Yosemite Dan

My brother Dan is going back home soon for a job in Plymouth. I will miss him a lot, and at first I was a teeny bit jealous, but as he tries desperately to cram in seeing as much as he possibly can in the two months he now has left, it has made me realise, again, how very lucky we are to be here.

As part of his efforts to see more of the country, he planned a road trip to Yosemite National Park last weekend and he asked us if we wanted to come along. No sooner had he asked, we were sitting in the car and driving over the Bay Bridge and out of San Francisco. We stayed in an old California Gold Rush mining town called Mariposa, an hour away from Yosemite. It was a tiny cowboy type place that took no longer than an hour to explore, which was lucky really as it was boiling hot, and we had plans to get up with the sun the next morning to get to Yosemite early.

It seemed that the sun had insomnia, as when we got up at 5.30am, it was already alive and kicking. In fact, at 6pm later that day it was still 33 degrees C, and reached 36 degrees on Sunday. Too hot to sleep, and certainly too hot to hire bikes without gears, and travel around Yosemite Valley. It was fun though, until goodness knows how many miles later, my bike muscles, stiff from a fourteen year hiatus, said no more please and refused to work. I sat my jelly legs down, mindful of my saddle sore and drank my own body weight in water reserving some to pour on my head like a real athlete. The park was now filling up quickly and as we had been there six hours already decided we should start heading off.

The next stop for the evening was Sonora, another old mining town, but with a lot more going on. We ate barbecued meat and cold beer for dinner and felt like rather full and very happy cowboys and girl. The hotel was full of motorcyclists and had an antique style wire cage lift which you had to propel yourself out of quickly lest it set off again, and the staff didn't seem to mind that three people were staying in a room booked, and possibly suitable only for one. Either they had seen much worse, they didn't care, or were too hot to care. The antique air conditioning wasn't as fun as the lift and kept us awake most of the evening, so the plan to get up really early again to see another part of the park wasn't quite realised.

We arrived a little later than planned at Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a granite walled valley flooded in 1923 to create a water supply for San Francisco, following the 1906 earthquake. Incredibly, this reservoir is still the place that we get our water from today, a staggering 156 miles away. As well as being so useful (we had already drank 2 liters each of it's bounty), it was beautiful, peaceful compared to the valley which gets most of the tourists (largely due to the fact that Hetch Hetchy has no facilities) and just a pleasant place to be on a Sunday afternoon. We strolled across the bridge at O'Shaughnessy Dam and through the rock tunnel until we felt lethargic with heat, and decided it was probably time to head off home.

(Dan took a lot of photos and some of them can be seen here and here)

The journey back seemed to take forever and we fell foul of the usual US lack of signs and almost ended up in Los Angeles. Over tired and over heating, we had still managed to see a lot of the park, and certainly more than we saw last time we were there and staying slap bang in the middle of it; plus we got to see some real American small towns, the like of which are difficult to describe, or certainly to do justice and which just do not exist in the UK. All of this was possible in a weekend and if that doesn't make me one of the luckiest people alive, I don't know what does.

Shivering in Bear Valley

Following a second evening in Vegas, we had a late start for the next stage in our journey, to Yosemite National Park. We had been told that this little road trip of ours was ambitious, and it was, but we were rewarded richly for our efforts, although it didn't feel like it when we finally arrived at the park a little shy of midnight having been on the road for over ten hours, the last two on pitch back windy roads. After checking in and signing all sorts of forms agreeing that we would put all food, drink, rubbish and toiletries in the bear boxes outside the tents, we then had to rummage around sorting these out in the howling wind, before trying to find our tent in a dark sea of tents by a small beam of light from a torch.

It was chilly outside but nothing compared to how cold our tent was. It was a canvas structure with a proper door and camp beds insides, so luxury compared to our usual camping escapades; except it was damp and the temperature was about minus 3 or 4 degrees inside the tent. We each made up our beds using 5 or 6 blankets each and headed out in numbers for safety into the bear infested woods hunting for the toilet block.


I woke up in the night shivering and try as I might could not get warm, despite having put on my thick hoodie and my coat to bed. I decided to visit the facilities again and bravely grabbed the torch and headed out alone, not having the heart to disturb my usual protector. It was actually warmer outside and by now I was so sleep deprived that I was willing to take on any bear that dared to appear before me. Luckily, I spotted no bears, and headed back to continue to shiver under my blankets until morning, being oddly comforted by the snoring this time. I got up early and went for a quick shower before the others were up, and overheard some girls in the tent behind us say that they had been visited by a bear in the night who had tried to break into their food box and left scratch marks down it in frustration; the same bear box I had passed in the middle of the night. Gulp.

When I emerged from the tent in the daylight, the view which greeted me was spectacular. We were staying in a deep valley surrounded by enormous rock faced mountains with waterfalls caressing down them. Despite the lack of sleep, it was rejuvenating and warm, so wonderfully warm, after I feared I would never be hot again.

A big breakfast and a big walk in the forests to see Mirror Lake, so called as it is so still it reflects the mountain views, and we were on the road again, having been privileged enough to see more natural awe inspiring beauty in five days than in some people's lifetimes.