California: Second Leg of the Trip

This is part two of a four part report on my recent vacation/work trip to San Francisco and Yosemite National Park.  Part one is here.

I’ve created custom Google maps for each leg of the trip, and

here is a link to the one for this part.  I spent a lot of time this past weekend working on these maps.  I had not figured out how to highlight the route before, and it is a time intensive process when you’re dealing with those mountain roads, but not so much an issue for the straight valley roads, or straight Missouri highways, for that matter.  I got the idea from Yosemite Hikes, a really useful resource for hiking in the Yosemite area, although it did lead me a little astray as I’ll relate later in this post.  Still, there is lots of information for each hike, the maps are great, and the author is a funny guy.

So, the first part of the trip ended, for me, after I ate lunch in Merced, California, on Day Two of the trip.  After lunch, I got on the Yosemite All-Year Highway (Highway 140 through Mariposa to the Arch Rock Entrance in Yosemite) and almost immediately left the San Joaquin Valley behind me.

It’s not far out of Merced that the road begins to climb up and down and the surrounding countryside begins to get a little hillier and a little rockier, but while the road is still pretty straight, you pass two large hills with flat rocky outcrops that are north of Highway 140.  They are the first real foothills of the Sierra Nevada on that highway, and I immediately thought of them as watchtowers.  In fact, I nicknamed them both Amon-Sul after the watchtower in Lord of the Rings, because that is how nerdy I am.  I think I’ve highlighted them correctly in the Google map above, so if you happen to be from that area and know anything about those hills, please let me know.  They really captured my imagination.  If I was a road-builder, I would have built that highway so it would run between those hills and thus they would be a real Gateway to the Sierra.  But I am not a road-builder, just a person with an over-active imagination.

Almost immediately after Amon-Sul, the highway began to climb into the foothills and became very curvy, but there was very little traffic coming or going.  It didn’t take long to get to Mariposa, which is another town full of hotels and motels catering to the Yosemite trade, but is still about an hour outside of Yosemite Valley.  Mariposa’s problem is that they deal with a lot of tourists but haven’t managed their tourist-information signs very well.  The rest area is not the same as the tourist information building, but signs were poor for either of them.  I had to turn around several times while looking for both.

I really liked Mariposa.  It obviously has to handle a lot of tourists, but it clearly get good money from that trade- not just because of those passing through the town, but also because the county collects a pretty hefty tax on all the hotel rooms, including those in the National Park itself.  I am always pretty awed by communities that take matters into their own hands when it comes to fleecing the tourist trade, especially when it’s a small town.  I had to pay the charge three nights in a row, and I didn’t mind it a bit.  I’m sure it helps to keep the roads, schools, and government offices in good condition.  Excellent work, Mariposa!

A little while outside of Mariposa, the road enters the Merced River canyon.  The Merced River is a very wide and shallow river for one that runs from the mountains.  I’m used to the deeper, narrower channels of Rocky Mountain streams.  But it was very rocky and very scenic.  The walls of the canyon climb straight up, and they’re gorgeous at this time of year.  Many of the steep slopes were covered with flowers, especially bright orange California poppies.  (Red Oriental poppies are my favorite flower, but the orange California poppies are right up there.)  It sometimes looked like huge swaths of orange paint on the hillside.  Plus, the redbuds were in bloom along the river banks, and it was really beautiful.

I haven’t really talked about the flowers in bloom in California, but I was pretty surprised by them.  I saw daffodils, poppies, redbud, mustard flowers, lupine, and iris blooming, while in Missouri we’re just barely out of the daffodils and into the redbuds.  Never mind the iris, which won’t bloom for weeks!  I couldn’t believe that all of those flowers could be blooming at once.  Amazing.

But back to Highway 140.  At one point, traffic on the two-lane road came to a halt at a stop sign (with a fifteen-minute cycle) because a rock slide from one of the slopes covered the highway.  A couple of makeshift bridges and a very crude one-lane road was built onto the other bank of the Merced River, and the traffic is one-way for a little while there.  You can see the rock slide very clearly from the detour.  It’s pretty amazing.  Here is an aerial photo of the slide, though the road on the other bank isn’t built yet.

