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| Yosemite Valley |
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| El Capitain |
Paul:
I am up at 06.50 to video the hummingbirds. There are loads of them, different colours and sizes that arrive at the nectar feeders hanging from the large hotel porch. The air is cool, there are no biting insects, it's sunny and the bird song competes with the sound of breakfast preparation.
'DO NOT FEED THE BEARS' is the most common instruction and signage in Yosemite but it wasn't always so. Park Ranger Sheree, a female Navajo Indian brought up in Michigan, tells the tour group in the back of a small articulated lorry a different story.....
Park Rangers used to raise money for the park by attracting black bears to a tourist spot by dumping food garbage thrown out by the nearby Ahwahnee hotel, a place frequented by stars of the Silver Screen: they discovered the bears eventually got tooth decay, became sick and died.
Rangers tried to raise money another way without bears. Hurling burning logs from a height of several thousand feet into the valley below worked well for a short time as a tourist attraction and even attracted a visit and applause from President JF Kennedy but had to stop when Rangers realised this was destroying the valley's pines and making the bears sick.
Finally Rangers acknowledged bears would always be attracted to the American outdoors diet of marshmallows, jello and peanut butter. Rather than encourage bears to eat this stuff Rangers put up signs urging people not to feed them and spent the rest of their time shooting the bears using paintball guns and slingshots, which they do to the present day.
At a rest room stop I chatted with a tourist from Washington State and he confirmed yesterday's weed smoking biker story. The restrooms here are airless wooden cupboards with a bottomless oil drum in which human effluent falls and the stench rises.
The rest of the three hours tour was also informative about, rivers, ice peaks and El Capitan and the Three Brothers granite mountains some several thousand feet high. Climbers could be seen as small limp dolls hanging from ropes and pegs a mile above us. Ranger Sheree says some people die on these climbs.
We ate lunch in the posh Ahwahnee hotel cafe; Amanda agreed it was alright but not as fantastic as the tour guide suggested.
Mid afternoon saw us at the top of Glacier Point, miles above almost everything including the famous Half Dome rock. I almost fell asleep driving the two hazardous hours to get there and left Amanda to climb to the very top while I had a 15 minute doze. When I woke up a squirrel and a chipmunk were staring at me closely.
We missed the mother bear and her two cubs by two minutes. They had scarpered by the time we leaped out of the car - shame really. Amanda is very sorry she missed them. Two American 40 something women travelling together told us that, "momma bear had two itty bitty boo bears". Why do they talk like this?
Steve, the hotel owner wasn't best pleased that I parked the finely tuned, gleaming granite chiselled Swedish Mustang on his lawn so I moved it to its proper space.
Tonight's diner meal for Amanda and I was meatloaf. It was better than lunch. Still no Anchor Steam beer but two pints of Sierra Nevada were much appreciated. Amanda drove back.
I am asleep before 22.00.
Amanda:
Today was supposed to gently separate Paul and the car by getting the bus about Yosemite Valley. This was only a partial success as he insisted on driving up to Glacier Point and almost fell asleep. The bends are deemed to severe for me to negotiate and I feed Paul peanut butter M&Ms to keep him awake on the long drive back.
Prior to the bends, we took a tour around the Valley sights with a Native American guide who spoke to us as if we were all rather simple 6 year olds. The content was interesting though and we stopped to appreciate the idiocy of people who climb El Capitain: it takes an average two days and you have to nail in a portable ledge to sleep on overnight. Your toilet is a portable tube and you have to take provisions weighing about 8stone. At the top, you have to then hike 8 miles back down again. It's vertiginous looking up, it must be truly terrifying looking down.
I expect it was that thought alongside the bendy road which prompted Paul to go for two schooners of beer that night. A schooner is like a 1970s wine glass on steroids and I can't lift one without both hands and a bit of effort. I get a plastic beaker of diet Pepsi which is easier to manage but makes me feel like a small child. The mozzies have new and even more nefarious tricks up their metaphorical sleeves - they bite me on the forehead leaving huge lumps as if I were trying to grow horns. It is vaguely disconcerting to be outwitted by insects. Fortunately after 7 days and £25 postage fee later, I am reunited with my GHDs and hairdryer brush. At least I can arrange my fringe silkily to conceal my contoured forehead now though.
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