At the last

I wrote too soon! Another finale. This time at a Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown, the name of which I cannot remember. A round table in a private upstairs room with an enormous, thick, beveled-edge lazy Susan and mounds of food in successive courses to be tasted and shared. Such fun. Good cheer. An undercurrent of, not sadness necessarily, but something unspoken? Our little community, already missing Bruce, temporary by nature, having been focused, generally, on a single point for several days, in the process of drifting apart again in so many directions. A microcosm of real life -- the length and breadth of it.

We left Lee Vining this morning at 9:00, reversing our route back through the Tioga Pass to just beyond Olmsted Point. (Bruce had been advised when he consulted a state trooper that the more direct route to San Francisco via the Sonora Pass, though not closed to coach traffic, wasn't a route he would recommend. Enough said.) Then it was new territory as we headed west, leaving the park again at the Big Oak Flat gate on CA120. Through the passing hours I had a sensation of the day playing itself out in snippets, in snapshots rather than like a motion picture or the gradual unfolding I'm used to. A jerky wind-up toy ... Odd. I guess I wasn't paying attention the way I had been -- working out instead the going back, beginning the process of incorporating the effects of this trip (the photography and beyond) on life day-to-day.

Snapshots:

1. Descending into the central valley via Priests Grade near Moccasin CA, a drop of over 1540 feet in less than 6 miles. The sign for Old Priest Grade went by too fast for me to request a stop. Now that would have been a photograph -- the old priest herself with that sign!

2. A picnic lunch in a park at Knight's Ferry Covered Bridge, the longest covered bridge in California. It's also the site of a saw mill ruin, a window/wall detail shown here.


3. A wind farm on either side of our route through the coastal range's Altamont Pass with hundreds of windmills of varying sizes visible from the road.

4. Increasing traffic and multiplying lanes, the Bay Bridge, San Francisco.

5. Arriving at the Club Quarters, saying goodbye to Bruce, our comfortable, efficient rooms.

6. An "unarmed" (meaning no camera) walk to the Embarcadaro and Chinatown with a travelling companion.

7. That supper ...

8. And, a final night photography session on the sun room of the hotel.



What a wonderful day!