Yosemite Falls

The morning light contrasts sharply with that of late afternoon.  The row of trees on the far bank of the river are the same trees that were in yesterday's photo.

Upper Yosemite Falls.

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls.

Even though the campgrounds were full, there didn't seem to be many people out and about. Traffic was light and it was easy finding a place to park so that I could simply walk around the meadows in the valley and soak up the views.

On a previous visit in July 2010 I was able to visit Glacier Point (the road was still closed this time) and got soaked at Bridalveil Falls. This time I decided to walk to the base of Lower Yosemite Falls. The trail was nearly deserted, it was very quiet and peaceful - except for the roar of the water which got louder with every step along the path.

There was a hint of a rainbow at the bottom of the falls.

Out on the middle of the footbridge, the mist from the falls was the strongest as was the blowing wind. I got wet, but nothing like at Bridalveil Falls.

A dramatic view of both falls, which is somewhat deceiving as it looks as though the Upper fall is immediately above the Lower fall. But looking at the third photo above, you can see that there is a considerable offset between the two waterfalls. As always, double-click on the photos to view a larger version, then click again to get the full size.

In addition to the road to Glacier Point being closed, Tioga Road (Highway 120 through the park) was also closed so a visit to Tuolumne Meadows was out of the question.  As much as I would have liked to do the hike that takes you to the top of Yosemite Falls, I didn't think my legs could handle the rugged, wet trail. Instead, I simply walked around the valley, had a picnic lunch next to the river, and enjoyed a wonderful, leisurely day.

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "Yosemite Falls," Kinexxions, posted May 14, 2013 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2013/05/yosemite-falls.html : accessed [access date])

Yosemite Valley

Monday, April 29th - - It was 24 miles from the Hodgdon Meadow campground to "The Valley" area, which took about an hour to get there - and it wasn't because of the traffic either! It was simply the nature of the route going up and down and over and around and even through the mountains. Luckily the road into the valley was wider than the road to Hetch-Hetchy!

The late afternoon light was incredible.

Upper Yosemite Falls.

Bridalveil Falls.

Bridalveil Falls from one of the pull-outs along the road back to Hodgdon Meadow. As always, double-click on the image to view a larger version...

Same view, zoomed in a lot. This really shows the "hanging valley" created when the glaciers receded many eons ago leaving Bridalveil creek with nowhere to go except down!

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "Yosemite Valley," Kinexxions, posted May 12, 2013 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2013/05/yosemite-valley.html : accessed [access date])

Ketch-in-up at Hetch-Hetchy

I've been "on the move" for much of the last 12 days since leaving Salt Lake City and have been off the grid for most of that time. I'm happy to say that I did indeed make it to the Coast of California but first I made a little stop at Yosemite National Park before moving on. The campgrounds in the valley were all full but there was plenty of room in the campground at Hodgdon Meadow at the North entrance to the park and I had no trouble getting a site for two nights.

Having heard about Carol's adventures (on Facebook - she hasn't written about them on her blog yet) in going to the Hetch-Hetchy section of the park, and never having been in that area, I thought I'd see if the drive was as harrowing as she described. I'll have to admit that, even in the mini-van, it was rather exciting with the sharp drop-offs and narrow roads. But I do believe that her trip down those roads was probably more than a little exciting - down right frightening - in that big old truck of theirs!

I did come across one turn-out where I was able to stop and take a photo of the dam and reservoir, but you have to look really close to see them! They are there, in the center of the picture.

From the same spot, zoomed in a lot. The Tueeulala and Wapama falls (on the left and right, respectively) can now be seen.

The reservoir and the falls.

That "dark spot" on the other side of the dam is a tunnel which takes you to the trail-head for several trails leading to the falls and beyond. I did walk about a mile along the trail but it kept going up and up and my legs kept getting shakier and shakier!

The view of the valley beyond the dam.
All photos taken on April 29, 2013

The drive back up to the main road was far more intimidating than the drive down to the dam. Yes, I tended to creep a little closer to the inside walls and away from the outer edges that seemed imminently closer than they had been!

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "Ketch-in-up at Hetch-Hetchy," Kinexxions, posted May 10, 2013 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2013/05/ketch-in-up-at-hetch-hetchy.html : accessed [access date])

My Genea-Mecca Sojourn is Coming to an End

After six weeks in Salt Lake City, I'll be leaving Sunday morning. It has been a satisfying and frustrating experience. Although no breakthroughs have been made, more documents have been gathered that add to the understanding of some of the ancestors. Of course, some of those documents have generated more questions - a few which will likely never be answered. But that is the nature of genealogy and family history research, which is a seemingly never-ending obsession.

In addition to research at the library, I've also been working on cleaning up my Legacy database. It is a slow and tedious process but I'm starting to have a good feeling about it. There is still a lot to be done with it but there is light at the end of the tunnel. One of the benefits of this process is that some of the "holes" in my research have been identified and I was able to obtain a few of those missing documents here in Salt Lake City.

