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| Mono Lake |
Paul:After breakfast we are back on the road, route 89 heading east to Yosemite National Park. Amanda drives us away from Cottage Inn and further into cowboy country towards Blackberry Inn some 150 miles away.
As I am not driving this bit I can spend time identifying our route the old fashioned way with a paper map and staring out at the big scenery all around: snow capped mountains towering over the pine forests ahead of us and scrub land and dessert around us dotted with huge impossibly blue lakes all set against the cloudless sky. After about two hours of motoring at about 35 mph I sense Amanda has had enough of driving and we change over just outside Marklesville on route 89. Out comes the SatNav and yards of cabling.
There are loads of cyclists battling to reach the summit of a 9,000 feet mountain in the hazy heat. We travel through three passes today: Luther, Monitor and Tioga and we stopped for another photograph. A man on a bike has just enough energy to say, "hi this is brutal". We have a short chat as he's moving so slowly and I tell him it's just another half mile which Amanda thinks is bad of me because it's nearer a mile and half to the top. He pulls away slowly saying he is crazy.
It is mid-day and 106 degrees F. We quickly pass through the towns of Coleville and Walker and take a lunch break at Bridgeport, proper cowboy town country where no accommodation is called Cottage Inn. It looks like Dodge City for cars. I tell Amanda I am going to ask the cowboy with spurs on his boots and the best Stetson in his group where we should eat hotdogs and burgers. She looks alarmed when she realises I am actually going to do this. I tell the group I am not from around here and ask about diners. Mr Stetson, who has a white beard, says, "are you from the south son"? I laugh and say, "not really, more from the east, a long way east" The group laugh, joke about being, 'outta town' and point Amanda and I to the diner behind us called Kool Kones where I chow down with a chilli dog and Amanda has a Corn Dog. All that mountain climbing in the car has made me hungry.
We turn down an offer to visit Bodie the ghost town of 1860 and the wildest most lawless cowboy city in Sierra Nevada's gold rush. Instead we plough on to the National Park pay $20.00 for a 7-day pass and drive 30 odd miles through the most picturesque scenery: waterfalls, ice, and more hills and pine trees. I have discovered cruise control for the car and am now able to look at the 9,000 feet altitude views without being concerned with foot pedals.
We reach Blackberry Inn around 17.00 the same time as a shed load of others. Steve the owner is in over drive and Amanda and I watch some humming birds and sit in the cool hall of the large house. Amanda looks for Montana on the very large globe.
Our apartment is just a month old and as big as a large studio flat: our home for four nights. The carpet is deep pile. There is no WiFi or TV so we're properly cut off from the World.
Dinner is a super size large pizza from Pizza Factory in Groveland eaten at about 21.20 on the porch outside our apartment called Yosemite Falls. It is still 80 degrees F. Our Sonoma wine, an RGB blended red goes really well and then next is the port wine which goes down well with cookies and a muffin saved from breakfast.
Sleep doesn't come easy because my tummy is so full to bursting. No late night gluttony from now on!
Amanda:
I mourn a bit for the wide empty roads of New England. The ones I drive are narrow with either a drop or a stone wall on one side; still, it allows Paul to enjoy some beautiful scenery around Lake Tahoe and along the first of our three mountain passes - Luther. It's incredibly beautiful - all fir trees, valleys and rocky mountainside. No sheep, curiously. No Julie Andrews either.
Paul takes over after a couple of hours with a very wiggly mountain pass to negotiate - Monitor. All these passes are only opened from late May/early June due to the snow! Hard to believe when it's tipping 100oF outside.
We pass alot of lunatic cyclists free-wheeling down, and then much more lunatic cyclists peddling up. Paul reassures one that he's near the top and tells him he's a hero. The cyclist says he thinks he's mad. I reckon a bit of both, personally.
We stop in a bizarre place for lunch where Paul makes a beeline for men in cowboy boots and spurs, cowboy hats and odd facial topiary for a recommendation. We eat in a place where everything is very deep-fried - not sure if they were having a laugh at our expense.
We pass an amazing and huge lake - it's three times more saline than the sea and is eerily still. It picks up the pink of the rocks and is quite stunning. Then we enter the third of our passes - Tioga. Just outside the actual park we stop so I can verify that the white patches are indeed snow.
It's a long old trek to our B&B but it's lovely. Paul doesn't fancy eating out so we buy a pizza to eat on the veranda (and in turn, are meal for a variety of bitey insects). The pizza place is grim but the pizza is okay - helped, no doubt, by the wine.
It's a curious thing but nowhere stocks deet; the common response is "oh yeah, we get asked for that a lot. No, we don't have it". I suspect that the insects are paying backhanders and are certainly dining out on us. I hope we at least are finer fare than that pizza.
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Sunday 9 June 2013 Very Hot/Dry & Stormy
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| Hummingbirds breakfasting at our B&B |
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| Apparently a path... |
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| Please don't tell the fashion police..... |
Paul:
It is 08.50 and it's forecast to rain heavily but the sky is a cloudless blue. Amanda is not particularly chatty at 08.00 at breakfast for two on the porch. Everything is prepared for us. Amanda becomes more animated when the two brown horses make noises and Alex, Steve's wife pops by to advise on walks, health and diet. She recommends the high ground to avoid the windless valley, Elizabeth Lake walk 4.5 miles. But it is about 40 miles drive back the way we came yesterday. Amanda thinks she has found another walk much closer: we'll see.. We hope to see bears and in anticipation attach bells to our rucksacks.
