Flumes And Their Dangers

We got on a train today, which was exciting since I rather enjoy trains. We drove the half hour down to the train stop and bought tickets for our tour. The cars we sat in had originally been designed to carry logs but had been recommissioned with seats so it could transport tourists. The train follows one of the routes that it took in the early 1900’s when it was used to collect the lumber from the middle of the forest. I say one of the routes because the lumberjacks would often rip up the tracks and redirect them once they had clearcut one area of the forest or another. Luckily, they left just enough trees that the forest has managed to regrow itself over the last eighty years, otherwise there wouldn’t be a forest for us to take a train through. We learned a lot

about the lumber industry of the early 1900’s during our brief train journey. I thought the most interesting tidbit was when the guide talked about the flume. Essentially, flumes were the originally log rides and are actually what log rides are based off of. It was a long, artificial river that was used to transport the logs back into the valley to avoid the physical labour of carting all the lumber in. On the flume, the logs could reach speeds of up to 50mp/h and was pretty dangerous. Now, here’s the fun part. In order to avoid the two day trek out of the forest, the men working would tie together a few logs to make a makeshift raft and ride the flume down to town. They would be on the water

for about ten hours and if they fell off their raft, they would drown. Sounds like a fun way to travel,

doesn’t it? It was quite a short ride, only an hour return with a fifteen minute break in the middle so they could restock the burner. Back at the beginning, we bought a quick snack at the gift shop and then hopped in the car so we could drive into the national park. We didn’t do too much since we had left Kizmet back at the campground, but it was nice to walk around. We stopped inside the South entrance at some picnic table so we could eat our lunch and then did some walking around. The area we were in was called Wawona where they had a really nice

covered bridge and some old residencies from the early 1900’s when people, artists and workers mostly, started to move over to the west before the gold rush. There were lots of log cabins, a tiny prison that had been a and an old well with plaques in front of almost every building. We took our time wandering around the buildings and we were hoping we would be able to drive down to see the giant sequoias but unfortunately, they were too far away. Instead we headed back to the trailer, had dinner and watched Ladyhawke with Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Broderick and Rutger Hauer. We chose that movie because it had been referenced so many times in the book Ready Palyer One by Ernest Cline and I really wanted to see it. It wasn’t the greatest movie of all time but, I mean, it was an ’80’s movie so. Peace out m8s.

#camping #yosemite #california