Just after the detour is the Savage Trading Post, which is just a few buildings that don’t seem to be in much use now, but is the trailhead for the Hite Cove trail.  Hite Cove is an abandoned mining settlement about 4.5 miles down the trail, but the first couple of miles of the hike are supposed to be beautiful in the spring as the trail follows slopes painted with wildflowers like I’ve described above.  So I had planned to stop for at least a little bit of the hike, and I wasn’t the only one as there were several other cars in the turnoff as well.  I put on my hiking boots and hiking socks, shouldered my camera bag, and, tripod in hand, I was off on my first hike of the trip.  Of course, I wasn’t expecting the elevation gain.  It was a very steep walk to the path along the slopes, and then the path was cut into the side of the hill with a very long fall to the south fork of the Merced River below.  I didn’t get very far before I was persuaded to stop by the lure of my macro lens and the poppies. 

This is where I had a really bad scare.  I had taken quite a number of photos along the narrow trail with my camera on my tripod.  (I rarely shoot without my tripod, even in bright sun.  I don’t have as much faith in photos taken without a tripod.)  Then, ready to move on, I left the camera on the tripod while I picked up my camera bag to sling it over my shoulder.  In that instant, the camera and the tripod tipped over and started rolling down the hillside.

I thank my lucky stars that I caught myself before my first impulse took over, which was to reach out and grab the camera.  If I had, I would have died.  The hillside was that steep, and I am that un-coordinated, and I would have fallen and rolled many hundred feet to a rocky end in a mountain stream.  My disappearance might have been noticed as I was not far from the trailhead and I think my windbreaker was still lying in the dusty path, but I would have died.  In my mind, it’s one of those slow-motion moments where I simultaneously put down my camera bag and attempted to stop the tripod’s rolling by sheer force of mind while doing that long, drawn-out wail of “NOOOOOO!”  Sounds funny now, but it wasn’t then.  The tripod and camera stopped rolling about five feet down the hill, but I am telling you that it was steep.  So steep that I couldn’t just step off the path and trust that I could hold my balance.  I had to sit on the path with my feet secured, and ease my butt down a little before I was able to grab the camera strap and haul it to the path.  I was shaking like a leaf and had to stop at this point just to catch my breath and steady myself.

Just at that moment, another hiker, an older woman, appeared just a few feet away, coming from the direction of Hite’s Cove.  I think she was surprised to see me looking like that, clutching my camera like it was a baby, with a mixed expression of fear and relief.  She hadn’t seen me drop the camera or grab it back, but I feel certain that she might have seen me if I’d actually fallen.  Surely she would have heard me scream.  In any case, she realized that I had just averted danger and was exactly what I needed right then- a friendly face, even if a stranger.  Our encounter was only a few seconds, but it was enough to get me up and moving again- this time, still clutching my camera, back towards the car instead of onwards.  I checked both camera and lens for scratches.  Miraculously, the camera was unhurt.  Its enormous LCD screen is covered with a replaceable plastic protection screen that got a little scratched.  My Tokina 12-24mm f/4 lens, which had been covered with a circular polarizer at the time, was fine too.  The circular polarizer (which is a type of filter that screws on the end) did have a couple of tiny scratches but, again, nothing bad.  I continued to use it throughout the trip.  This is why they tell you to get UV filters for your lenses, because if the lens takes a fall like that, you don’t hurt its front element.  Unfortunately, I had decided against getting a UV filter for the 12-24mm because the lens is so wide that the filter would cause vignetting, especially when stacked with the polarizer.  But I’m glad the polarizer was on it when it fell.

God, the whole episode was so stressful and scary that I am still a little unnerved by it.  I sat in my car for several minutes after I’d shaken the dust from my jeans and even downloaded all the pictures to my computer just in case.  I even broke out the vegan cookies.  But eventually I could move on, and managed to stop and take more pictures in the few miles (from the safety of the shoulder of the road) before the entrance to the park.  It was ‘get back on the horse’ type of feeling, and necessary.

