Our Sierras Vacation Begins: Groveland, CA
A pleasant chatty drive up the central valley and the flank of the western Sierra Nevada to an old western gold-mining town to rest for our first visit to a remote part of Yosemite National Park. We are going to Hetch Hetchy, a name that is deeply shamed in the water wars narrative of the West, a twinned atrocity to the Owens Valley succubus that the city of the Angels wrought. I gaze through the breakfast room window’s wavy old glass at this town where the construction crews and office housed to build the O’Shaughnessy Dam.
When it was completed, the Tuolomne River filled the magnificent granite domed valley called Hetch-Hetchy, a small twin to Yosemite Valley. If it had been saved, it would have been one of the anchor jewels in American’s crown of national parks, so unique were the geological events that shaped its splendor. But it was sacrificed for the “greater good”, acquired by the growing city of San Francisco for its eternal water supply after 10 years of intense political and legal battles. Woodrow Wilson finally permitted the city to claim the water, and by 1924, the dam was built, in just 3 ½ years.
A short but tiring hike along the shore of the O’Shaughnessy Reservoir, viewing the present day beauty of the drowned valley. Kolana Dome, one of three magnificent formations visible from the dam, stands 2200 feet high above the original valley floor. The maximum water depth is 312 feet, but I think that it probably was about 280 or so today, guesstimating only. So much more of the granite formations was visible than I thought. That said, what is gone is sad to think about: the beauty of the Tuolomne, meandering between the valley walls, all mute and glowing evidence of earthly time’s powerful inevitability to make long slow change.
The waterfalls were not submerged, and the “bathtub ring” so ugly at Lake Mead, Lake Isabella, and other lakes isn’t unsightly here. The water itself is bottle green/black, so deep is it, and with sides and bottom of granite, little blue can be reflected from the sky above. We will never stand on the valley floor, eyes raised to geologic forever, to know the intimate and unique forms of this drowned place. 
Wildlife SightedToday
Black-headed grosbeak, acorn woodpecker, black-throated gray warblers, California sister butterfly, purple finch, female mule deer, California ground squirrel. I was very pleased to have seen the California sister butterfly, a new species for me. We saw quite a few of them. The wings folded look very different than when open.The doe was a lovely sienna orange, small and delicate. The grosbeak is also new for me - I thought it was a towhee, but it had that strong beak and less black on its head.
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