Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
Our plan has been to travel, just a little, between Christmas and New Years. Our first destination, just an hour away from home, was the Merced Wildlife Refuge, a great place for bird photography. I had been here once or twice before and enjoyed the challenge of nature photography where the subjects all have minds of their own.
Our drive was uneventful, on busy Highway 99 and on empty, straight, cross-valley side roads. We hoped the bridge with mastodon decorations was a good sign for seeing wildlife. Maybe.
Our first stop was the Sandy Mush Road entrance to The Merced National Wildlife Refuge. (The road name hints at the swampy history of these wetlands.)
Over the next few hours, we took a couple hundred pictures of scenery, birds, and animals. The cloudy-day light was not perfect, and we could not command the wildlife to do dramatic poses, but we enjoyed it.
Trees and landscape are stationary and always easy to paint or photograph.
Birds love the water, some for a place to rest and others
for the worms and bugs in the "sandy mush" bottom.
Studies.
Birds in flight are hard to photograph, but great to remember.
This hawk won our first prize. He posed for as long as we wanted,
twisting his neck in angles we thought only an owl could manage.
The last part of the Merced "auto tour route" runs through grasslands teaming with
little furry animals.
The Desert Cottontail Rabbits zipped in and out of cover whereas
the California Ground Squirrels
alternated between holding sentry positions and
diving into burrows. Lots of action.
Part two of our safari was at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Complex, about a half-hour west of The Merced NWR. Here, the goal was to visit the visitors center museum and then do an auto-tour around a large paddock that holds a herd of Tule Elk. The museum part was nicely done, other than the park ranger who seemed to be having an off day.
The displays described all the local bird-life and animals, especially the Tule Elk. Originally numbering over a half-million animals, the Tule Elk was hunted almost to extinction, mostly to feed gold rush workers in the mid 1800's. By 1873, they were thought to be gone, but a handful turned up in a remote part of a local ranch owned by Henry Miller, perhaps the most famous California rancher of the late 1800s and the turn of that century. He dedicated a few hundred acres to the elk and ordered his ranch hands to protect against poaching.
For the next hundred years, limited efforts kept the species alive, mostly in zoos. In 1974, a 780-acre enclosure was established on the San Louis Refuge and 18 animals were transfered from the Detroit and San Diego zoos. That herd prospered and led to a Tule Elk population today of over 4,000 animals, held on reserves throughout the state.
The San Louis National Wildlife brochure notes: "Elk are a popular visitor attraction on the San Louis NWR. Due to their large size and permanent residency, they offer easy and predictable viewing opportunities for the public." Indeed, in the five-mile auto tour drive, we did spot a few animals way off on the far side of the compound. At least we think they were animals. That drive, however, almost broke our car as the water-filled ruts and pot holes made passage treacherous.
We settled for a closeup with a bronze Elk outside the museum. If they fix the road, we'll come back, but only if.
By now it was time to get to the Hotel Mission de Oro, another half-hour away. The large middle-of-nowhere resort offered us everything we needed, from Tesla Supercharging, to large room, and a decent restaurant.
Here is a picture of our meal and I have to say that my salad and Marianne's pasta were both darn good, but the exhaustion of an all-day safari may have made us more receptive than usual.
On Friday, we returned to the Merced NWR, in hopes of seeing hundreds or thousands of birds "lift off" in their daily search for nibbles scattered on Central Valley farmland.
Seeing the great lift-off would require departure from the Mission de Oro before dawn, down empty country roads. One or two bird formations pointed the way east to the Merced NWR.
The refuge welcomed us with the same gnarly trees we'd see the day before and, maybe, the same herons and hawks. Like being at a home park.
Birds at the Merced WNR rest overnight on the wetland ponds and leave around dawn to harvest worms, bugs, and grain from Central Valley farmland from dozens of miles around. Ideally, this offers a photo opportunity to see hundreds take off from their overnight rest into a sky colored with a red horizon and puffy clouds. Ideally.
Not today. The sky was gray, with no morning color. The biggest departure occurred far in the distance, so we settled for just a few flying scenes. OK enough.
From the gray photograph excursion, we returned to the hotel for a breakfast with remarkably slow service. We don't normally notice service speed, since we have plenty of time, but we debated leaving a note to management. In the end, we didn't, because we can imagine getting staff in Santa Nella is not all that easy. After that, it was a few hours of writing, reading, and screen-watching. This really is why it takes us twice as long to travel and tour as other people need.
Our afternoon was spent at the San Joaquin Valley National Cemetery, just north of Santa Nella. Opened in 1990, the cemetery is the sixth in the state and 114th in the National Cemetery Administration. The grounds currently hold 15,000 burial and 8,000 cremation sites.
We were most impressed with the solemnity of the place, with grounds in perfect military order. It's good that the Valley can offer such quiet resting space to our veterans and their spouses, with a few squirrels and hawks as full-time guards. A definite recommendation for tourists like ourselves too.
After our cemetery tour, we stopped at a Santa Nella gas station to pick up a Mega-million lottery ticket, sure we would be THE ONES to win the billion dollar plus prize. As I wrote this on Saturday morning, we didn't know if we have one, but we will let you know. (Update: We have a winning number, but for $2.00 only. Better luck next time.)
We decided to end our trip after just two days. Nowhere else reachable was calling to us, so we returned home, to our routines. Maybe we ARE getting old.
Stay tuned,
John and Marianne