Author - Grant
Based In - Yosemite National Park, California
Miles Walked - The equivalent of a marathon
Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157617562718532/
After five days in Yosemite National Park, I am proud to announce that we are completely at one with nature. Admittedly the cable TV, central heating and fully fitted kitchen helped bridge the gap and I’ll confess that I’m still not happy with the insect world (as the numerous spiders whose brains are now smeared across the bottom of my shoe can attest to) but the fact remains that we have survived a week amongst the bear and mountain lion infested woods of this incredible park. Obviously I’m exaggerating as we haven’t seen anything more deadly than woodpeckers all week but that hasn’t made the pitch-black midnight walks with Molly any less intimidating.
So what have we done all week besides walk and eat? Actually, nothing but just those two activities have kept us incredibly busy. Day one we decided to walk Molly into the ground and took her on every dog-friendly walk in Yosemite Valley which added up to 7 miles of zig-zagging between monstrous monoliths and huge waterfalls whose spray you could feel from half a mile away. We’ve seen some cool things on this trip but Yosemite Valley is definitely up there as one of the most incredible sights we’ve been fortunate enough to lay eyes on. As always, the photos don’t quite do it justice but I find that if you take one you particularly like and triple its impressiveness then that’s a pretty good approximation.
Our cabin (which is the size of the average garage but feels like a palace to us after months in motels) is an hour drive from the heart of Yosemite so on day two we stayed local where the highlight of the day was stumbling (literally) on a golf course. Turns out this 9 hole, full sized course is the only one located in a National Park so it would be rude not to play it. And the best part is that it didn’t officially open for another couple of days so it was free. Hence it was rude not to play it twice! As a result of being officially shut, there weren’t any flags out but those kind of details are only important for real golfers as I’m still at the stage of aiming for the big flat bit of grass half a kilometer away from where I initially smack it. Still, either not aiming at anything specific or not having a constant audience (i.e. being a billy-no-mates) really seemed to improve my game. No flag, lonely golf is clearly the way forward for me.
Day three we headed further south to Mariposa Grove which is home to the biggest and hence the oldest sequoia trees in the country. Now I’m no botanist so I wouldn’t know a sequoia from a pencil but even the least cultured Milwall fan couldn’t fail to be impressed by these colossal mega-trees. Our walk took us past the biggest and oldest of them all (the Grizzly Giant) which is a frightening 2700 years old and, to give you some sense of its enormity, its branches were thicker than the trunk of any non-sequoia in the forest. Another indicator is that some had arches cut into their trunks to allow cars to drive through and their pine cones were the size of babies. Others had fire damage resulting in caverns that were bigger than our old apartment. Seriously, they were crazy big and mighty impressive but I’m realising that it sounds like I have some sort of big tree fetish so I’m going to wrap this paragraph up now.
We’d been forced to suffer perfect blue skies. constant sunshine and comfortable 65 degree temperatures every day so it was quite a relief to wake up to drizzle and grey skies on day four which gave us the perfect excuse to minimise the physical exercise and spend an inordinate amount of time sitting around reading, catching up on chores, watching god-awful films (The Incredible Shrinking Woman and Brewster’s Millions) and generally relaxing. These are the kind of days where I use the sentence “I can’t wait to have a home again” a few too many times. Maybe that is why I took full advantage of the kitchen and turned into the perfect housewife; baking bread and muffins, making packed lunches every day and taking a full 24 hours to plan and cook a smorgasbord of comfort dinners. I’ve almost already worn out the “don’t mess with the chef” oven gloves that my mum gave me when I was last in Blackers. Perhaps that’s why we finally sat down and semi-planned out the rest of the trip today? The result is that I reckon we’ve got exactly two months on the road left in us as we’ll not feel like we’ve had the full American experience until we see Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore.
I’m getting ahead of myself though as tomorrow we leave for the liberal, steep slopes of San Francisco. I’m not panicking though, it’s still well within wine country.
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