CHARMS AND DANGERS OF THE MOTHERLODE.

When I return home I never have any doubt that I live in one of the nicest places in California. Murphys Creek runs two miles from my house, right through town, in fact.  My daughter and her two boys came to stay for a couple of days and we drove to the creek to cool off.  The kids like to walk upstream and tube back down while we visit on the bank.

The water is low everywhere this year, and it is kind of fun to float under the bridge.

Or do some fishing from the bridge.  A tented playground is part of the park, visible in the background.

Or you can lounge around an eat cherries and corn chips, which is what we did. Relax. And, for nostalgia’s sake, we walked about two blocks to the Peppermint Stick, an ice cream parlor and enjoyed ice cream sundaes with whipped cream and a cherry on top.  Virginia worked there when she was in high school, and she regaled the kids with stories of working an ice cream parlor and candy counter where kids could order two gum drops, one licorice stick and a sucker and hand over their sticky pennies. Ice cream cones had to be consumed outside.

My daughter, who had just recently done a field trip with students and went rafting down a huge river finally jumped in to get wet and cool off. I’ve enjoyed this creek since we moved here, only more now that I have grand-kids to come and play. It’s a pleasant way to spend a hot afternoon.

While waiting for the garden soup to finish cooking for a light supper, we heard a close flying plane.

The spotter plane is  barely visible in the smoke that we hadn’t noticed until we heard the plane.

Soon the whole sky was a mass of smoke and haze and looked to be very close, which it was, approximately a mile away.

The helicopters began dropping buckets of water and the spotter continually circled to direct them.

A second copter joined the first one and a flurry of cars went up and down the road. We saw folks hauling their horses out of the canyon.

Eventually there were four helicopters and two spotters. The boys wondered why no fire engine came out. We explained to them the fire is in such a steep place, fire fighters can barely get to it. There were fire fighters from the highway side of the fire, we learned later. And my daughter took one camera and I another and we took pictures of every room in the house, every out building and the whole yard…just in case.

The copters were dipping into Utica Reservoir on the highway, and hauling back their buckets. The buckets don’t look like they carry enough water to fight a major blaze, but they do.

After a couple hours of the bucket brigade,  they brought in a long line bucket as the reservoir water got lower.  The helicopters were dumping with their lights on until it got  dark and the ground crews had to hold the lines. Fire tamps down at night and they caught this one right away.

The wind had shifted away from us before it got dark and we were able to go to bed with a feeling of safety, but fire is always a danger in the Motherlode. Other communities suffer hurricanes, tornadoes and twisters, or volcanoes, so we all have our dangers and our charms. This turned out to be a 180 acre blaze with no evacuations. We can sigh with relief and go on about our business. For me, it has been a busy month and I’ve missed blogging more than I ever have before. I have been nursing an injured muscle and have three weeks of therapy coming up as well.

And, then this morning, besides hearing the spotters work the sparks, Karen was towed home with an incapacitated vehicle.  It needs a new fuel pump. Not dangerous and not charming. Dang.

TIGER LEAPING GORGE.

After each day's activity, we return to Jiliang, (lee-john) with its waterwheel churning, strange characters walking the streets and at night, the marvelous market place with people of every description eating by torch-light  along the moat.

The place is fascinating but each day, our guide has plans for us.  After the snow-covered mountain, we returned early enough in the day to grab few pictures before it got dark.

A diverted part of the Yangtze river flows right through the middle of town and is used for everything including washing dishes, dogs and clothing. We wonder about sewage, but don't ask. The water always appears to be clean.
If you get hungry before dinner hour,  which starts  quite late here, you can always grab a snack from a small stand. We joke, Chinese fast food. Ha, ha! We saw a rat being carried out of a candy shop with a tongs but we refuse to be squeamish.  This town rocks, day or night. So, who needs candy?

Children play in the streets without a hovering parent to watch them. It feels like we are in some magic wonderland.

