Fresno.

We left Fresno at about four-thirty o’clock over the same road we traveled a year before.  However, before crossing the river, we turned to the right and went up through a town, Pulaski, where we crossed on a splendid cement bridge.  The road was pretty badly cut up from heavy teaming, but we got to Crane Valley about ten o’clock p. m.  We had considerable trouble with our carburetor during the afternoon, and lost much time trying to locate the trouble, but without avail.

The younger members of the party, although the hour was late, went to prowling around the camp for something to eat.  They raided the cook’s pie counter in the dark.  We had had a splendid lunch at Fresno at two o’clock, and Mrs. Graves and I were too tired to want anything to eat, and retired on our arrival.

Crane Valley.

Since our visit to Crane Valley a year ago, we found that the then uncompleted dam was finished.  Instead of a small reservoir of water, we found a vast inland sea, with water one hundred and ten feet deep at its deepest part.  It is six miles long, by from half to one mile in width.  It is twenty-five miles in circumference.  The dam proper is nearly two thousand feet long, and at one part is one hundred and fifty-four feet high on its lower side.  It is built with a cement core, with rock and earth fill, above and below; that is, on each side of the cement work.  The inner and outer surface of the dam are rock-covered.  To give you an idea, of its capacity, if emptied on a level plain, its waters would cover forty-two thousand acres of land one foot deep.  When we were there a discharge gate had been open two weeks, discharging a stream of water two and one-half feet deep, over a weir thirty-eight feet wide, and the surface of the reservoir had been lowered but two inches.  I say, “All hail to the San Joaquin Light & Power Company and its enterprising officials, for the great work completed by them.”  It is a public benefactor in storing up, for gradual discharge, at a time of the year when it could do no good, this vast body of water which would otherwise run to the sea.

What a place for rest are these mountain valleys!  After inspecting the dam, catching some bass and killing a ’rattlesnake, we were all contented to sit around for the remainder of the day.  A certain languor takes possession of the human frame when one has come from a lower to a higher altitude.  One ceases to think, his mentality goes to sleep, he can doze and dream and be happy in doing so.

Again on the Road.

Tuesday morning, leaving Mr. Dougherty, the Superintendent, and his good wife, we started for Wawona.  We traveled up the left side of the lake, over a good road, above the water level, to its extreme western end.  Here we climbed a mountain to an elevation of five thousand five hundred feet, over a cattle trail which was badly washed out, to a road leading to Fresno Flats.  This place we soon reached over a good but steep roadbed.