Mx. Fox's Class

We just got back from Yosemite National Park! It’s only about 4 hours away from San Francisco and was totally amazing! We were hoping to see Firefall but there wasn’t enough precipitation this year. We did get to see Half Dome turn scarlet at sunset, though! We also encountered a really cute California ground squirrel — and later found out some of the squirrels in the park are vectors for the plague.

If you zoom in closely at the photo of El Capitan, you can see the rock climbing making their descent. A man named Alex Honnold climbed to the top of this granite monolith without and rope in 2017. Here is an article about it!

We saw lots of bark beetle damage on the trees in the park. The little beetles look like mouse droppings. They lay their eggs inside the tree’s soft phloem and then infect the tree with a blue fungus after they’re done. The fungus turns the tree into food for the beetle larvae and also kills the tree. Some scientists think the drought and shorter winters caused by climate change are helping the beetles and the fungus they leave behind damage more trees than ever before.