Into Yosemite and Out of My Mind (Day 2)

The next morning we took a quick walk around Jamestown, and I photographed the BAG with every wooden statue I could find. Then it was a quick trip up behind Jamestown to check out the Railroad Museum which was astoundingly boring. I headed down a west-ish cutting road which I reasoned must cross Highway 49, since we had crossed 49 on our way up. We drove just long enough for me to begin regretting I hadn’t gassed up in Jamestown and then, lo and behold, I saw from above the big stinking reservoir below Priest’s Grade. The mystery road had cut neatly back to Highway 120 and within minutes we were shooting up New Priest’s Grade. Got to the top and passed the first gas station at Oak Flat as well as the one at Groveland. I knew there were gas-stations in Buck’s Meadow as well as another one just before the park entrance. Got to Buck’s Meadow, pulled in and was just starting to get out of the car when a Cooter-esque dude sweeping the gravel off of the.. well, the gravel.. said, “them pumps are empty.” This was also true of the other gas-station in Buck’s Meadow and now I was getting a bit uneasy. We shot on for another 11 miles or so and, lo and behold (really, "lo and behold" twice in the same post? Three times now?), there was the other store/station I knew about and we quickly skipped off the road which revealed to us --- the “closed for inventory” sign. Down the road there was an Inn, but it was deserted, so I pulled around and back onto the highway.

We made Crane’s Flat without any trouble and gassed up, but some aspects of the closed gas station and store would come back to be amusing later.

Anyone who’s ever driven into Yosemite knows the feeling you get the first time you see Half Dome neatly tucked between the two walls of the valley. So we had it. There was road construction everywhere, but the park was essentially empty as that photo on the left shows. That is the road to Yosemite Village and we were literally the only car on it.

We drove into the Village and as we did I pointed up to the sky where two vapor trails crossed, “look,” said I, “it’s a cross.” That seemed uncontroversial, but in that very moment the BAG developed an unwavering and psychotic hatred of the vapor trail and every time a plane crossed the valley (pretty often since it is on the way to Sacramento, Oakland, San Jose and SF airports, and that’s just going west), the BAG bristled like a rabid dog and hissed, “there’s another one, why do they have to do that?” Sometimes her finger pointed shakily into the sky, sometimes her little fists were balled in rage, but each time her voice and body shook. I began pointing vapor trails out just for fun.

After a bit of time in the village (and signing up for a photographic walk at 9 am on Saturday that I was certain to miss by sleeping in) we headed off to Curry Village which was essentially closed for the season. Again, a weird scene since it is normally packed tight.

We headed off to view Yosemite Falls and when we got up to the top viewpoint I took out my camera and started taking pictures. Other photographers were there as well, and since I had a cooler camera and bigger lens in my bag, I took them out and began using them. I also clambered on the rocks and scrambled up towards the fall to take even closer pictures. The other photographers, I noted, were in awe of my equipment and skills and looked at me with something approaching reverence.

Too bad I didn’t have a SmartCard in the camera I was using. So. No pictures of that. Vastly over-rated in any case. A bit of bad landscape.

This is getting to be a disturbing habit.. I change cameras and don’t make sure they can actually take pictures. I later discovered that my newer camera has a setting that doesn’t allow you to “take” pictures without a card in the camera and I set it that way. I hope this helps. I could use the help..

After a short visit to the meadow, it was starkly revealed how much help I need. The night before I had realized I had left the cord to my iBook at home so I was only opening the laptop to download pictures to it or to access the screen-shots I had taken of our hotel reservations. This is my normal technique for saving such things and I was a bit confused when I opened the screen-shot for our lovely two-night stay at the Yurt-Village and the screenshot had no phone number, no address, nothing but the name of the place, “Yosemite Lakes.” Fortunately I did recall a little about the web page and knew that it was located 5 miles from the western park entrance. No problem, I’d shoot down 140, set my odometer to 0 at the park entrance and start eyeballing places about 4 miles down. A brilliant plan, but it revealed nothing. Between 3 and 7 miles down the road was a lovely stretch of river and trees, nothing else. I stopped at the El Portal store and they had no idea what I was talking about.

We rolled back up to the park. Back down 7 miles, back up to the park. Trying to phone anyone we could as eception kept cutting out. We finally reached the BAG’s brother who in a quick (and wildly inaccurate) Google search informed us that we had reservations in Modesto. This was not gonna do. We stopped back at El Portal and this time there was a guy who made the previous day’s Cooter-esque dude seem positively like Cary Grant. But he said he knew of a place like the one we described and in fact had applied for a job there. I paid half-attention, more fascinated by the mossy cave-opening he had by way of a mouth and the teeth that wobbled loosely in their settings, shining green and black in the waning sun. Well, those teeth that were still there, anyway. But the place he was talking about was back on 120 which is not, as everyone knows, the west entrance. This sounded a bit better than Modesto (so does Hell, to be honest), but since the guy was cradling a half-empty fifth of Vodka in a brown-bag I wasn’t gonna take his word for it. So we rolled back up to the Cedar Lodge (a hotel we had noticed along the way) and the very helpful Cara Googled “Hillside Yurt” and “Yosemite” and, wondrous thing, old snaggle-tooths had been dead on. By this time it was getting dark and the BAG was making a remarkably wide variety of snide remarks about my navigation skills. I decided to get a room at the Cedar Lodge, call the Yurt-hut and say we’d be in the next night. This cost me the price of the Yurt for that night, but it was worth it to get off the road. Cara, impressed by our tale of woe, upgraded us to a room with a big old spa (that little head in the "spa" pic is the BAG) and we spent the night there, BAG spa-ing and me cursing the Yurt-Hut for calling 120 the “west” entrance (I cursed them because it couldn’t possibly have been my fault for not having their address or phone number).

The BAG proposed that, according to a theory that I have long held about terminal degrees - they produce stupidity not education - my day without a computer cord, without a SmartCard in my camera, and with no direction home was the result of my proximity to my MA. I think I only hit her once. So that's good.

I’m sure the stars were out, or something… but I focused on drinking myself into oblivion and so largely missed them.

The next day, we were to head for the dreaded Mist Trail...