Honeymoon Days 20-21: Big Sur to Yosemite

My yin and I left Big Sur on a Tuesday morning, and rather than taking Highway 1 back north to Monterey, we opted for a tiny road – barely visible on the map – that cut east across the Santa Lucia mountains. There were steep banks on either side of it, no guardrail, and the road afforded some of the most magnificent views of the Pacific we saw during our travels:

Unbeknownst to us, it also cut straight through a military base, and there were intermittent signs that warned civilians about the dangers of being shot:

like this one, for example

Although I'm sure we were in no danger, it felt pretty odd. The road was completely deserted, and we passed by bombed out husks of cars and small sheds that had obviously been used for target practice.

Luckily, we traversed Fort Hunter Liggett unscathed and eventually made our way to an equally deserted road that brought us to California's central valley. This dirt road obviously existed to connect farmers on one side of the mountain range to the other, and we were grateful that we had filled up our gas tank before taking it:

the car morphed from black to brown by the time we reached asphalt

By lunchtime we were in San Juan Bautista, which is home to a famous mission used as one of the locations in Hitchcock's Vertigo:

This is the hallway Madeleine ran through:

And here is the bell tower that sounded her death:

Happily, this excursion was more than just situationist nostalgia, and I was truly taken by the beauty of the building and its surrounding grounds. Constructed in 1702, it still functions as an actual Catholic Chirch:

the main worship chamber

a groovy idol

a giant cactus

After finishing our lunch we continued onward towards Yosemite, but along the way we learned that every accommodation within 100 miles of the park was booked, and that the lodging within the park had been booked since they opened the reservation system at the start of the year. This year's record snowpack (twice what it is normally) had caused all of the alpine areas of the park to be closed. This caused two things: 1) There was only one walk-in campground; and 2) the waterfalls were beyond spectacular. These items, combined with the fact that California's schools had just begun summer break meant that the park was teemed with tourists.

My yin and I decided to use the city of Merced as a staging ground, calling AAA and finding a "home hostel" that could provide lodging for the night. We called the number and spoke to a woman named Jan, who told us that we could check in after 5:30 that evening. This gave us a little time to kill, and we used it to do our laundry, which had reached a critical level of filth since leaving Eugene:

In the parking lot, I was a approached by a tall stranger driving a cargo van. He told me that the city of Merced was 1/3 full of illegal immigrants, 1/3 full of drug addicts, and 1/3 full of crazy people. I nodded in agreement, being that his very presence proved at least 1/3 of his theorem.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that we ate ridiculously good Chinese food that night for the ridiculously cheap price of $11.89. It was easily one of the best meals we had on the road, and I have no idea what such a fine restaurant is doing in such a nowhere place.

Wait a minute, this is also beside the point.

The points is actually that we spent the night in Jan (and her husband Larry's) home hostel that night, which is basically a regular house that's been outfitted with bunk beds in the spare bedrooms. Fortunately my yin and I got a room to ourselves, and we spent the night to Larry telling stories around the kitchen table. As Paramahansa Yogananda once wrote, he was "one of those long-winded fellows whose conversational powers ignore time and embrace eternity."

Larry, Jan, the dog, and a German student named Bertram

We left Larry's before 7am the next morning, drove to Yosemite, and found ourselves in a preposterously long line for camping. We were told people had been lining up since 6am, and they ran out of sites long before we made our way to the ranger booth.

This was probably for the best, though, because Yosemite is like nothing so much as the National Park equivalent of Disney World (or Land). People were literally shoulder to shoulder everywhere we went, and after the empty peacefulness of Big Sur it was simply too much to process. My yin and I decided to make the best out of the rest of the day, then leave at sundown.

First we hiked up to Mirror Lake, which I wanted to see because of this famous photograph by Ansel Adams:

I even did my best to replicate it from memory, but it didn't quite come out right because I forgot which orientation he had used:

By now it was getting hot, and we hadn't seen any evidence of the alleged snow that had shut down most of the park. Wanting to investigate these claims, we decided to hike to the summit of Yosemite Falls, which is the tallest waterfall in North America:

the water falls nearly a half mile (2,425 feet)

This was easily the hardest hike we had ever done: 3.6 miles one-way, straight up. It was challenging (and blistering) for both of us, but provided some incredible views of Half Dome:

Yosemite's most famous rock formation

And stunning double rainbows that Mardou had told us to look for:

Looking at the distant peaks, it also confirmed that there was, in fact, snow at the park's higher elevations:

my yin and I at the summit of Yosemite Falls

The above picture was taken by a hiker named Francis, who had already hiked to the summit once that day because he was "in training" for an upcoming event at Mt. Shasta. One of the pleasures of this trip has been meeting people like Francis, and he gave us tips as to what hikes we should take at the other parks we planned to visit. Sadly, we didn't take a photograph of him:

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Incredibly, there was a group of rock climber on the next peak over, who were walking a tight rope across the gorge. The scope of our own achievement seemed suddenly less impressive, and my yin and I watched in wonder at the daredevils walking across the sky:

really?

The hike down was almost as challenging as the hike up had been, and at times the spray from the falls was so heavy that it collected in the leaves of trees and fell to the ground as rain. Upon our return to the valley, we took the shuttle back to our car and left via the southern entrance. Although it was incredibly dark, our fancy new camera allowed us to capture Yosemite's famous "tunnel view" as a parting image:

exposure time=3.2 seconds

We set our sights for a cheap motel in Fresno, and took a final photograph just as nightfall descended:

last image before leaving Yosemite