East 2010 Day 2

6-15-2010 2100 Lee Vining Ca.
Well, this is the first post of my life as a blogger. So far, I've discovered that I dont know how to paste previously written content into this space.
Lee was one of the two Vining brothers who settled this area in the hopes of striking it rich. They didnt. Also known as Poverty Flat, because of its limited agricultural possibilities, you may already know Lee Vining as the town nearest Mono Lake. Its also the home of the Nicely Family Restaurant,where Sala and I just ate dinner as Fuji waited in the car. We've arrived here by way of Tioga Pass , Tuolome Meadows, Arch Rock Entrance, Mariposa and routes 156 and 140, starting at Pt Lobos at a comfortable 10 AM. Cynthia and Molly were just about to leave to meet the possible little dog addition to the household. Hope they luck out, as we seem to have. Fuji had another great day of travel, meaning that she mostly slept. But stopping at Casa de Frutas alongside East 156 in the Santa Clara valley at Pacheco Pass gave her a peacock chasing experience. The Casa de Frutas is a genuine home grown destination, established by matriarch Clara Bisceglia Zanger as series of orchards and fruit stands, but amalgamated into the present miniature railway, duckpond, restaurant, fruit stand, coffee shop and antique (aka junk) agricultural machinery collection by among other Eugene Zanger, one of her children and alive although retired. Eugene is celebrated by a painting in the foyer of the restaurant which shows him in the act of flipping a coffee cup off its saucer (and presumably catching it unscathed). The plaque asserts he did this action 3 million times over a career of 30 years, earning his 15 seconds of fame on Letterman in 1987. The machinery is worth stopping for if you like rusting agricultural machinery, but do not go out of your way for the home fries.
Travelling across the Central Valley is always a humbling experience. 20,000 square miles, 17 percent of America's irrigated land, $17 billion productivity yearly. Farmworkers bending over plants outlined against the skyline of fields. Cars parked along service roads. Repititive rows of greens, browns, purples. Acres of fruit trees left to die and be burned. Acres of new crops ready to replace them. The Delta Mendota aqueduct, the Sacramento Delta flowing South into a desert made to flower. And then the acres of turkey sheds, the rolling yellow hills laced by delicate dark greens of small oak trees. And then the rockbound immensity of Yosemite, the roaring white water exuberance of the Merced River. It all unrolled under a blue sky. Up past White Wolf, Tuolume Meadows with patches of snow, and at just under 10,000 feet, Tioga Pass, just opened 10 days ago. Across California, from the gleaming surf break off the beach at Seaside to the barren rock of the Eastern Sierra, and the gleaming isolation of Mono Lake.
More tomorrow morning. Hope this new format works.