The Amanda walk turned out to be the walk we hadn't envisaged, largely due to us not having a map and a heavy reliance on signs, the hikers equivalent of SatNav I imagine.
The start point at White Wolf was a shorter drive. The walk or hike as it's called here was through some fabulous pine tree and granite rock scenery. We both get wet feet and legs crossing an abundance of streams. We headed for Lake Harden, which even the guide book tells us is not an exciting walk but does attract folk who like flowers.
Without the map we have no idea how far or near Lake Harden is from us. We plod along for almost two hours. The bells now removed from our rucksacks to improve our chances of seeing a black bear. We stop at a precipice looking down to a long canyon with a river a few thousand feet below. The trail seems to take us down here but I have had enough of being bitten by mozzies and attacked by small aggressive flies and who knows if the lake is there? The walk is billed as easy and this descent is the sort of thing you'd abseil down. We are both disappointed with ourselves. We eat bits of our packed lunch made by Steve's wife Alex; it's very good.
The trek back is hard going mostly up hill but with a raging storm echoing around the canyon we march onwards grim faced. We do not see black bears but we did see a large deer, some colourful burrowing birds, a lizard, some flowers and some fish so not all was lost on the day. Amanda wants to buy packets of salt to deter being bitten by leeches. I think she has altitude sickness.
As it was only 14.45 we raced around the valley hugging the road's edges that excites Amanda so much. We stop at El Capitan, a massive granite edifice rising more than three thousand feet from the meadows the largest single granite rock on Earth. I chat briefly to a 60 something old timer biker also taking photos. In the short time we discuss, Chris Bonnington and biker's dad's WWII posting to England. He is proud to live in Washington State because you can marry whatever age you like, your doctor can put you to sleep legally and you can smoke some weed when you want to. He shows me his stash inside the BMW 1200 top box. He is half way through Destiny With Death but finds it hard reading. I was quite sleepy at the wheel but after this I am wide awake. Amanda has severe tummy upset but we find time to buy a map and the Swedish Mustang purrs along at 75mph to get her back to Blackberry Inn. We make it......
We decide to visit the nearby Buck Meadow's diner just 10 minutes drive away. A couple in the early 70s sitting outside ask us, 'how's it going' and direct us to the entrance. The outdoor small speakers play an Eddie Valence song with heavy emphasis on the treble sound.
Inside the diner is doing a brisk trade. Katelynn our waitress cannot believe I just want a filet mignon steak cooked medium and a side salad with blue cheese sauce. I am interrogated about having chips, mash and baked potato but resist them all because I don't want the same stomach bloat as last night. She cheers up when I order a pint of Sierra Nevada beer in a heavy schooner glass. I wanted Anchor Steam beer but they ran out. The glass is ice frosted and a film of ice covers the beer's surface it is most welcome.
Amanda and I agree that our steaks are superb as are the salads; what a great diner this is. We finish dinner at 20.45 and Amanda drives the short route back mostly on the right side of the road. There is no TV or WiFi so Amanda eats her take away lemon pie and entertains me with local travel facts from her Big Moon Book of Yosemite Park Knowledge while I finish the Sonoma port. Tomorrow we think we will book an open top tram tour of the park. I hope to see Old Grizzly a huge Redwood 2,700 years old.
Amanda:
It's going to be hot and I fail to buy hair sunscreen. Paul points out the baseball caps but I pick up a kerchief - "How does it look?" I ask, "Ridiculous?". "No more so than the baseball cap" is the reassuring response. Deciding that I'd rather someone crossed my palm with silver than asked for a large fries and milkshake, I opt for the headscarf as the lesser of two evils.
Americans clearly love driving. Every walk they recommend to us requires a two hour drive each way. I look for the closest walk marked 'moderate' - an easy trip of just under 6 miles round trip. Except round trip clearly means something else here. We yomp for a good couple of hours (including - literally - through streams) before Paul comes to a halt and refuses to go on. On the way back I find I am glad of this as it's a long uphill trudge. To distract myself I examine the effect altitude has had on my hands, wrists and fingers which have blown up to bizarre swellings: I may turn into Violet Beauregarde and simply pop from the wrists. That should attract the evasive bears in any case.
I see a deer with enormously long ears and we walk through fields of wild orchids. This salvages the walk a bit for me - that and Paul's examination of a map which tells us we walked almost 10 miles. At least I have the right to be so tired! I am however severely displeased with the book and have to restrain myself from annotating it for future hikers, a trait I seemed to have inherited from my grandfather who was fond of correcting books. I often correct spelling and punctuation but this is a factual inaccuracy and a trap that future hikers may fall into! Still, it's not my book.
Paul almost causes an international incident by declining to have ANY sort of potato with his steak at dinner. The waitress almost cries. "Not even a baked one?" she asks plaintively before scurrying off to the kitchen to point out the weird Brits. In the land of the pie, I try lemon meringue - it's nowhere near as good as my mother's. I aspire to try a peach cobbler but such things only seem to exist in the movies. My canny tactic of wearing boots to deter the mozzies is a fail: they simply bite me through my clothing.
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