Chapter 18: Yosemite
April 16, 1998 to April 23, 1998
4/16 We're finally leaving San Diego! This morning, I stopped by Dan's apartment for one last batch of Email, stopped by a barber to get the hair out of my eyes, fueled up the truck, and then returned to hook up the trailer and head out of town. We drove straight up I-5, through the center of Los Angeles, which turned out to be no problem at all, and eventually turned off on SR 99 to Bakersfield. We stopped at Orange Grove RV Park, as recommended by someone on RV-Talk a long time ago. It is indeed an orange grove, although the wrong season to pick oranges. The trees were in full bloom, and the smell of orange blossoms was almost overpowering.
4/17 The California Living Museum (CALM) is a clever name for a small, under-funded, but ambitious zoo. The whole place is somewhat ramshackle, but they try hard. The animals are almost entirely from the surrounding region. Several bobcats looked perfectly contented in their cage, dozing in the sun. We finally got to see a kit fox up close - perhaps the smallest species of fox , and not much bigger than a house cat. We lingered near a pair of half-grown black bears that had been rescued from the wild after their mother was killed. They were typical teenagers - compulsively active, full of mischief, alternately chasing each other around or trying to dismantle everything in their cage. The cage was small and makeshift - the museum is trying to raise money to build a large natural enclosure. We watched a badger excavating an incredible amount of earth from a new tunnel. This is a very interesting beast, which I don't remember seeing in any of the many zoos we have visited previously. A worthwhile stop.
We drove on to Midpines - between Mariposa and Yosemite National Park, stopping at the Yosemite-Mariposa KOA. It's overpriced ($30 less a 10% KOA discount), but seemed to be the closest full-service RV Park to Yosemite. We decided not to stay in Yosemite Valley, expecting the night time temperatures to be below freezing at that altitude (the Valley is 4000 feet, and the KOA is about 2400 feet). We also weren't sure how easy it would be to get the big trailer up there, or how suitable the NPS campgrounds were for big rigs. Later, I looked over a couple of the campgrounds. Some sites will comfortably hold big rigs, and the highways are (barely) adequate. The campgrounds in the valley appeared to be about 80% full. The KOA had over half of the full-hookup sites occupied, and almost none of its unserviced sites were in use (why stay here, when unserviced sites in the park are available and cheaper?) Highway 140 would be a test of one's driving skills, in a big rig. The road is very narrow, and for a few miles within the park there is no shoulder at all - just a rough stone wall a few inches away from the side of your rig. Large tour busses drive up and down here all day, so it is obviously no problem for a good driver. But passing another big truck, with just a few inches to spare on both sides, would be a white-knuckle experience.
4/18 We drove the Valley loop road, stopping to hike to the base of Bridal Veil Falls, then parking and taking the shuttle bus to the beginning of the trail to Vernal and Nevada Falls. The walk up to the top of Vernal Falls was just barely possible. The upper third of the trail was wet, with portions icy or snow covered. This upper trail clings precariously to the side of a sheer cliff. In some places, the cliff overhangs the trail, and melting snowdrifts hundreds of feet above provided a continuous "rain" onto the trail. That upper section of the trail was officially closed, since at this time of year it can rain rocks as well as water. Vernal falls drop over a smooth, solid, granite cliff, and the upper viewing area is on this same expanse of almost crack-free rock. A few hundred yards behind the falls, a small lake sits in another pocket of smooth granite. The stream slides into this lake down several hundred feet of smooth, uniform, granite incline, spreading out 50 feet wide and a fraction of an inch deep. The solidity of this rock is quite unlike most other mountain areas we've been in.
4/19 After spending a while in the Visitor's center, we walked more of the trails on the Valley floor, ending up at the base of Yosemite Falls after seeing it from several different angles along the trail. The overall impact of Yosemite Valley leaves us at a loss for words. Anything we could say has already been said better many times, starting with the well-known descriptions by John Muir in the mid-1800's.
