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Yosemite National Park
- del.ico.us
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- Last edited: 15:52, Jun 23 2007
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Aaahm a go-in the country! Get me out of the city, see some of that nature stuff.
Yosemite National Park is beautiful and grand, yet full of people and commercialised in the way only Americans can (loud and big). Given the volume of people that come here, it is probably the most sustainable way. But first to Merced.
Merced
I had to catch the bus and stay the night outside before getting two days walking in the park. Lucky me that place outside was a little sh*t-kicking city called Merced. The hostel owner’s granddaughter was having her graduation so the one day I was going to be in Merced was the one day the hostel closed. I asked what alternative motels there were and he said “don’t stay on 16th street because those motels are always in the paper”. It was an ominous recommendation. I managed to find Motel 6, and asked for their cheapest. They said $65 a night.
The bus arrived at Merced at 10.30pm. In the dark. I saw the motel, which was on a side street, as the bus drove past down 16th street. I also saw the other motels. Luckily I am not staying there, I thought to myself. I got a closer look at the motels however, as I got to walk the 30 minutes back down ‘16th’ street to get to Motel 6 - the warning was scarier than the journey. Arriving safely at the motel, I noticed the glowing neon out front said rooms for $45. Cheeky monkeys! Americans often will lie to your face to charge you more, and then either claim ignorance or give you a look that says they know the game is up but those are the rules.
The door in my motel room had a dead bolt on and a sign below that said lock for your own safety. I felt very safe with my dead bolt. Later on the yellow pages caught my eye (I might have been bored) as there were several leaves that were made out of cardboard. Turns out the number one business in Merced is bail bonds. There were pages on pages of full size adverts for bail bonds. Assault, drunk driving, domestic violence? Need money now? Don’t spend a night in jail, call us and we will make all of your problems go away. Walking around Merced a couple of days later there were bill boards on buses and at the side of the street. Merced is a boom town.
Yosemite
The plan was to catch the early morning YARTS bus into Yosemite, dump my stuff at a lodge, do a walk and then catch the YARTS back to the Midpines aka Bug hostel just outside of the park.
I arrived at Yosemite around 11am and proceeded to be shocked. National park? National theme park! I had been told prior that there was a supermarket in the Yosemite valley but I wasn’t prepared for either it’s own bus system or the sheer volume of people and buildings. It wasn’t even peak season (school holidays) yet but there were already queues and standing room only on the buses. I ditched my pack at a place called Curry Village, which for some reason only I found hilarious and then proceeded to climb the Yosemite falls track and onto Yosemite point.
Once off the valley floor the people immediately drop off. Given that the time for the walk I did said 6-7 hours and I did it in 3 and 1/2 I am not surprised. Americans as a trend are fat and overweight or very skinny/athletic - not much in the mid-ground. Also given that the park attracts over 4 million visitors a year the times also accommodate all walks of life (I kill me).
Yosemite is GRAND. The area is predominantly granite and there is nothing in New Zealand that really compares to its scale. The Yosemite falls is one of the tallest falls in the world and can be seen from nearly everywhere in the valley. The rock faces are sheer and daunting. The valley is like a fissure cut into a mossy earth, with beautiful mountains and pine forests spreading as far as the eye can see, so long as one can get a view high enough. At the top of the falls I got mugged by a squirrel for my lunch, and went for a swim in one of the pools at the head of the waterfall. People who I later told this too stared at me wild eyed like I was insane, and there were signs saying ‘Do not swim in case you get swept over the edge, no second chances’. However there was a naked old guy doing push ups in the water(!) and some young boys futher up stream all swimming so I thought what the hey. Snow melt is cold, California sun is hot. I dried completely in 2 minutes. The view, well look at the photos.