There are unreadable signs everywhere. Little bridges, too, with watering troughs for animals. You are as likely to look up and see a yak or llama wandering the streets on a leash as you are a dog or horse.

Town is always teeming with people. We eat along the moat each night. Viki buys us an unattractive looking bean cake with spices for all of us to taste and it is wonderful, but none of us would have chosen it from its looks. We order various vegetables and meats on a stick the waiter  brings to your table with a small wok of boiling oil in which to cook your food.  We have fried milk for dessert. Safe! We avoid the crickets, snails, pigs tails, beetles, ants, grasshoppers, moths and the ever popular dog meat.

Again, the bus takes us into the Easter Himalayas, this time in the opposite direction of the snow-covered mountain village of Hanzai to a place called Tiger Leaping Gorge.

When the bus can go no farther, we are taken about a mile by rickshaw. We meet our  driver and are thrilled that this is a real rickshaw, not a bicycle peddled device like the one we rode in Beijing that was touristy and contrived.

The trip into the canyon is gloriously beautiful. It follows high above the clean, glacial river crashing down below us.

The road itself is chiseled out of solid rock. In some places, it is wide enough for a small car to get through.

The rickshaw jiggles as we move and the pictures jiggle too. The rickshaw takes as close as he can to the narrow place where the Emperor was hunting a rare black tiger and it leaped across the gorge and got away. Thus the name of Tiger Leaping Gorge.

And there, at the very point of his jump, a magnificent statue of the rare beast. The canyon appears to be about 70-75 feet across at this point and some of the men decide the tiger couldn't have jumped it. Viki tells us the canyon was 7-8 meters, (24 feet)  at the time and the river has widened since then. Other people hike into the mountains beyond the tiger to see a beautiful waterfall, but Viki has asked that we do not go off trail though we see back packers coming in from the wilds. Our tour isn't set up for hiking except for somewhat easy, controllable hikes like at the top of the gondola to see the snow covered mountain, or something that can be done by all with a guide making sure we don't get lost or hurt.

Our rickshaw driver waits for us but we pay him off and several of us decide to walk back. The driver is glad to rush away and return for another fare.

The Chinese are supposedly going to dam this narrow UNESCO canyon on the Yangtze River as part of their 12 dams project. Hopefully not, since the road is something special to behold.

The stanchions holding the chains are quite close to the edge in places and we wonder just how safe it is. It looks as though you could just push one of the posts over. And, up ahead in this photo,  there are guards standing with their backs to the canyon,  making sure no one walks too near the chains.

Near the end of our walk, the water is closer to the road. The return trip is down hill.

The scenery is majestic but the road is ever fascinating.

The canyon road continues but is  fenced off . The chiseled road continues and brings us back to our point of entry.

We hate to leave the beautiful canyon and a tour mate,  Joyce, clowns around as a rickshaw driver. We decided this canyon has more beauty than the Yangtze River canyon.
In a recent conversation about UNESCO, my nephew insisted UNESCO was part of the United Nations. It is not. It began because the Egyptians were going to flood some amazing antiquities to build the Aswan Dam. A group formed to raise money and protect them by moving them from the flood zone. That committee went on to protect and preserve many, many places as world heritage sites so important they should be shared and maintained for all people of the world. To read more about UNESCO, click the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Heritage_Site#Convention_and_background

THE SNOW COVERED MOUNTAIN.

Wu tells us there is speculation that Eskimo culture and Western Canadian natives, all of whom built totems, are descended from Tibetan mountain tribes.

We ride on this very curvy mountain road, with plenty of switchbacks, part paved and part gravel,  steadily climbing.  There is grass, and an occasional meadow,  and a few trees.  No houses or signs of habitation. We pass a couple of kiosks  with people selling trinkets. No sign of where their village is, or how they get there. Then, in the middle of nowhere this beautiful building. It is a restaurant where we are having lunch. We shake our heads. This is China.

