It was a do-over of a trip.
My friend and I visited Yosemite in early October, a trip planned back in June. Back then the Creek fire was still months away from starting, but by the time we showed up at our Yosemite West rental, it was clear that our plans would be scrapped. Heavy smoke throughout the park made hiking difficult. We had some nice birding moments, but missed out on the overall experience of the park. On our drive back to the bay area, we began planning our return.
This time we stayed at the Yosemite View Lodge in El Portal. As much as we love camping in the park, it’s less practical in winter since it gets dark so early. (And on a chilly night, I gotta admit it’s nice to just roll into a warm bathroom without getting dressed up and crawling out of a tent.) Our room overlooked the Merced River, which tumbles over boulders as it drops out of the valley (the title photo is the view from our balcony). Even with the lower flows this time of year, it’s still impressive. Also, the rooms have kitchenettes, which meant we could cook for ourselves and avoid public dining.
We knew the trip was off to a great start when literally the first bird we saw after checking in was a dipper, working the rocks below our room.
We still had a few hours of daylight so we headed into the park to walk along the river just below El Capitan. When we’d been there in October, that was one of the high points, with at least five Pileated Woodpeckers working the trees on either side of the river. This time, they had moved on and it was fairly quiet bird-wise. But it was still Yosemite — and the fall color was lovely.
Back to our hotel and a dinner of homemade tamales, a nice bottle of wine… and since it gets dark so early now, a jigsaw puzzle to occupy our evenings.
Friday morning was off to a great start — dippers on the river rocks; hermit thrushes, black phoebes, kinglets and butterbutts working the willows; a redtail in a tree across the water and perfect cups of coffee to warm us while we drank it all in. I went for a refill and the day took an abrupt turn — I miscalculated the width of the door and brushed hard against it, tearing my continuous glucose monitor off my arm. I couldn’t go three days without checking my numbers, so we’d have to drive to Mariposa to get a monitor and test strips. That was okay, because we’d planned to visit Tuolumne Meadow, but weather was coming in and the road would likely close during the course of the day.
At least we could take our time because I didn’t really need to test again until lunch. We decided to explore El Portal and checked out a road heading west on the other side of the river. This stretch of river is popular with rafters in the summer, but in late fall we had the place to ourselves. Birds were abundant, though it was mostly just a handful of species: juncos, white-crowned, golden-crowned, song and fox sparrows, spotted and California towhees, hermit thrushes and robins, black phoebes, scrub-jays and… kinglets. Everywhere, ruby-crowned kinglets.
At one spot, the kinglets were so vocal that we heard them from 30-40 yds away (while looking bear poop in the road). Ooh! Maybe a sharpie was lurking in the hillside scrub. My friend hopped out to search while I went to a park a few hundred yards away. “Anything?” Thumbs up! When I got there, a fun surprise sat in the tree — a Northern Pygmy Owl. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen one, so quite a treat. The kinglets eventually drove it deeper into the vegetation and we moved on.
At Briceburg, we decided it was time for another diversion and took Briceburg Road as it followed the Merced River for about 5 miles. It was rather quiet bird-wise, but you could tell that in spring and summer it would be bursting with song between the riverside willows and hillside chaparral. Mental note to check out the campgrounds next year…
Finally into Mariposa, in and out of the pharmacy, and a quick stop for cold-brew coffee at a place we’d found on a previous trip (Moonbow Espresso — worth a stop!) So now, what to do with the rest of the afternoon? Maybe we could head back to a winery we’d visited the year before, Butterfly Creek. Very reasonable prices for some nice wines, a great setting, friendly owner, even friendlier dog and a 22-year-old barn cat — what could be better? We were very sad to hear he had lost this year’s entire harvest to smoke taint, but we were able to buy some of the previous years’ wines and some other goodies. The humans’ loss was the birds’ bonanza — he began telling us about all the great birds who’d been around, and invited us to walk the grounds to see what we could find. Bluebirds, waxwings, blackbirds, robins and other thrushes were abundant — the berry eaters were having their fill!
Another nice dinner (scampi and sautéed brussels sprouts), one of our new bottles of wine and back to the jigsaw — this time with a nice nightcap to go with it.
Saturday dawned rather chilly and there was a hint that rain was on the way. (Well, also a forecast.) We lingered over breakfast, farted around on the puzzle a bit … and then our phones blew up with texts. AP had called the race for Biden/Harris. Not many better places to get the news. The birds made joyful noise and so did we.
A visit to the high country was out of the question given the forecast, so we headed back to the valley. Even the crowded spots weren’t too crowded, but we headed for a trail from Yosemite Lodge that follows the Merced River. It was the expected mix of birds — juncos, sparrows, more juncos, jays, kinglets and more juncos. We heard a Red-shouldered Hawk calling (a pair has bred in the valley for the past several years). While I was trying to puzzle out a plant, my friend tried to get eyes on the hawk. She saw it in flight and pointed me to it just as it ducked behind trees. We waited for the hawk to emerge and… out popped a Bald Eagle.
Neither of us had ever seen one on the valley floor — what a treat! And to see it just after hearing the news that it appeared our democracy had been saved? Perfect. (Also, as I was posting these photos, I think I spotted the eagle flying in — look closely at the clifftop on the left in the “never disappoints” picture.)
We headed toward Yosemite Falls (dry this time of year) intending to take the trail to the Yosemite Village. To our surprise, it was actually pretty busy. Most of the time, even midsummer, you might pass a dozen people on the mile long walk. We decided to try someplace different, and the decision was re-affirmed by the first raindrops hitting our heads. By the time we got to the car, it was a full-on hail storm. Oh, hail no.
We headed out of the park and went back to Incline Road to see if the owl was still around. No luck there, but we got in a nice walk during a lull in the rain. We called it an early afternoon, birded from the balcony of our room again, had dinner and wrapped up the jigsaw.
Sunday morning was even rainier, with repeated squalls of hail. We consoled ourselves with the thought that it would certainly help with the Creek Fire. We cleared out pretty quickly after breakfast and headed to Merced Wildlife Refuge.
Birds at the refuge don’t get swallowed up by the landscape quite as easily as at Yosemite. We’d stopped by last month and waterfowl were just starting to show up — they have now arrived en masse. (Did I have the sense to photograph the masses? No, of course not.) A few highlights for this city dweller:
One reason we had decided to stop at the refuge was a report of a female Vermillion Flycatcher, a species that we likely would have seen this summer if our Arizona trip hadn’t been cancelled. She would be a reminder of the year that could have been. We were surprised to find her in the southwest corner, about a mile from where she had been reported. We stopped to look at a Say’s Phoebe and realized — nope, it was our bird.
We were even more surprised when we got to Bittern Marsh, where she’d originally been reported — because we saw a female Vermillion Flycatcher, and it appeared to be a different one, much more like adult female plumage than the first. And then… a male.
He appeared to be a younger bird, just coming into his glorious reds. Did some of them breed in the area this year? You have to wonder.
All in all, a great trip. We had planned to unplug, knowing that it was going to be media insanity that week. We succeeded, but with just enough connectivity to get the one story that made the weekend perfect. While family and friends were (literally) dancing in the streets, I was perfectly happy to cheer the moment with nothing more than the sound of the rushing river.