On the way back down the mountain I bumped into four people shuffling their way down the hill. The woman (Amanda) was carrying the bag whilst the two guys Philip and Paul were taking turns carrying Paul’s mate Jared. Apparently Jared had broken his ankle walking up the hill. Remembering my bible stories I thought of Jesus and the good samaritan and offered my hand and my back. Apparently nobody else had read their bible recently and plenty of perfectly healthy individuals passed us on the track with not so much as a word. It seemed the more feeble the person, the more likely they were to stop. I guess if they were able-bodied they avoided eye contact so as to not feel obligated to help.
Philip had called a ranger and half way down he met us with a pair of crutches. Jared’s armpits nearly wore threw his shoulders by the end of his journey, which also made me miss the last YARTS bus out of the park. Fortunately Philip and Amanda were friends who were working in the camp for the summer, and they offered me to sleep on Philip’s floor for the evening. What a stroke of luck, they were the first non-hostel Americans that I got to talk to.
Philip and Amanda were incredibly friendly and I proceeded to meet the close circle of friends they had made in a camp staff that grows to around 2000 in peak season. The workers stay in canvas huts in the pine forest which bears can rip through the sides of easily. Signs everywhere in Yosemite dictate that you must keep all food, drinks, toiletries (smells like food?) and chilly-bins because they know what the look like in supplied bear proof lockers. We went for a pizza at a local pizza place, because this is a national park and all national parks have their local pizza places right? 
Anyhow, in Australia you have to lock away your food because of ants. In Yosemite you have to watch out for cute furry Disney animals attacking you left right and centre. We were sitting at some relaxing tables on the deck outside with 100 other people, and a raccoon runs under the tables. Strange cat monkey things are climbing trees nearby and raiding the recycling bins. Then a skunk shows up, not to forget the squirrels. Squirrels are the most deadly, the little sandwich fiends.
After dinner the others got drunk. I am getting good at recounting my ‘I don’t drink’ story. It is actually a conversation starter and I act drunk when others are anyhow. We went and sat on boulders next to the Merced river that flows through the centre of the park, looked at the stars and argued the existence of [g]od for the rest of the evening. At one stage the ground shook and I am still unsure whether was a landslide, which apparently happen with regularity, an earthquake, or a divine warning about said conversation.
I was supposed to get up early and go for an excellent walk up half dome peak which is apparently a must. One also needs to leave at 4.30am to make it to the summit and back. Needless to say I did another walk on which I left at 11am. This was up the Misty and John Muir trails to see the Vernal and Nevada falls. Beautiful. It reminded me of doing the Tongariro crossing in there being parts of the track where it was a single file line. Being an easier track than the previous day there were people everywhere!
That evening I gathered up my stuff and finally caught the YART bus to the bug hostel, which was my first YHI hostel with a nice friendly atmosphere. I think that was only due to it’s unique location, the people I was staying with there didn’t even know it was a YHI. I met Bruce who was a technical writer converted to park ranger from Santa Cruz who was very nice.
The following morning I caught the bus back to Merced and then caught the double decker Amtrak (I forgot to take a photo) train to Los Angeles. Did I ever say America was huge? There were plenty of identical pre-fab suburbs with bill boards that proclaimed ‘If you lived here you would be home already’. I wanted to graffiti them to say ‘If you lived here you would slit your writsts’, but then that is just my anarchist streak talking. They are great, really!
One more night at Santa Monica hostel before flying to New York city. I wanted a changed but all of the Hollywood hostels were booked out and the one I seen at Venice looked dodge. I met a local L.A. woman (dammit forget her name) at an organic restaurant. She proceeded to inform me on the dangers of Mormonism, which is a hilarioius religion if you want to research and a laugh, and what it is like to be a citizen of L.A.. Apparently there is a section of L.A. near Skid Row which is a homeless shanty town comparable to the Johannesberg soweto. I missed that spot.
Instead of paying $16 for a shuttle to the airport I caught public transport which cost me 75 cents. It pays - I mean saves - to be organised and research transport before you get to a place. New York, New York…
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