Travelling Diaries
2017 US Great Adventure / Day 4 - Yosemite
Previous and next: Day 3 - Yosemite National Park / Day 5 – Sequoia National Park
This would be our last day in Yosemite National Park.
We checked out early and left our bags at the hotel. Luckily they didn't charge us for the lost key, so we were feeling good. That feeling wasn't to last.
Lost: Episode 2
We set off into the National Park. As we drove in, I had this awful feeling that I had left my iPad behind in the vacated hotel room. The iPad, apart from costing a fortune, also had the semi completed blogs that I had been writing over the last few days whilst we didn't have internet. I didn't fancy having to rewrite all of that lovely prose again!
We searched the bags in the car but the iPad was not to be found.
We dropped Karen and Laura off in the park and the designated driver and I went back to the hotel.
It was a long and fraught old journey and I could see that the queues of cars to get back in were getting longer and my nerves were getting shorter.
Luckily, back at the hotel, the iPad was still in the unserviced room and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Branches everywhere
We returned slowly to the Park and met up with the others to head off to do a nice long walk.
We parked up at the appropriately named Happy Isles starting point and made our way down a path towards Mirror Lake.
As I walked along I was busy watching my step and didn't notice a low hanging branch over the path. Bang! The branch hit me on the top of my head. Luckily I was wearing a cap otherwise I would have taken layers of skin off my bald scalp!
Ouch, it hurt. Even with the cap on, I managed to cut through the skin and a huge egg like lump appeared on my head. Soon I resembled the mountain called Half Dome which we could see in the distance, which was probably appropriate.
Laura had a Mister Bump plaster which was applied to the wound. We then headed back on our way.
As I had twice slowed the whole posse down today, I raced ahead of the others on the path so as not to hold them up any further. This only lasted about 10 minutes.
The path around the lake was littered with fallen trees and branches. This made it a bit of an obstacle course, but this added to the wilderness aspect of the walk.
On the journey we came across an area of boulders and huge fallen trees. Karen worked out that at one stage this whole area was covered in forest and a massive landslide from the rocks above had wiped out a broad swath of trees. Guessing by the regrowth and state of the fallen trees, we reckoned that this had happened in the last 10 years or so.
Later on everyone was admiring Half Dome when I told them to stop looking at my head and to start looking at the mountain instead!
(The real Half Dome!)
We saw an area where people had been stacking stones.
On the way back to the car we saw a number of deer feeding in the forest.
We also saw a road sign that reminded me of earlier in the day.
We left the Yosemite National Park and headed off to Mariposa to eat and get gas (the old joke).
In Mariposa we eat at a local diner called the Miners . I was sure there was a rich seam of jokes to go with the name, but no nuggets were forthcoming.
Afterwards, as it was starting to get dark, we made our way off to our next hotel which was in a place called Three Rivers.
Back seat driver
In the car on the way to the hotel, I was sitting behind the designated driver who was following his TomTom Sat Nav.
As I love my technology (you don't say) I decided to set up my own Sat Nav using my phone, some freebie software (actually pre-downlaoded Google maps) and a generic windscreen holder stuck to the passenger window. When everyone else saw me they roared with laughter and said it reminded them of Maggie in the opening titles from the Simpsons, where she is sat with a plastic steering wheel next to Marge Simpson pretending to drive.
The journey itself was good.
We stopped off at the Walmart just outside of Fresno and, to be honest, I take back much of what I said on day two about the store. This had a much better stocked fresh fruit and veg section and only 15 varieties of indigestion tablets.
Lost: Episode 3
We arrived at the Sierra Lodge hotel late, after 10pm. The place was miles from anywhere and we were worried that there would be no one to greet us. But there was.
The receptionist checked us in and told us stories of a bear wandering down to the hotel a few days earlier. The prospect of possibly seeing a bear got Laura excited!
We got to our rooms and prepared to settle in for the night. It was then that I noticed that the charging cable for my Fitbit was missing. I had left it in the previous hotel. If only I had noticed it when I had gone back for my iPad. Drat!
The Fitbit itself still had some charge in it, so was still working, but how long would it last?
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