In front of the restaurant is this handsome fellow adjusting the feathers on his hat. Without the language we can’t engage him. Vicki is arguing with someone inside and comes out complaining about “government-run restaurants”  but eventually we are seated and enjoyed a marvelous lunch. But for all 14 of us and other wayfarers, there was one western toilet and  several pit toilets outside with very little cover.

We came to a bridge over the river and wranglers were washing and watering their yaks. We wanted to get out and take pictures, but there was no place to park the bus. We begged and Vicki gave us ONE MINUTE.

I climbed down and got a couple more shots, but the place was mobbed and I couldn’t get close. Just the sounds,  the cool water and colorful clothing was enough as four of us  ran back to the bus parked on the bridge.

We arrive in the village of Hanzai at the base of the mountain.  We are greeted by colorful booths with all manner of souvenirs and memorable foods, mostly cooked over open braziers.It was tantalizing.  Exotic foods cooking mixed with a bit of incense burning.

We know instantly why that state-run restaurant is so strategically placed. It is lunch time and the booths are crowded with a mass of hungry humanity. You can’t blame our guide for not wanting us to try these foods because then she has the extra work of caring for someone who gets sick.  A sick person affects the whole group.

One dish was hanarobi cooking in oil. It is a flat dough with rounds of some kind of sausage resembling  salami inside, fried on a 3 foot diameter wok. With boiling hot pots everywhere, spices and chili scenting the air, it was wonderful enough just smelling my way from kiosk to kiosk.

If you can’t afford the high-priced food in the kiosks, you can bring along your own raw duck and cook it on a portable brazier as this family did.

Our goal today is to take a gondola from the village at 7,800 feet to this huge meadow at 10,000 feet to photograph the mountain. It is a couple of miles from where the gondola drops us and we hike the trail  to a boardwalk with a spectacle before us.

Michele Maurer engages an English-speaking, costumed model.

A wooden stage of kiosks sits in the meadow beneath the beautiful mountain.

We have our choice of costumed models  with whom we can have our picture taken in front of the  mountain. It seems a little Disneylandish to us and we decline.

The Chinese tourists seem to love it.

It was a bit hazy, but I got a picture of the much touted mountain peak with an unpronounceable name.

A couple of models taking a break.

If they catch you taking a picture, the hand comes out immediately for money. It is probably unfair and impolite to sneak pictures of them when this is their livelihood. I didn’t get many but it was definitely worth the hike in to enjoy this very unusual experience at the base of this lovely mountain.

The gondola ride down gives a good view how steep it is, and of the surrounding area.  Each car carries two people.

I got paired with this lovely Chinese woman. I smiled. She smiled. I talked, she didn’t understand a word I said. She talked and I didn’t understand a word she said.  I indicated I’d like to take her picture and she assented. Then near the end of the ride, the gondola slows so a photographer can take a Polaroid picture that is instantly developed and waiting for you when you are unhitched from your gondola. I thought I would buy the picture for my companion. She had the same thought  and she held up her hand and said “No pay!” and bought the picture for me. I remembered how to say thank you in Chinese as Vicki taught us. We walked out together smiling and she brought me over to meet her family. Her daughter, Annie, spoke perfect English and was visiting the home country from San Diego. What a small world. We all hugged goodbye.
As I got on the bus, everyone was talking about the Chinese sex “manuals.” Everyone but me had seen them. One of my tour mates pointed to a kiosk near the bus parking. I made the driver wait while I ran over and bought one. Tedd told me that when he boarded our ship, one of the workers approached him surreptitiously and offered him a set. We laughed, he turned them down and I bought one. I was curious and obviously everyone else was too or they wouldn’t have been talking about them.  I passed them around for everyone to see. They are made from two-inch square pieces of bone, nine of them,  joined together in a circle like a bracelet, each carving showing a sexual position.
My partner, Michal is sick as we make a last stop at the end of the parking lot for the pit toilets. These  were the worst ever seen on the trip. God awful, dripping, stinking things really unusable. Thankfully, I’m a camel and didn’t have to deal with it.  Tomorrow, Tiger Leaping Gorge.