El Portal is the last stop before the park, and the last gas if you don’t want to go out of your way when you’re headed for Yosemite Valley, because there is no gas available in Yosemite Valley.  I have a receipt somewhere for the price I paid for gas in El Portal- I think it was nearly $4.50.

After El Portal, it was a short couple of miles to the Arch Rock Entrance, where I paid $20 for a seven-day pass and entered Yosemite National Park.  There is actually a rock arch near the entrance that you go through if you have a small car and are headed east, because it is not very big.  After that, the Merced River is on your right as you drive towards the valley, and the cascades here are spectacular.  It looks almost fake, but it could not be more real.  There’s no earth-moving equipment in the world that could place a 1000-ton, house-sized boulder so perfectly into the river like that, not to mention the hundreds of others just like it.  I could see then why some call Yosemite a natural Disneyland.  The river canyon here had that feel, but it was all real and it was all beautiful.  I didn’t get very many pictures here, though, because I never seemed to be there at the right time.  You have to get soft light to capture those, and I was there during the hardest light of the day.  So, while I enjoyed the drive, I pressed on towards Yosemite Valley.

Yosemite National Park, which is located in the central Sierra Nevada range on the eastern side of the state of California, is about 1200 square miles in size, eighty miles from east to west at the center, and the elevation ranges from 2,000 feet to 13,114 feet.  The most famous features in the park are visible from Yosemite Valley, which is also the center for tourist activity and open year-round.  Many of the other roads in the park are closed during the winter months, and some don’t reopen until June (such as the Tioga Road).  The valley is about seven miles long and roughly a mile wide.  Although there are permanent residents in the park, mostly it is a place for tourists.  There are four lodging facilities run by a contractor for the park service, and several campgrounds.  One of these is the famous and beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel, which was built in the 1920s out of what looks like redwood but is actually concrete (because of fire hazards).  It is at the high end of the cost for lodging in the park, at about $250 a night.  There are some motel-style rooms for $150, and then you can stay in Curry Village in a room without bath for about $110.  Guess which I was in?

Curry Village is at the very east end of Yosemite Valley, tucked up against the mountains.  It is late to get sun in the morning and early to get shade in the evening, but I can’t imagine it’s very comfortable in the summer as it certainly doesn’t have air conditioning.  You can camp there, you can stay in a tent cabin (we called them perma-tents when I was in Girl Scouts), and you can stay in a hard-sided cabin with linens and propane heater provided, but even that is pretty rustic.  I think there are some cabins with bathrooms in them, but for those without, they are shared facilities.  The shower rooms are even more separate.  I was lucky that the bathroom was just behind my cabin, and even the shower wasn’t very far.  I thought the whole thing was very pleasant and a lot of fun, but Tracy would not have enjoyed it at all.  So, you know, to each their own, right?  In the room were two double beds (though it would have been very crowded for four people), a bedside table, a desk, a chair, and the propane heater.  The beds had sheets, a wool blanket, and a sleeping-bag-like comforter.  Very spare.  Two lights, both of which were CFLs that took some time to warm up to a useful brightness.  Four total outlets, and if you needed more than one of them, you’d have to unplug the lamp, the clock, or the heater.  As I carry quite a few things that need charging, I went without clock or lamp most of the time I was there.  Many of the cabins were individual buildings, but some shared back walls with another cabin.  Mine was like this, and boy was that a thin wall.  The family next door had children who jumped on the beds, and not only could I hear their voices but I could discern entire conversations without even trying to listen.  In return, I got up at four-thirty every morning and they had to listen to me ‘tiptoe’ around my cabin in my hiking boots.

Because of the relative remoteness of Curry Village, it is very prone to bear sightings.  I signed not one but two waivers about bears while checking in; they warned me to take all the food and toiletries out of my car, and that absolutely no cooking would be allowed in the Valley, even in the campgrounds.  I could keep them in my hard-sided cabin, but those in tent cabins or camping had to use bear lockers.  Playing in the lobby were video loops of bears breaking into cars for food and visitors cleaning up broken windows and destroyed car seats.  I was even warned against keeping empty coolers in the car because most bears in the park could recognize them by sight.  Bears have even been known to break into cars that were completely empty of food just because the smell of food lingered in the vehicle.  But I didn’t see any bears while I was there, and I didn’t hear of any bear sightings either.