One of the highlights of my visit here was being able to spend some time with Denise Levenick, The Family Curator. Denise was here for five days, coming a few days prior to the Utah Genealogical Association's Spring Conference where she was the keynote speaker and gave several presentations. It was a very nice change of pace to have someone to bounce ideas off of and just talk about stuff.

One evening, A.C. Ivory joined us for dinner at The Garden restaurant on the 10th floor of the Joseph Smith Building. Lots of laughing and talking - and we also enjoyed the sunset over the valley!

What's up next?

The coast of California will be my next stop, for about a week of "just relaxing" then I'll be meeting up with some of my Joslin cousins in Missouri in mid-May. After that, I'll be returning to Indiana to "settle down" into a somewhat "normal" life - whatever that is!

G.R.I.P. is on the agenda in July. I'll be attending "Your Immigrant Ancestors’ Stories: Writing a Quality Narrative" with John Philip Colletta and Michael Hait and in August I'll be going to the FGS Conference in Fort Wayne. I'm looking forward to seeing some of genea-peeps again and soaking in some knowledge that will, hopefully, help with the research process.

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "My Genea-Mecca Sojourn is Coming to an End," Kinexxions, posted April 26, 2013 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-genea-mecca-sojourn-is-coming-to-end.html : accessed [access date])

Thank You, Family Tree Magazine

Early this afternoon, I took a break from research at the Family History Library and checked in on Facebook. There I saw a couple of mentions about Family Tree Magazine's Top 40 Genealogy Blogs in 2013 so I clicked through and started reading the article. I was amazed and honored to find that Kinexxions had made the list in the "Story Time" category!

There are many fine genealogy blogs being written and it had to have been difficult to pare it down to just 40. I know I'd be hard-pressed to come up with such a list.  But, like Randy at Genea-Musings, I was surprised to see some very excellent blogs missing. Congratulations to all of those who are listed.

For new visitors here, the post written in January for the 6th anniversary of Kinexxions, Now It's Six, provides links to the "year end" roundup posts and will give you some idea of what's been written in the past. Posts have been somewhat sparse thus far this year but more will be coming in the near future.

Thank You, Family Tree Magazine. I appreciate the honor and the recognition.

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "Thank You, Family Tree Magazine," Kinexxions, posted April 16, 2013 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2013/04/thank-you-family-tree-magazine.html : accessed [access date])

Thoughts on RootsTech

Much has already been written about the RootsTech Conference, which was held last week in Salt Lake City. Randy Seaver has compiled a list of Geneablogger posts in his post RootsTech 2013 Geneabloggers Review. But I thought I'd add my two cents worth...

I managed to arrive on time for the keynote speakers on Thursday morning in spite of having to remove two inches of heavy, wet snow off of Van Dora and then driving in "rush hour" traffic through the valley. That drive stressed me out so much that I decided to forgo the keynote addresses on Friday and Saturday - knowing too that they were being recorded and would be available for viewing later.

I'm not going to give a run-down of the sessions that I attended but will just say that with 6700+ people in attendance, most rooms were crowded. There were several sessions I wanted to attend but couldn't because the room was already at capacity when I arrived 5-10 minutes before they were due to start!

This year I decided to attend sessions on topics that I knew very little about. For the most part, that strategy worked out well. However, I had a big issue with the descriptions of some of the sessions and the fact that very few were identified as Intermediate level. The bigger issue, however, is that several sessions identified as Intermediate were definitely not. And, the titles of some sessions were misleading.

One session, billed as "using technology to solve research problems," was very disappointing. In my opinion, it was a basic beginners level overview of how to do your genealogy - the only "technology" mentioned was the use of the internet and genealogy software. In fact, the speaker, after polling the audience to determine our research level, stated that she expected more beginners to attend.

Some of the highlights... learning about the Genographic Project, picking up some ideas from Denise Olson on using Powerpoint (or other presentation software) to tell short family stories with pictures (photo above), and learning that Thomas W. Jones utilizes online family trees in his research process.

On that latter point, the Thomas Jones session "Can a Complex Research Problem Be Solved Solely Online?" was worth being stuffed into the smallest room available. The session was unlike any other I attended - an interactive experience with the audience responding to questions regarding resources that might be used and then learning from 'the master' what was actually used. Can you imagine getting an email from Tom Jones inquiring about the sources  for your online tree?

Will I attend RootsTech next year? Doubtful. But then, that's what I said last year! I think a better option for me is to watch the sessions that are live-streamed and archived for later viewing. Also, if they follow through on their plans to have 600+ locations holding sessions locally at the same time in conjunction with live-streaming - well, that would be awesome.

The downside of attending virtually, of course, is that you miss out on the interaction with other attendees and spending time with friends. But if RootsTech grows in attendance next year like it did this year, the current venue would be impossibly crowded...

Published under a Creative Commons License.
Becky Wiseman, "Thoughts on RootsTech," Kinexxions, posted March 26, 2013 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2013/03/thoughts-on-rootstech.html : accessed [access date])