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Day 636 of Lee and Irene’s Most Excellent Adventure

December 14, 2006

Greetings from Yadkinville, NC, where the sun is shining and the temperature is a mild 60 degrees.

In my last post I only covered our travels up until we reported to Yosemite National Park on July 1st for our volunteer duties as Desk Officers with the Law Enforcement Rangers. We were at Yosemite until October 7th and then headed east.

We truly enjoyed our time at Yosemite. When we arrived we were given a camp site in North Pines Campground. Getting Montey settled in our site was challenging. The campground is heavily treed with very large pines. It took 2 people directing, Lee driving, and a large shoehorn, to squeeze Montey into his home for the next 3+ months, but 30 minutes later the task was accomplished. The Desk Officer sites were fully equipped with water, 50 amp electric, sewer, and a phone hookup (we paid for the phone service but nothing else). There was even an official sign identifying each of the sites as “Desk Officer Residence”. None of the sites that visitors stayed in had any hookups at all. Receiving satellite TV proved to be impossible with our roof mounted, dome satellite dish because of all the trees. However, much to our surprise and delight, one of the couples who we replaced, Don and Diane, very kindly gave us a free-standing satellite dish. Charlie (who worked with us) gave us the cable we needed, and with 4 guys working on it for about an hour, we were setup with satellite.

There were 3 couples who shared the responsibilities of the Desk Officer position while we were there (Lee and I, Charlie and Gigi from Hampton, Virginia, and Larry and Carol from southern Illinois) and 3 other couples preceded us, working from April until we arrived in July. Each couple worked 3 days on and then had 6 days off, which gave us lots of time to explore the park and the surrounding area.

Yosemite National Park is the size of the state of Rhode Island, but only a fraction of it is developed. We were located in Yosemite Valley, and the nearest decent sized grocery store was outside the park in Oakhurst, CA. The trip from the Valley to Oakhurst took about 1.5 hours each way. The Village Store, which was located in the Valley did have basic groceries, but to do a real grocery shopping you needed to go to Oakhurst. The nearest Walmart and Costco were located in Fresno, about 2.5 hours each way from the Valley. We made only 4 trips to Fresno during our stay at Yosemite.

The granite walls and formations in Yosemite attract rock-climbers from around the world. Two of the most famous formations are Half Dome and El Capitan, both located in Yosemite Valley. Half Dome looked down on our campground and glowed orange at sunset. What an amazing sight! I never got tired of looking at it. You will see in my pictures that Half Dome came by its name honestly because it looks like it was sliced through the middle and then the other half removed. El Capitan is one of the largest granite monoliths in the world. The Merced River runs through the Valley and feeds the Nevada and Vernal Falls. Yosemite Falls, the tallest in the United States, can only be seen from Spring until sometime in August because it is fed only by melting snow, and dries up in August. It was looking pretty good when we arrived but we were told that its grandeur had already been greatly diminished by then. Bridal Veil Fall, also located in the Valley, flows all year, but like all other water attractions in the park, its volume reduces through the summer because Yosemite receives almost no rain during the summer months. In fact, between July 1st and Oct 7th there was a total of only 3 brief showers, and 2 rainy days. The 2 rainy days both occurred during the first week of October. July, August, and September produced bright blue skies every day, with no humidity, and temperatures between 85 and 110 degrees during the day, but comfortably cool most nights. I have to admit that I really enjoyed the low humidity!

A Day in the Life of a Desk Officer at Yosemite National Park

Our work day at Yosemite began at 0530, when the alarm rang and we got ready for “Bear Patrol”. At 0600 we were in the “Bear Mobile” (a beat-up 1987 Ford Bronco), and Lee got on the radio and announced that “Desk Officer 26 is in-service for bear patrol.” Our patrol route took us from our North Pines campground to both the Ahwanee Hotel and Yosemite Lodge parking lots, to Camp 4 (where most rock-climbers camp), to 2 picnic grounds so we could open the gates for the day, then to Housekeeping Camp, Curry Village, the Apple Orchard parking lot, the Wilderness Lot (where people attempting the Mist Trail, John Muir Trail, or Half Dome Trail would park), Lower Pines Campground, Upper Pines Campground, and finishing in North Pines Campground.

Our job during Bear Patrol was to look for damage to vehicles caused by bears and writing reports when damage was found. We were also stopped frequently by visitors and asked a wide variety of questions, the answers to which were occasionally made up by Lee because we didn’t know the real answer. My least favorite task was telling campers that they couldn’t have wood fires in the morning and that they would have to put their fire out. From May until October 15th, fires are only permitted in the Valley from 1700-2200 (5-10 pm). Sometimes people were in the middle of fixing breakfast or were just about to start. I hated being the “heavy” but Lee refused to do it and since it was a rule that had to be enforced, I was stuck doing it.

