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Heading south - Mt Shasta is always magnificent
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It's very viewable from I-5 around the town of Weed, CA
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All those turtles means it's the Turtle Beach Fish Camp in Manteca
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Why we came - satellite internet dish installation
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Big dish = internet. Small dish = TV. Proper priority, right?
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One of Manteca's murals.
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All the murals are within a few blocks of the middle of downtown
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Some people have the audacity to park in front of them
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The grand plan is for 40 murals over the next 10 years
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They have an annual "Mural in a Day" community painting project
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And some are painted by the local muralist
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Guess who funded this one?
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There was a wedding in progress in the hall on the right
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San Jose and the famous Winchester Mystery House
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A gingerbread model of the mansion, built about 10 years ago
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The "$25,000 room" with lots of uninstalled cut glass windows
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Impressive under ambient light
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One of many Tiffany windows - spider webs are a recurring theme
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A bedroom furnished as it might have been when the house was used
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More spider-web cut glass windows.
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The requisite pump organ - not original to the house
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A window in the middle of the floor, with a railing around it.
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The oriental fireplace is original to the house
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Another Tiffany window
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Some of the damage sustained by the San Francisco earthquake of 1906
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More Tiffany windows
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The only shower in the 160-room house
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A glass roofed room
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The house sits on 4 acres today, 106 acres back then
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In one of the kitchens . . .
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The fireplace is original to the house, the rest of the stuff isn't
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Mr. Tiffany made lots of windows for this house - this is the front door.
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As a sitting room might have looked
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In an unfinished ballroom
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Every house needs a pipe organ
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Our tour guide and some of the group
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A big water pump (and a bigger cactus)
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The roofline of this place is very interesting
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A 100-year-old grapefruit tree in full fruit
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The mansion has a magnificent exterior
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The grounds are extensively landscaped
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Mrs Winchester liked the number 13
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This statue commemorates Indians killed by the Winchester rifle
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One of many fountains
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A patch of the original exterior colors
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Some of the gardens
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Another fountain
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It's approximately 150 times the size of our home on wheels
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Another fountain
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Topiary is always neat
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The Three Frog Fountain
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A Spouting Stork
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Lots of parts from projects abandoned when Mrs. Winchester died
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Great roofline
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Someday we'll have to go "nowhere" . . .
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Love those coin-op music boxes
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We'd never been here before . . .
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The road up from the San Joaquin Valley is steep and winding
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Lots of good views
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Our first sighting of Half Dome
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And of Bridalveil Falls
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Cascade Falls, about 10 miles inside the west entrance
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Every change in lighting creates a whole new view
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This "little" fall drops several hundred feet
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Looking into the valley
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Many of these falls dry up in the summer
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Upper Yosemite Falls - over 2800 ft high
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These granite cliffs are absolutely spectacular
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Yosemite Falls changes shape as the winds blow
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The famed El Capitan
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And Bridalveil Falls
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El Capitan attracts many mountain climbers
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Can you see them? Three climbers are perched above that yellow "wart"
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What a place to pitch a tent - it hangs there, resting on thin air!
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The glacial scouring of the granite is spectacular
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There are always wonderful views
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El Capitan on the left, Bridalveil on the right
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Sometimes the best route is thru the rock
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Even in the clouds, the views are great
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Bridalveil Falls is 620 feet high. We must have been higher
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Waterfalls in the mist . .
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We kept coming back to Yosemite Falls
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Don't know the name of this fall . .
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Dogwood was in plentiful bloom
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Trees full of blooms everywhere
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There's Yosemite Falls again
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One of the best ways to get around in the park
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Even in the rain, Oregonians keep touring . . .
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Even non-famous rock formations are spectacular
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Gee, that's nice
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Judy likes this picture
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Al likes this picture
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Some snow around Glacier Point
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Bridalveil again
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Cascade Falls again
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And again
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And again
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Above the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir - Tueeulala Falls and Wapama Falls
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The reservoir isn't on the usual tourist routes
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It's in the northwest corner of the park, way off the beaten path
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There are also several falls over 1000 feet high
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Some get really small after the snow melts
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Hetch Hetchy was once called the twin of Yosemite Valley
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O'Shaughnessy Dam was built in the 1920's and 30's
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It's over 400 ft high and impounds almost 400,000 acre-feet of water
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85% of the fresh water supply for the San Fancisco Bay Area is here . .
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Enough water is spilled to keep the Tuolumne River flowing
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They say the river is "Wild and Natural"
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San Francisco applied to build the lake after the 1906 earthquake
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The conservation battle was bitter and long
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Congress finally gave approval in 1913.
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The first phase was finished in 1923
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The second phase was complete in 1936
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Even when waning, the falls are impressive
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You can hike to the tops of these falls. You can. We didn't.
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You're seeing just a few of almost 500 pictures we took
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It's a really neat place
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Even if we didn't actually get closer to the falls.
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An artist working water colors (fittingly).
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Some kind of spectacular
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Downstream 20 miles this river ran thru our campground
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It was well worth the 40 mile roundtrip to see this place
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Judy says it's burls. Al says it's a natural Dolly Parton.
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All ages walk down into the grove of giant Sequoias
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Two big old things in the woods
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Good deed doing - and one humongous tree
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Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls
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Judy likes this tree
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It had a nasty skin condition
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Same tree, other side
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Half Dome in the clouds
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Upper Yosemite Falls again
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Some granite walls are so smoothly polished they glisten
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Neat white water on the Merced River
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The river runs through most of the Yosemite Valley
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Mother Nature's Pick Up Sticks . . .
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More dogwoods
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More white water
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Still more dogwoods
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Perfect blooms
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Isn't that great?
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Neat
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Back at Cascade Falls
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The road crosses the creek about half-way up the falls
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We watched this for a long time
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We hear the falls aren't as full in the summer
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We're glad we came when there was lots of water
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One last shot of flowers