Who needs Sleep? Mariposa beckons!
the moral of the story is...GET THERE EARLY!
16.05.2008 - 17.05.2008
19 °C
In case anyone is thinking of going to Yosemite, (pronounced YO-SEM-ITE..heh) you might want to read on and see if croftee's path is right for you. Or maybe you just want an idea of what Yosemite is like...
I flew in from Atlanta to San Fran and arrived in the wee and i mean WEE hours of morning. ME and Lodge immediately hopped in our rental car and drove East towards the mountains. We stopped at a food store and stocked up on all the things we'd be eating on our trip. Red and Yellow bell peppers, cheese, crackers, tofu, beans and rice, an apple, and you know batteries and the like.
Croftee drove. Lodgey slept. The drive across California's valley was monotonous at best, but rather smelly at worst. I have NO idea what kind of farms I was passing buy, but manure would smell GOOD to me there. I grew up on a farm and animal poop aint no big deal. But as I drove, sandy-eyed in the darkness across miles of dead flat country roads, all I could smell was burning sulfer and maybe satan's bunghole for a time. Finally the land began to rise and soon the edges of the darkness were beginning to lighten. THe sun began to rise just over the mountains of Eastern Cali. Lodge woke up and gave Croft an hours rest. When she woke, the sun was just up, and all around were old growth trees. THe mountians were all around us.
By 6:45 we were in the parking lot for the mariposa grove of redwoods. The trees were amazing. They rose like sentinals from the earth, their lofty branches really too high to comprehend. We were both tired but determined to beat the crowds, so we hiked a few measly miles amongst these old trees. THe mosquitoes were the size of golf balls, but they couldn't deter us. Interesting fugus grew up from the ground, and deer timid but not fearful sometimes came close enough for us to gaze on freely. We saw the major sites to see, Old Grizzley, the bachalor and the Two Sisters, and of course the tree with the tunnel carved into it. This was actually kind of sad. I know they wouldn't damage a tree like that today but I still didn't wish to spend much time looking at this desicrated tree for some reason.
9:00am Making our way out of the grove and into the parking lot, we saw what we'd gladly not missed. Scores of people were in the parkinglot. It was all we could do to get from one side of the lot to the other without accidently ruining someones photograph. It was all ducking and waiting because cameras were flashing everywhere. There was yellow people, young people, old people, big people, and you know people-people. School buses, coaches, vans, and cars packed into the lot and Lodge and I just looked at eachother blearily and thanked our lucky stars we didn't take our nap already or else we'd be competing with all these people for views of the ancient and lovely trees in the grove.
So we left in a spirit of humbleness for having seen such majestic and breath-taking trees and a spirit of thankfulness for having skipped in just ahead of the crowds.
Now it was time to plan our hike into the back country....
Posted by LadyCroft 04.06.2008 11:00 Archived in USA Tagged backpacking
