WAML 13 site visit part 2

The exciting part 2 of the Tenaya Lodge familiarization weekend is here!

Saturday's schedule was full, starting with breakfast at 7:30am (there was a promise of no sales PowerPoint presentations) and ending with dinner at 7:00pm. Little did the group know we were in for a lot more . . .

First stop was the historic Wawona Hotel which was, indeed, very historic. With no TVs or phones guestrooms and huge porches engulfing every building, a stagecoach's arrival in the circle drive wouldn't be out of place here. You can see a poorly captured version of the main building above, with other members of the familiarization group making their way back to the bus.

The Wawona Hotel was followed by making our way into "The Valley," as it's called around those parts. Our group was treated to the tour guide stylings of Manny, our awesome bus driver. Manny's ability to tell stories about Yosemite, the land, the people, its history, was amazing. It would come in handy throughout the trip. In the park we stopped at Tunnel View which overlooks the entire Yosemite Valley. There are have been many amazing pictures taken from here, but none with the backs of the exact same heads as I was able to capture with my phone:

Take that, Ansel Adams!

Another interesting feature of Tunnel View is this relief model:

I'm not sure if they took wear and tear from wind and rain into account when setting the scale for the z-axis . . .

We made it to the valley floor with Manny talking about Yosemite the entire time. Stories about specific waterfalls, trees, and buildings. The bus made it to the Ahwahnee Hotel, the grand hotel in the valley. The  Ahwahnee is very nice, historic, and has a lot of stories both Manny and the hotel manager shared with us. Apparently, very late one night, there was quite a ruckus at one of the three Steinway pianos at the hotel. The manager was roused from his sleep by complaining guests. Upon further inspection, the manager found a number of guests rather drunkenly gathered around the piano, singing loudly and carrying on. When the manager approached the group to tell them to stop playing, he realized that the singer was Judy Garland accompanied by none other than Ansel Adams on piano. The manager shrugged and went back to sleep.

The  Ahwahnee is beautiful as you can kind of make out here:

After lunch, we loaded onto the bus to head closer to Yosemite Falls. I was very excited to walk to the falls since I'd come the whole way from Oakland to see some nature and had, so far, seen a lot of different hotel rooms. On the way to Yosemite Falls, we stopped at Curry Village where the famous permanent tent lodging is located. Here's a view of the exit from Curry Village:

While we were waiting for the bus to pick us up, it started to rain. Once we arrived at the main Yosemite Falls area, the rain started coming down really hard. Only a few of us were up for a wet walk to the falls. I was determined to commune with nature, even if I had to wear a rain jacket (my own) and a plastic bag poncho (supplied by Yosemite). It was a wet walk (no pictures due to the rain), but we did get to see frazil ice, which was very cool.

After recovering from the wet walk to the falls, we loaded back into the bus to see a final property which had been remodeled. The rooms were nice, but I forgot to get the name of the property as my pants were soaked (which I realize was my own fault), and I was ready to head back to Tenaya.

In the meantime, the rain had turned to snow. Manny drove/talked us back through the park toward the south entrance, the way we came in the valley. By the time we reached the road, it had been closed due to snow(!). We made another lap around the park to get another bus (our defroster wasn't working right and Manny couldn't see). We faced the prospect of a three hour drive around the mountain back to Tenaya. Which would have looked a lot like this:

When we picked up the new bus, our gracious (and VERY smart) hosts informed us that we should stock up on all the "supplies" we needed at the store for the long journey into night. That was great news! Manny got the bus together and we were ready to roll. At this point, Manny informed us that his dispatch office told him the south exit would be clear and we could make it over the pass with chains. We made another lap around the park: 

View Yosemite in a larger map

Each lap took about 20 minutes due to the snow, bus, and tourists scrambling to buy chains for their cars. Unfortunately this time, the park ranger stationed at the exit told us the road would open in 20 minutes. So we sat in a nearby parking lot, hoping this 20 minutes would be what it took to get us around the short way.

After 20 minutes, the ranger sauntered over to the bus to let us know the road would not open. We had to take the long way around. Manny, being the good sport he is, just started telling more stories, kicked the bus in gear, and we headed out for what was turning out to be very much like Gilligan's three hour tour. Unfortunately for Manny, his microphone stopped working. This did not thwart his desire to share his stories and he kept on telling them, though no one beyond the fifth row of the bus could hear anything.

We eventually made it most of the long way around, with Manny having to put the chains on and take the chains off the bus repeatedly throughout the journey. The last six miles to Tenaya tested our mettle: chains were required but wouldn't stay on the bus. Manny had to stop three times in the last six miles to adjust the chains. It was amazing.

The group rolled into the Tenaya Lodge parking lot at 9:45pm, nearly three hours late. Manny received at least three standing ovations from the group and probably had more stories to tell the next group he takes into the park. The Tenaya staff who were with us were amazing and never lost their composure. The staff at the lodge kept an amazing Basque dinner ready to go so, upon our arrival, we sat down to a delicious and much needed dinner.

The whole point of relating this story is to let you know that WAML will be well cared-for during our meeting by a professional and responsive staff at Tenaya Lodge. Even in the most difficult times during the long ride home, the staff was nothing but courteous and professional even though it was their sixth day of work in a row and they were trapped on a bus with 35 meeting planners. Also, it's a warning: don't forget to bring snow chains with you for WAML 2013!