Curry Village, along with each of the other lodging facilities as well as the main visitor area of the park, has several dining facilities and shops in it that sell souvenirs and hiking necessities, but I didn’t feel that the park was too commercial.  I ate only a couple of takeout sandwiches from Degnan’s Deli (located in Yosemite Village) while I was in the Valley; the rest was from my store of groceries.

Yosemite National Park, and especially the Valley, must see a lot of visitors in the summer months.  The roads are not very wide, and visitors are encouraged to leave cars in parking lots (though not overnight unless the owner has a pass from one of the lodging facilities or campgrounds) and ride the free shuttles through the park.  There are even shuttles that run from Merced and other outlying towns so that visitors can ride into the park each day and leave their cars behind.  I’m sure it’s totally necessary in the summer.  Many of the parking spots for trailheads were limited to a few at a turnout.  It was smart of me to schedule my trip during midweek in April, because I was able to get parking where I wanted it.  The only times I took the shuttles were when the roads to the trailheads were blocked from traffic, like to the head of the Mist Trail.  But otherwise there just wasn’t that much traffic in the park while I was there.  And the waterfalls were beautiful, while they dry up in late summer.  So my advice to you is that you should come to Yosemite in the spring.

After checking into Curry Village and hauling all my luggage and food into my cabin, I went out and took some pictures of El Capitan and other park features that looked good in the late afternoon light.  But I was a little frustrated because many of the roads in Yosemite Valley were shut down for construction, and though I had planned out different spots to cover while I was there, I couldn’t get to them.  So I went up to Tunnel View instead, and was rewarded with the iconic view, bathed in the sunset light.  I also discovered that, while I couldn’t get any cell service on the valley floor, I could get it at Tunnel View.  So I stayed and called Tracy and chatted with her for a little while, then got out and took more pictures before I headed back to my room.

The next morning I was up way before sunrise (I tried to do that every day, both because sunrise is my favorite time of day and because I thought I could get around jet lag that way), and I went to Yosemite Falls.  It was a great time of day for it because hardly anyone else was out and about.  I parked near Cook’s Meadow and walked across that on the way to the falls, and met up with several grazing mule deer.  (No one has ever been killed by a bear in Yosemite, but one child was killed by a mule deer after feeding it potato chips.)  I thought that was special, but I saw them again later that day, so clearly they are not an unusual sight in that meadow.  Yosemite Falls is in three sections- the Upper Falls and the Lower Falls and the Cascades section that is between them.  At the base of the Lower Falls at sunrise, you can stand with your back to the sun and you will see a rainbow in the mist.  I was there to capture it on this morning with a couple of other photographers.  (I did see a lot of other photographers in Yosemite, but that is natural as it’s a photogenic area, to be sure.)  Then I walked the very easy 1.5 mile loop through the woods near the falls, and it was beautiful in the morning light.

When I left, the sun was getting too high so I went to Yosemite Village, which is the main visitor’s area for the park, home to the Visitor’s Center and the Ansel Adams Gallery.  I stopped at both of these, watched the Spirit of Yosemite film and bought some books of Ansel Adams photos as gifts and for myself.  Then I went back to my cabin, ate my veggie sandwich and downloaded pictures, and then set off for the Mist Trail.

