The Long Ride Home

The next day we were crippled. We limped into Yosemite and did very little things. One thing we did was take a small diversion. On both highway 120 and 140 I had noticed a little road named “Foresta” and it seemed to run off to an area where there had been a serious fire. There was also a meadow and some A-frames. Over the serious whining of the BAG I cut off here and we drove down to into the meadow. We found, go figure, a moribund town named Foresta which consisted of an apparently abandoned fire-station and a lightly occupied cemetery named the ‘Foresta’ cemetery. This made the BAG happy – since she has me as an older boyfriend she is always happy to see where the old go to die.

Took some photos, wander about, and headed to the valley. We walked to Bridal Veil Falls. This is an epic journey of up to .25 of a mile (if you stagger as seriously as we did). We headed out to Mirror Lake, where we had been a few years ago in the dead of winter, with a trio of Koreans, slipping, sliding and falling on our dumb asses as we struggled up and down the last icy quarter mile. When Yosemite is dry the walk is trifling and we made it in a trice. We sat up there for a while and that is where these tricky "mirror" pictures come from. At some point the BAG grabbed me by the shoulder and had me take the picture you see at the bottom right. That's right. No vapor trails. I don't get it either.

After that it was to the Yosemite Cemetery where the BAG fruitlessly searched for the grave of a Native American. She took it badly when I suggested that anywhere in the US she looked was pretty much the grave of a Native American. They are pretty testy considering all the Government cheese we’ve squandered on them. I was happy to see the gravestone (pictured) with the phallic headstone and the inscription:

“Ah, that beauteous head if it did go down, It carried sunshine into the rapids”

which is pretty much how I feel about getting good head.

It was getting late and the BAG wanted to go back to Yosemite Falls so that I could take more pictures. I didn’t want to walk anywhere and we bargained for an hour and a half of time sitting on the valley floor. If there’s a better place to read a book I don’t know it. So we headed to Groveland and the Charlotte Hotel. A lovely place and we settled in. I wandered across the street to the Iron Horse Saloon and had two beers. The BAG went back to the hotel to check out dinner at the restaurant there. I headed back as well and we read for awhile. Then it was an excellent dinner. I know that I’m comfortably off now, because when the bill came in and they’d missed a glass of wine I drank, I mentioned it to the waitress so that she could add it in there.

Later, on the way to the car, or something.. perhaps to pick something up for the lovely BAG, I heard the band in the bar across the street playing “All Along the Watchtower” and was seduced by its mighty beauty. I shot across the street and sat in for just three songs (after all, the mighty beauty of the BAG was still in the Hotel and she would clock me a new skull-hole if I didn’t come back in a timely fashion) and slugged down a quick shot with a beer back. It was a beautiful thing.

Next day we had some lovely breakfast and the BAG asked to see the map. She picked out a path home that I had been considering – highway 49 to Jackson (we know of a bar and bookstore there) and we decided to take it. I was slightly impressed by this, since the BAG is not a map-reader at all, and there’s a tangle of roads right around there. Anyway, we had agreement without discussion, which is the sign of a happy couple or a fascist government – perhaps I have switched the adjectives there? This path took us back through Jamestown, Sonora, and up to Jackson. On the way I saw this lovely sign indicating a pleasure pit off to the left. I also tried to get some pictures of Hawks on the wing, but this is like sobriety – it never works out for me.

We had lunch, she headed to the bookstore and I to the bar. The bar had this lovely old-school machine offering devices of pleasure for less than one dollar. The dispensing slot in the middle actually suggests that I purchase all 12 "extenders" and "pleasurers." Like I want sex that much anymore! An hour later I was done with the bar slightly before she was done with the bookstore. Just slightly though, since as I drove down old Main St. to the bookstore, she was walking back.

We rolled the Delta and ended up home. It was a splendid nature adventure.