many homes like this have a gate, and an electric opener. An important consideration for all the people who prefer to make furniture or work on cars rather than hoe weeds and plant corn instead of buy them at the local market. This is not to say that bungalows can't have gardens. They can, if they don't bother with a garage. And they have have some in the front, like this picture. It is usually very formal. I understand it is considered poor manners to grow veggies in the front garden.

I think bungalows, currently second only to restored Victorians for sale value, are the next big thing in real estate. Unlike the "Ranch House" which is dominated by its driveway and 2-3 car garage in front, the Bungalow isn't obsoleted by the end of oil. Not to say you can't do useful things with a Ranch House, or a McMansion. You can break up the driveway with a sledgehammer, remove the doors, replace with greenhouse or convert it to more bedrooms or even an apartment of a shop. You could turn a garage into a business, and put up a wall and gate in front of the house entrance so customers would know not to pester the home, focus on the shop or cafe or whatever you have there. I think we'll see a lot of this.

In the post-oil future, a single parking stall from your former garage is enough for your scooter or motorcycle and bicycle parking. Somewhere out of sight from people who like stealing cars. A big garage won't be necessary.

Real human beings won't own electric cars, though some might own golf carts because they're dirt slow and the batteries are cheap and don't wear out. But same with an ATV, which is faster and if running small diesel engines or setup for Alcohol, they can go faster, further, and are easier to refill. They aren't bragging about how rich they are, not like a Tesla or Porsche 918.

Porsche 918 hybrid. $875K. Rich people only. 

 Cars for the ultrarich. Cars that don't have room for a bodyguard to protect the person who owns it.

$95K, Tesla S. If you can drive this, you are worth kidnapping. 

These hybrid or electric cars are very fancy. Very nice. Very expensive. People who own them will need to live in places where others are so rich they won't steal them either. In closed communities, with armed guards with machineguns and the right to shoot on sight. Places like Mexico and Brazil and Florida and Russia. Places where money talks, and the only lives that matter are those who can pay. Not like here, not where normal people live.

Former garage on the right side, driveway garden now. 

We will have bicycles and scooters and small houses that are easy to heat and cool, and live modest lives without much money. We will have the bungalows because that's all we can afford. And people with kids will convert their ranch houses and restyle them to look more like a bungalow, turn one of the garage spaces into a bedroom or office. This is what most people will do. The ones who either found the right town to settle down into after travelling a while, or never left in the first place, or fuel was so difficult to get that an RV/trailer no longer made sense. This is the outcome of the final result of oil depletion.

When The Ice Returns

This is Sardine Lakes, a pair of them. On above the other, formed by the same glacier that carved the northernmost spur of the Sierra Nevada mountains into this sharp and craggy point. The lakes aren't huge, but you can fish in them, in a boat. There's cabins, camping, picnic grounds, and hiking trails. It has been getting rain almost daily all summer long. As you can see there is no glacier left there, but it will come back. Making glaciers is a matter of "accumulation". If more snow falls and stays through the summer than melts, you get a glacier. Summers can still be warm and have an ice age. They just can't be warm enough to melt all the snow. Not at the highest elevations, like this mountain. These are visible from where I live, btw. You can see them for a hundred miles. 

The drive up Highway 49 from Nevada City is about 90 minutes. It is twisty, has blind turns and changing radius turns (those kill people because you loose grip as the turn tightens), and winds over all three forks of the Yuba River. The South Yuba, which passes near where I live, is the one that come out of Donner Pass area and it follows I-80 for a dozen miles before veering off into its own canyon to the north. The Interstate than follows the ridge between the Bear River and the American River, which also have deep canyons and lots of gold mining scars all the way down to Auburn. Highway 49 follows the locations of the various gold mines and used to be a stagecoach road. It is paved, smoother and straighter than it used to be, but it is still a very fun road to drive in a sports car, and painful in a slow moving RV or towing a trailer. There are sections, such as the one between here and Auburn, which carry lots of heavy trucks and commuters at high speed, but much of the highway is slow and two lanes and people pull over to let the more anxious pass them. We did, for a few maniacs with downhill mountain bikes heading for Downieville. There is a local hardcore sport that runs out of Downieville for cyclists. They pay a van to take them up to Sardine Lakes and drop them off. They climb up the hill over various ridges onto the west slope, stare at the view from the top, all the way to the mountains which hide the Pacific on their far side, and then power down the various trails for 20 miles, back to Downieville. It is not a good place to wreck, and proper downhill bikes are purpose built for the trip, and very expensive. 

This is a race from 2012. Bikes are getting longer and more angled suspension forks, to absorb more bumps. They also cost a few grand, so rentals are popular, and the shuttle services and bike rentals make it fun for the tourists, who also stay the night, eat at the local restaurants and provide most of the funds in this little tourist town nestled deep in the mountains. It is pretty much the only legal employment in the area, since the illegal stuff is on the south bank of the river, that being the north edge of the San Juan Ridge pot growing area. Sigh. When it starts raining hard this fall, the pot growers will be ready, harvest and process their plants, and make their annual bulk sales down in the cities. Next year will have lots more water, and lots more pot will result.

In any case, the highest parts of the northern sierra, up the mountain from Downieville is very pretty, and totally worth a visit if you live in California or Nevada. Someday those lakes will be filled with glacier again, the trees and brush ground under the advancing ice that returns to the high country first, and I'd like to write a story about the geologists assigned to studying them as they advance, then going down the mountain to one of the local towns for rest and resupply snowmobiles and 4WD trucks, probably electric by that point. Its one of those good things about Star Wars, that it gave us the concept of a scifi universe with dirt. It opened the door to filthy heroes with crap on their boots.

It was a fun day. I drove us over the Yuba Pass, and respectable speed, and descended into the Mohawk Valley below, which thanks to getting almost daily rain, was green, healthy, and filled with cows. They are not having drought there. It was gorgeous and Dad and I both want to live there. I just need to get someone to pay me to be a librarian. Sierraville, several thousand feet below the pass, is in Highway 89, at the south end of the Mohawk Valley. It has a forest service branch office, a Caltrans repair yard for the various highways going through there (serious jobs) and a small market. I did not see a library. Pity. Its got about 350 people, in the summer. And more like 100 in the winter. It ices up during the winter months, and it is about 30 miles to Truckee, which has the nearest supermarkets. We zoomed down that highway with the other traffic until we reached Nevada County, where the roads turned to bouncy thumpy crap. We also passed a crash being attended to by fire trucks, ambulance, and CHP (Highway Patrol) for some honda that had tried to cross a creek at speed, backwards, and wrecked. Not sure how they missed the bridge, but texting is never a good idea. People still do that, texting while driving. I think it is a Darwin Award, and it resolves itself. I remain a fan of Single Car Accidents. Texting crashes are just Chlorine in the gene pool. Once in Truckee, we rejoined I-80 and climbed over Donner Pass, and it rained most of the way up and part of the way down the west slope. This slowed traffic somewhat, but the road was also slippery. A good weekend.