Saturday, June 16, 2012
Cheri June-15-12
8:23 AM | 
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
Today is Gay’s birthday. I fixed him an omelet for breakfast and then around 11:30 we headed out to do the Tour of Carvings along Vallecito Lake. The carvings are the comeback story of the Vallecito Community following the Missionary Ridge fire of 2002.
Between June 9th and July 28th over 70,000 acres were burned at the cost of $40.8 million dollars. The Vallecito Valley was hard hit, losing 28 homes.
The fire swept both sides of the Vallecito Valley, turning tens of thousands of trees into black poles.
They wanted to pay tribute to the firefighters and help restore tourism to the Vallecito Lake area by have a local wood carver, using actual photos taken during the fire, carve images of firefighting personnel, animals & equipment.
Most of the carvings are mounted on concrete pedestals and are located at various locations around the lake. They stand 18 feet tall and weigh up to 2,600 lbs. They are all carved out of the remains of trees that were destroyed in the fire.
Before beginning the tour we made a stop at the Vallecito Dam. The scenery there was beautiful.
As we began our tour around the lake you can see by the pictures, the destruction of the fire. It’s been 10 years since the fire and the burnt trees stand tall over the new growth that has begun in the area.
We made a stop at the General Store and took time for a quick sandwich and picked up some Elk Summer Sausage. They even had Wisconsin Cheese there!
All the carvings were really great. Such detail, and it was all done with a chain saw!
We also checked out Lemon Dam before returning to the 5th wheel.
At 5pm we headed over to the pavilion here in the park for Wood Fired Pizza. Gay was really looking forward to this. We hadn’t made plans to go out for his birthday because we thought this would be good. We put in our order and waited 45 minutes for our hand tossed pizza and then ended up having to send it back because the veggies on it were cold and the crust was not done. It was a big disappointment. It was only the parks 2nd time fixing the pizzas, so they have a big learning curve on getting their oven hot enough.
They were setting up for a jam session when we left, but we are close enough to the pavilion, we were able to enjoy the music from the 5th wheel.
It was only 44 degrees when we got up this morning but turned out to be a sunny 80 degree day.
To see the pictures click on this link https://picasaweb.google.com/sharpstravels they are in two different albums: Tour of Carvings and Lemon Dam Ride.
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