Pastmaper and preserving and versioning web mapping

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend a meetup to discuss Pastmapper, the awesome historical web mapping project that seeks to recontextualize historic mapping with a contemporary interface. Self defined, Pastmapper "is a new platform for organizing data using the visual language of online maps to describe the world of the past. It’s also the manifestation of months that I’ve spent tracing old maps in Illustrator, learning to hack together code with the Google Maps API, and cramming 19th century city listings into a database."

The idea was to get a number of people who are interested and engaged in historical research and mapping together to talk about the project, our own work, and how Pastmapper might move forward.

One of the most engaging portions of the meetup was Eric Fischer (@enf) describing his interest in false maps of the past and maps of potential futures. These include the mapping of the mythical Laguna Dolores in San Francisco, and the plans to cover nearly the entire eastern portion of San Francisco in freeways during the late 1950s. Both of these situations ended up not being true, though mapped and published as if they were (or were going to be). 

Brian Mount (@brian_mount) discussed his work in creating a web app that allows users to modify San Francisco streets. He discussed the ability to move curb lines to make streets more narrow, close streets, and create a transportation grid of possibility rather than inevitability.

These comments and the interest generated by everyone at the Pastmapper meetup really made me think about how there is so much geospatial information generated in web mapping applications that isn't retained in any way. As today's users encounter Brian's app or planners work on creating the new bicycle utopia in San Francisco, there's literally no way to see what possibilities are created. That blindess of today's possibilities extends to tomorrow's understanding of today. If we couldn't see what the plans were for San Francisco before the Freeway Revolt of 1959, contemporary roads in the city wouldn't make as much sense. Besides, who doesn't feel smug at being able to know the future when looking at the past?

While talking about Pastmapper, which is, itself, an amazing platform for mapping the space of the past, today, false maps of the past, and possible maps of the future, I realized that there are some possibilities for GeoData@UC Berkeley and Open Geoportal to become a platform where geospatial musings can live on and be discovered in the future. It will take some work to figure out how to technically make the connections, but is something worthwhile to investigate.

WAML13 site visit part 1

Over the weekend, I visited Tenaya Lodge and other properties operated by Delaware North at Yosemite National Park as part of the company's familiarization weekend. Since WAML's 2013 meeting will take place at Tenaya, I thought it would be a great idea to see the meeting facilities, lodging accommodations, and, most importantly, taste the food, in person before the meeting. Plus, who would pass up a trip to Yosemite?

Getting There

My family (wife Jenica and daughter Clio) and I set out on Friday morning after rush hour, planning to stop a lot along the way. After stopping in Mariposa for supplies (sandals and craft beer: Dust Bowl Brewery Hops of Wrath), we headed to Madera for another rest stop:

Another stop for lunch, and we finally made it to Tenaya!

Tenaya Lodge property tour

The first order of business was to tour the Tenaya Lodge property. We saw three levels of sleeping rooms, the indoor pool, game room, three on-site restaurants: (Jackalope's Bar and Grill (casual dining), Sierra Restaurant (with a giant patio), and Embers (fine dining), the currently-under-construction outdoor pool (heated and open all year), meeting rooms, and "the cabins," which is a separate set of buildings that house three 1-2 bedroom apartment style sleeping rooms and Timberloft Pizzeria.

Sleeping rooms

WAML has been assigned standard lodging at Tenaya. All sleeping rooms were renovated within the past year and have granite counter tops and flat screen tvs. Wifii is $9.95 for 24 hours and I had a very inconsistent cell phone signal (Verizon) in the room.There's a nice set of rocks in the parking lot where there's a really good signal. The beds were comfy with ample pillows. You can see that the chairs were suitable for reading:

Meeting rooms

Tenaya Lodge has over 15,000 square feet of meeting space. WAML is a relatively small group for Tenaya, so we'll fit in a pretty standard meeting room with air walls for the meeting, lunches, and the banquet. You can see a map of the meeting rooms on the Tenaya site as well as a capacity chart (pdf warning for both). We can bring our own A/V equipment or use theirs. It's nice to have a choice!

Food

One of the nice things about participating the familiarization weekend is that I had the opportunity to meet and talk with a number of professional meeting planners. One thing I found out from a few of them is that there is a saying about planning meetings, "As long as the food is good, nothing else really matters." If that's indeed true, then WAML will have a fantastic meeting at Tenaya Lodge.

Our familiarization weekend group (about 35 people) was able to sample a wide variety of catering services while at Tenaya. We had breakfast, lunch, snacks, heavy hors d'oeuvres, and dinner at Tenaya and other properties operated by Delaware North. Everything was very, very good. A number of chefs had recently changed properties where they were working and their interest in providing food specific to their location was apparent. You can find out more about catering and food on the Tenaya Lodge site. Suffice it to say that we'll be well fed and happy! Delaware North has emphasized well prepared, sustainable food for quite sometime. It really shows in the care they provide at Tenaya.

In addition to the restaurants mentioned above, there's the Parkside Deli which offers quick breakfasts, sandwiches, and food to go.

Look for part 2 where I'll detail the exciting adventure the familiarization group had touring other properties in Yosemite. Plus: snow, outdoor beauty, and field trip ideas!