High Sierra Topix

Thank you for the info Eric. Hopefully they will fix or keep up the road for the future. It has been about 3-4 years since I have been all the way to Edison so I haven't seen the road lately but did have some friends go in early last summer with their boat, which is smaller than mine, and they got bounced around quite a bit and thought it was the worse they had ever seen......and he has been going there since the 60's.

Driving a car is not that bad on that road but towing a trailer or boat can be very difficult.....especially if you take in account the drunks and speed demons who take up every inch in their car/truck/rv/boat.

As Dave 54 said,

Local citizenry working for a common cause has done more than either political party. Or should I phrase it as in spite of either political party.

Last week, I re-watched a lot of the Ken Burns’ National Parks series. One consistent thread running through the series is that one or two incredibly dedicated individuals were responsible for preserving each one of the parks, not only Yosemite and SEKI, but the others as well. One subtext to many of those individuals was that they were incredibly wealthy and chose to use that wealth to buy the land and use their wealthy class connections to powerful politicians to make sure that land was preserved for all time. It’s one of those great ironies that in many cases a wealthy few individuals preserved this land for all the rest of us who never would be able to appreciate it if it was locked up as a private preserve, as was the case in much of the world until recent times. The fact the National Park idea has managed to take hold in so many other countries is quite amazing. The fact it began in the Sierra with Yosemite Valley is something that I appreciate every time I am fortunate enough to be there.

I have to say the concept of one or two dedicated individuals joined by not-quite-so-dedicated helpers is what preserved so much of the open space and parks where I live. My wife and I are good friends of one of those persons and we’re amazed at her dedication, persistence, and patience when it comes to dealing with the institutions and politicians who stand in the way.

I just have to say how refreshing it is to see a four page thread, on the internet, about politics, that has not degenerated into name-calling, angry rhetoric and bitter diatribes. Just about anywhere you look these days you find all of the above and more, and now even the simplest of news stories will descend into a political free-for-all if you read the comments section that follows them. It seems that everywhere you turn idiots (both left and right) are throwing around their untenable and apocryphal opinions on everything under the sun. Here people are doing what? Research? Spreading the blame and the praise equally? Debating in a respectful manner? I feel like I've fallen into some kind of strange, alternate universe.

That's all. I rarely read or contribute to threads such as this one and don't plan to start now. I'm only posting because it is so invigorating and stimulating to see healthy debate and discussion - it's been such a long time that it was beginning to look like a lost art.