On one occasion we were in Lower Pines Campground and came across a bear sitting behind a campsite, indulging in a package of pancake mix that she had stolen from an improperly secured “bear box”. We called dispatch and asked for a Wildlife Ranger to respond (who had to be called out from home because she wasn’t on-duty yet) because it was our first week of patrol and we didn’t know what to do. Campers were gathering to take pictures and bringing their children and babies too close to “see the cute bear”. The “cute bear” probably weighed 400 pounds and the American Black Bear can run 30 mph so getting close is a really DUMB idea.

Some of the calls we were dispatched on during bear patrol included: responding to the Court House (yes, Yosemite NP has its own jail and court) for an alarm sounding, helping a woman who had locked her keys in the bear box (Lee used our personal bolt cutter to cut the lock off), helping a young guy who had locked his keys in his car (Lee used his Slim Jim for that task), taking a report from visitors staying in one of the cabins about a bear who had broken out the window of the cabin to get at food the people had left near the window, helping a Wildlife Ranger release a bear that she had caught in a humane bear trap, helping a security guard scare off a bear that refused to leave the roof of a cabin, and helping rangers keep foot-traffic away from an area where a group of coyotes had a mountain lion trapped up a tree.

We were usually done with patrol by 0800 and Lee would get on the radio and announce that “Desk 26 is secure from bear patrol.” We would then have breakfast and by 1000 Lee would be at the Desk Office. Since I was not a “retired law enforcement officer”, I was not expected to work in the office but I would help when called upon to transfer vehicles to or from the garage located in El Portal, about 30 minutes from the Desk Office, or other tasks that required extra bodies. Because I was rarely asked for assistance, I had lots of extra time so I went on hikes or bike rides with the other couples who were on days off. At the end of August I took a job at the Visitor Center Bookstore, which I enjoyed immensely.

Lee would work at the Desk Office from 1000 until 1600 (10 am to 4 pm) where he would take phoned-in or walk-in reports of stolen property, motor-vehicle accidents, and the like. He was also dispatched to accidents or for traffic control, etc. At 1600 he would go to roll call with the Law Enforcement Rangers and would report on the day’s points of interest. On a rare occasion we were called out, or we responded on our own, to a variety of incidents that occurred “after hours”. On one occasion Lee got out of bed at about midnight and responded to a call he had heard on his police scanner of rangers having trouble trying to arrest four disorderly visitors. You know that he LOVED that!

When Lee came home from work at about 1630, it was time to join Charlie and Gigi and Larry and Carol for “Happy Hour”. That was sometimes followed by a Pot Luck dinner with each family contributing something to the meal, or a walk over to Curry Village for dinner at the Buffet. Other times we made our own dinners but then got together at one of the RV’s for dessert. Both Gigi and Carol were pie-makers, sometimes apple and sometimes blackberry made from blackberries picked fresh by Gigi, Charlie, Larry, and Carol along the trails in Yosemite. Since I’m not a pie-maker, I would bake brownies and provide hot fudge, vanilla ice cream, and whipped cream to put on top of the brownies. Of course, there was also the occasional campfire in the evening (of course we had it out by 2200 per the campfire rules).

After shared stories and lots of laughs, our day would end and we would all retire to our beds in preparation for another wonderful day at Yosemite National Park.
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I really can’t adequately describe how wonderful it was to spend 3+ months is such a awesome place as Yosemite. Between the waterfalls, the rivers, the granite formations, the giant sequoias, and amazing vistas, how could anyone ever doubt the power of our God?! Pictures only tell a very small part of the story, but I hope you enjoy them.

While we were staying at Yosemite, we had the chance to travel a bit. We spent several days on the coast and in Wine Country, and we visited Lake Tahoe. Gigi, Carol and I also took a “road-trip” to Lake Tahoe and left the men in Yosemite to work while we played.

Well, on Saturday Lee and I are off to Aviano, Italy to spend Christmas with our daughter and son-in-law, and on Christmas Eve our son will join us there. The five of us will travel approximately 5 hours by train to Rome on December 30th and we will be there for New Years. Chris, Lee and I will return to the USA on January 2nd.

We wish you all a Blessed Christmas and Joyous New Year.

Until next time…

Lee and Irene Williams
3700 S. Westport Ave #3193
Sioux Falls, SD 57106-6360
Lee’s Cell 703-402-1130
Lee’s Email leonzo@hotmail.com
Irene’s Cell 703-963-4665
Irene’s Email icw1015@hotmail.com