Oakhurst! Eagles, Easter, Big Trees, El Capitan and more!

Deb
Apr 9
4 min read

On the way to Oakhurst we stopped in the town of Firebaugh where Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen is from. The workers at the high school gave us a thumbs up! I guess we were not the first fans to show up in town!

We arrived in Oakhurst April 2nd for a week. We got a new rental car so we could do day trips. With it being Holy Week we had researched and found that there is a Catholic Church called Our Lady of the Sierra in Oakhurst so we could participate in the Triduum. What a gorgeous church! We did miss our parish though.

We stumbled on to something a little different and found Oakhurst Community Center. They have about 8 full hookup RV sites that they have available for when there are events but since there was no event scheduled they let us reserve a site. We are the only ones here! There are little league fields below and the folks park near us but it’s kind of cool to chat with parents and their kids and to watch other people come and go. We were in the middle of a thriving California community! We also watched home school PE day and the local food bank day! Most of the time though it was pretty quiet. Shout out to Joshua the manager! He’s great!

I could not break from my Good Friday tradition so I made a cheese pie in advance and froze it. We made the baked macaroni in our convection oven in the motor home!

Holy Saturday we ventured to Bass Lake where we learned three eagle pairs live. My eagle eyes didn’t let me down and I spotted one pair. We were glad we came prepared with patience, binoculars and a good camera with zoom lens! We got shots of an eaglet and mom or dad coming to the nest. My joy!

Certainly a different Easter for sure! We drove to Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon. What an amazing place. God’s hands at work!

We saw with amazement many sequoias and you could see some withstood forest fires. A few did not make it. We saw the largest tree in the world, the General Sherman Tree, and the second largest, the General Grant Tree. You can’t really understand the size of these trees looking at the photos.

The Sherman Tree was a hike down and at 7,000 feet elevation. We knew the walk back up would be tough so we didn’t go all the way down.

The General Grant Tree in Kings Canyon was a lot easier to access.

A few facts: Sherman Tree is 275 feet tall and Grant Tree 267 feet. Sherman Tree weighs 4 million pounds! Sequoias can live thousands of years! If only trees could talk.

Next day trip was Yosemite National Park!

We decided to go to Yosemite on Monday hoping crowds would be down and I think they were but it was still busy. There is no way to avoid spring break because it spans so many weeks. The directions to the welcome center were confusing but we managed. Yosemite Valley is beautiful and the waterfalls spectacular! It was cool to finally see El Capitan in real life! The one thing we did know is that half the park is still snowbound so there was a lot we did not see and because we are not hikers anymore we did miss some waterfalls. It was a nice day though. We expected to explore Yosemite for two days but we were content with one.

El Capitan is the granite monolith you see once you go through the tunnel. Its vertical height is 3,000 feet and total elevation is 7,573 feet. It has had many climbers over the years. It takes several days to climb it!

Bridalveil Falls is one of the first falls after the tunnel. It flows all year round but is strongest in the spring. It’s height is 617 feet. It was called Pohono by the Native Americans which means “Spirit of puffing wind” because the wind blows it sideways at times. We walked up to get a closer look and I could feel the spray!

The views on the way out were beautiful. Remnants of past fires are a reminder how hard it is to control the flames and what is left behind.

We had some trouble finding open wineries on the Madera Wine Trail nearby so we ventured out to Mariposa and Madera to visit an olive oil shop, olive oil farm, and two wineries! We bought a lot of olive oil!

The first olive oil shop, Costa Livos, was fun. We never did an olive oil tasting before. The owner presses the olives several times. So many flavors! They also had balsamic vinegars from Italy. One we bought is aged for 25 years and is transferred to different barrels during that time to give it great flavor and thickness.

The first winery on the Madera Wine Trail in Madera was Ficklin Winery and is family owned and a port winery. I don’t care for red wine but this was good! They have won many awards. We met Peter, the owner and winemaker. He was bottling some wine when we were there. I have never been to a tasting when they were bottling! The person who was doing the tasting, Chance was his name, was very versed and we learn a lot from him.

We called Rosenthal Olive Ranch and asked to visit. When we arrived we realized we were going to their home and they had the tasting set up in the kitchen! They are a four generation family farm and for many of the generations they grew grapes. The last 7-8 years they switched to olives due to the drought. Olives are drought resistant. They also planted pistachios which are also drought resistant. We learned it takes about 5 years after planting olives to get a crop and 7-8 years to get pistachios!! We walked out of the Rosenthal home with a gallon of their olive oil!!

The second winery was Quady Winery and they specialized in Moscatos. They also had a wine slushie machine. Yummy!