The Mist Trail is a very popular hike that follows above the Merced River and climbs to two waterfalls, Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls, and then continues on its way to the summit of Half Dome, if you are foolhardy enough to go there.  I had read a lot about the Mist Trail, but I had not realized how steep it was (this is becoming a similar refrain, isn’t it, after the Hite Cove comments?)  From the trailhead to the footbridge over the cascades (with a view of Vernal Falls), the elevation gain is about 600 feet in .8 miles.  I will now use that as a point of reference when understanding elevation gain on these hikes, because it was pretty steep.  My plan to make it to the base of Nevada Falls was quickly amended, and I knew I wouldn’t even make it to the top of Vernal Falls.  I do know my own poor strength.  I’d also read that it was a pretty view even in the bright bad midday light, so I’d planned for this timeframe.  However, even in midweek April, it was a popular path at noon and there were many of us on a narrow steep path.  The only problem with this was one specific family of suburbanites, parents and four children (one of whom was in a yellow sweatshirt and was especially obnoxious), who paid no attention to anyone else or the dangers involved with running amok on steep populated pathways.  They would regularly stop and converse in the middle of the trail, requiring others to walk around them, or their preteen children would leave the path and climb up and around the boulders.  I felt that it was just a matter of time until one of their little brats fell, broke something, and the parents sued the park service.  It pissed me off to no end.  I tried to pass them up, but my poor conditioning had me stopping every few minutes for a breather, and then they would pass me up just to stop further up the trail.  Eventually, I sat down and waited for them to pass.  We were pretty close to the footbridge by that point, so I sat where I could see them and waited for them to finish their picture-taking on that spot.  When they finally, finally started to make their way back (I’d hoped that they were going to go on and head for Vernal Falls), I started down to the footbridge.  No joke, but I really was afraid that one of their kids would throw my camera into the river or something, and the parents clearly didn’t care.  Ugh.  So, then, with all of them far away, I spent many many minutes snapping away at the waterfall and the cascades, even chatted a little with a British couple that were waiting for their grandchildren to come back from their trip up to Vernal Falls.  They headed back before I did, but the steep path down was pretty painful on their knees and I quickly overtook them.  In all, it wasn’t too bad and I even walked the rest of the way to Curry Village.

It was later in the afternoon when I finished downloading those pictures and started out again.  This time I had a few spots in mind that weren’t too far from the road: more pictures of El Capitan, Half Dome, Cathedral Rocks, and a little walk to the foot of Bridalveil Falls (my favorite falls in the park).  I finished up with another very pretty vista at Tunnel View, this time with some clouds coming in that were making patterns in the golden light over the Valley.  Several tripods were lined up to get the shots, and mine was along in there.  I called Tracy again after the sun was down, and then I headed back to my cabin for my last night in the Valley, spent eating the rest of the takeout sandwich, reading guidebooks, and burning DVDs (like most of my nights on that vacation).

I was up again way before dawn on Day Four, and did the easy hike to Mirror Lake before the sun rose.  Mirror Lake is a seasonal lake that is formed in Tenaya Creek.  On the way up, you pass the cascades of Tenaya Creek and I spent a lot of time taking long-exposure shots of the cascades on the way back.  I returned to Curry Village to check out, and then went back to Yosemite Village.  I took one last look at the gift shops and the Ansel Adams Gallery, then went to the post office and mailed home most of what I’d bought the day before (as well as copies of all the DVDs burned to that point, just as a backup).  Then I got another takeout sandwich and left the Valley.

The plan for the rest of the day was giant sequoias.  There are three groves in the park, all of which have some elevation gain and the largest of which is very popular.  But I had read about another grove south of the park that was supposed to be very easy to walk and usually devoid of other people, so I was headed to it.  And this proved not to be the smartest decision.  I wish I’d just headed to one of the smaller groves in the park, and would do that if I had it to do over.  But I don’t.

The Nelder Grove is outside Yosemite National Park and in the Sierra National Forest that surrounds it.  I headed out the southern entrance of the park, which is right next to the parking lot for the Mariposa Grove.  Even though the road to that Grove is closed in winter, the lot was already full with hikers who would walk the couple of miles there and back to the lower grove and possibly as many as six miles round-trip to the upper grove.  But I was sure I was headed for something better and easier.

However, after turning off Highway 49 and then down and up and down a twisty mountain road, after several forks in the road and following directions from guidebooks, I passed a sign that read something to the effect of, “This road will not be plowed or maintained in winter by the Park Service after this point.”  To which I did not pay any heed at all, because it is April!  And there could not possibly be any snow of consequence in April!  For I was not at Glacier Point or on the Tioga Road, but just a few miles outside the populated community of Fish Camp, California! 