The drive up SR 140, from the campground to the park, is still enjoyable, after several repetitions. The redbud trees are in full bloom all along the road. The lupines are also in bloom - spectacular waist-high bushes covered with flowers - much larger than the lupines we saw in the low desert further south. The steep mountainsides are dotted with patches of blue, purple, yellow, orange, and white flowers, and we've only been able to identify a few of them.
4/20 The KOA is not modem-friendly. We spent quite a while poking around Mariposa looking for a hookup. The tourist bureau/chamber of commerce wasn't helpful, but suggested a couple of other places to try. The MailBoxes Etc. store may be the only place in town that provides a hookup. The owner charged me $5.00, then watched over my shoulder to make sure that the computer was dialing an 800 number. (A few days later, I went back. The owner wasn't there and the clerk charged me $2.50!) We also heard Sierra Telephone has an office in Oakhurst with modem hookups available, and also with public-use computers. We didn't verify this.
Later, we drove to the Mariposa Grove, a large grove of giant Sequoia trees. Here, the ground is still covered with several feet of snow. The paths, with hard-packed snow, were tricky to walk. The trees, of course, are wonderful. Even dead, they last almost forever. One fallen tree, largely intact, with the roots towering 15 feet over our heads and a trunk extending far back into the forest has been determined to have fallen about 300 years ago - already laying on the ground before the United States had even been thought of.
4/21 The Yosemite Falls trail was just too inviting to pass up. Helen and I both started up it, each at our own pace. The views of the valley, and then of the falls, got better and better as we climbed, encouraging us to keep going. Helen got to the overlook at the base of the upper falls - 1000 feet of elevation gain. I went all the way to the top - 2700 feet of elevation gain. The upper part of the trail was still snow-covered and slippery, but the view from the top made it very worthwhile. There are stone stairs leading right out to the lip of the falls. A huge volume of water was shooting out over the cliff edge. Just 100 feet or so beneath the lip, the cliff face protruded outward, and most of the water crashes into it and then shoots even further out into space. The process is chaotic - with the water pattern and the thunderous noise varying over seconds or minutes. Every once in a while, a jet of water would shoot straight out into space, then arc over and fall, gradually turning to mist, and disappearing before getting to the bottom. The day was sunny and unseasonably warm, and the sound of running water was everywhere. The water volume in the Merced River has been growing daily, and up on top, one can see why. There was still a deep snow pack on the high plateaus, but today it was melting at a furious rate, so that everywhere I looked there was a little stream cutting through deep drifts. In addition to the huge famous waterfalls, there are uncountable other places where water is cascading down sheer cliffs 1000 feet or more in height.
4/22 We spent most of the day being lazy at the campground, leaving only for a brief expedition into Mariposa to get groceries, drop some film off for development, and retrieve Email.
The tall, still leafless oak trees in the campground are occupied by a small flock of acorn woodpeckers - a new bird to us. They are noisy, gregarious birds, with distinctive white spots in the center of each wing. Surprisingly, they seemed to be catching insects on the wing - sometimes flying almost like swallows.
Each time a campsite is vacated, a pair of scrub jays appears, and systematically searches the site for food. Back in the edge of the woods, a pair of Stellar's Jays flit from tree to tree, scolding loudly. Other distinctive bird voices can be heard back in the woods, but I haven't been able to catch a glimpse of the owners.
4/23 It's time to move on! Yesterday, a big motorhome moved into the terrace below us, and is tall enough to block our view of the valley. Their awning extends to within a couple of feet of the side of our trailer. These sites are narrow! We packed up, stopped in Mariposa to pick up some photo prints, and headed west.
We stopped for the night at Maple Leaf RV Park in Morgan Hill. Liking what we saw, we signed up for a week. This place is about 20 miles south of San Jose and will make a good base while we are playing tourist in the Monterey and South Bay regions. We finally have a local telephone in the trailer - the first time in 10 months. This park has a hotel-style phone system, with phone hookups available at every site, at quite a reasonable price. A heavily used railroad track runs right past the back of the park, and we find the frequent trains a not-unpleasant sound. We'll probably spend two weeks in the San Francisco Bay area, with the second week based somewhere further north.