But no sooner had I left a paved road for a slightly gravelly (mostly just covered in pine needles) non-paved road than I encountered a snow drift.  And then another.  And then one that made me think that maybe I should pull over now, which I did because I had no interest in getting my rental car stuck.  But my guidebook directions made me believe that I wasn’t more than a couple of miles from the sequoia grove, so I put my takeout sandwich and a bottle of water my camera bag, grabbed my tripod, and started off down the road.

Now, it wasn’t that steep of a road, but there was quite a lot of snow because even at noontime the road didn’t get much sun with the tree cover.  It wasn’t cold at all- well above freezing.  In fact, the weather while I was in the park was in the fifties and sixties and bright and sunny with no clouds at all.  (Bummer on that, because photographers love clouds.)  Still, I was glad I’d pulled over because all the other car tracks dwindled until they completely stopped about half a mile from where I’d parked.  The snow there was at least a foot and a half, but I still pressed on.

At this point, my imagination was working overtime because I really did feel isolated.  There were other footprints in the snow, but it wasn’t clear how recently they’d been made.  I kept walking because have you seen that movie Touching the Void?  It’s really very inspirational.  The man comes down a mountain with a shattered leg.  I thought I could make it back the couple miles with a sprained ankle or something, seriously.  And, anyway, I decided that, if I died from a mountain lion attack or getting lost in the wilderness or generally being stupid, the resulting article would read something like “Hiker Found Dead”, and I supposed that wouldn’t be too bad.  “Died on Couch After Consuming Too Many Doritos,” that one I can’t live with, but I am willing to be the “Hiker Found Dead”.

There is a bulletin board and a last fork in the road about a half-mile from the beginning of the sequoia trailhead, and there was a lot of snow on the ground there.  More than a foot in most places, and impossible to drive through without a big truck and a lot of clearance, and it was made clear that that wouldn’t be possible.  The bulletin board hadn’t been maintained since the last summer, so I continued on to the grove.  That’s when I saw my first sequoia, right near the picnic table not far from the road.  At least I think it was, but it was the biggest tree I have ever seen.  I saw a lot of redwoods in California, along the coast and in Yosemite, but this was bigger than any of those redwoods.  It was pretty amazing.  I’m not sure that the pictures I took do them justice.  They’re notorious for that because it’s hard to present the scale in photographs, but I tried.  Anyway, I did a section of the loop but didn’t do a whole lot of it.  It wasn’t well marked and I got nervous about getting off the trail, and my fears of being so isolated were getting the best of me.  I turned back with the intention of eating my sandwich at the picnic table, using the pit toilet, and heading back to my car.  The ratio of a few sequoias to no bears or mountain lions was still in my favor, and I wanted to keep it that way.

And this is the point when I heard the giggling shriek of a child from back at the trailhead.  Very weird.  Then things were quiet again, and I decided I’d imagined it, although that is very unlike me to imagine that kind of thing.  The sound of it calmed me somewhat, but still I continued on back.  Then I heard it again, the sounds of people and, specifically, children.  I was still pretty sure I was imagining it until I came out of the clearing near the pit toilet, and there was a big group of kids, all about the age of nine or ten, and a couple of adult chaperones.  They quieted down and stared at me as I walked through them, but I was just as surprised to see them as they were to see me.

They started down the loop trail almost immediately, and I ate my sandwich.  I was feeling much better now that I’d seen some other people, and then I realized that I could get cell service on the top of the mountain there, and that was pretty swell.  But I still decided to quit while I was ahead (and alive) and head back to the car since obviously there was a big group of people behind who would find my partially-eaten body on the snow-covered road, should it come to the whole ‘Hiker Found Dead’ scenario.

I started back down the road, and almost immediately I was surprised that there weren’t more footprints in the snow on the way back.  And then, when I’d reached my car safely, there were no buses or shuttles of any kind parked near it, ahead of it or behind it.  So I am now totally confused as to how those kids got to that grove that day, and whether I did completely imagine them.  Though, again, that’s not like me at all.  If you zoom in on the Google Map, you can see that the road does continue on in the direction of Sugar Pine or wherever, but the guidebooks all suggested the route that I took.  I would hope that if there were an easier and more accessible way to that grove, that it would be listed, but maybe it’s just known to locals or something.  Or maybe those kids were ghosts!  Anyway, I made it back down the mountain all in one piece, having done more than five miles on that hike, and with a weird little over-imaginative story to tell about it.

After that, I went on down to Oakhurst, the first big town south of Yosemite, but the road was not nearly as scenic as the one from Mariposa.  I turned around and headed back north to the park.

My reservation for the night was at the Wawona Hotel, another room without a bath, but this place was many steps above the Curry Village room without a bath.  The hotel was built in 1879, and I stayed in the main building, just up the stairs from the registration desk.  The rooms were decorated in Victorian fashion (lots of roses and peonies and flowered wallpaper) and the bed was luxurious in comparison to Curry Village.  But the cost for the room was about $20 cheaper than Curry Village, simply because it isn’t in Yosemite Valley.  Wawona is about forty-five minutes south of the Valley, so I guess you make your choices.  I was happy to stay there to explore the southern end of the park, though it wasn’t nearly as scenic or interesting as the Valley.  Oh well.

I checked in and cleaned up, then had dinner at the Wawona dining room, which is very nice and slightly expensive and had a couple of vegetarian options (I had a very tasty poblano relleno).  Even for its location in a national park, you wouldn’t want to eat there in your hiking boots.  After two nights in Curry Village, many miles of hikes, and after wearing the same jeans and boots for three days in a row (not really atypical of me, but they were pretty dirty), I had a sense of coming back to civilization.  They have a lovely lobby and enormous verandas lined with Adirondack chairs, and a man named Tom Bopp comes in every night to play the piano and sing and entertain the guests.  It’s really very pleasant.  If you’re an extrovert, there are plenty of people who are willing to chat and drink with you, and if you’re an introvert, you can hide in an Adirondack chair on the upper veranda with a book and listen to the music.  Because my room was just up the stairs from the lobby, I could hear the piano in my room while I burned my DVDs and read my book.  (As in Curry Village, there are no TVs, radios, Internet access, cell service, or air conditioning at Wawona Hotel, but there are ceiling fans and big windows which are lovely.)

Up before sunrise the next day again, and I did part of the loop around the Wawona meadow, which was really beautiful in the morning sun.  They were doing some managed fires in the area, and there was some resulting smoke lingering in the trees that caught the light.  It was pleasant.  I returned and had breakfast at the Wawona Hotel (a nice buffet), checked out, and went back to my car, which had to be defrosted before I headed back north to the Arch Rock entrance.

On the way there, I took a right turn on the Glacier Point Road because it is supposed to be open as far as the Badger Pass Ski Area.  The road really climbs here, which is to be expected as you’re headed to the tops of the mountains that you can see from Yosemite Valley.  After the previous day’s expedition, I was not surprised to see snow, but I was surprised at the amount of it.  If the road wasn’t regularly plowed, the snow would easily have covered my car.  The drifts on either side of the road were several feet high.  I turned around at the ski area and came back down, then moved on.

Tunnel View, which I’ve mentioned before, is named such because you come through a tunnel on the way from Wawona to Yosemite Valley, and when you pop out of the tunnel you see the famous view.  It’s the kind of thing that could cause accidents.  I mean, seriously.  It’s breathtaking.  I went through the tunnel a couple of times just because it was such a cool explosion of sights.  But this time I descended into the Valley knowing that I had to turn around and head out through Arch Rock.  And I pretty much did that.

The way back down along the Merced River was just as spectacular.  I tried to stop but the sun was pretty high and the water looked better to me than it would through a camera lens.  I got all the way down to the entrance station, then turned around and went back up part of it again, and then back down again, because it was so pretty.  And then I went through the entrance station and left Yosemite National Park behind me.  I was pretty sad to leave it.  I had a wonderful time there.

And that is the end of Part Two, which is an astonishingly long narrative, but quite memorable to me.  I have been processing pictures from Yosemite first, as I’m sure you can understand, but I’m kind of skipping around a little and doing some here and there rather than in chronological order.

Part Three will be coming soon!