Yosemite

Yosemite.  Pronounced, yoh-sem-i-tee.  Or as a person I once met pronounced it.  yoh-se-might.  However you choose to pronounce it, nothing can change the fact that it is one of the most beautiful places in a country that has no shortage of beautiful places.  The scale of the valley on first encounter is breathtaking.

Shortly after my wife and I got married, she was invited to attend a conference in San Francisco.  I, of course said, “When do WE leave?”  So, WE started to make OUR travel arrangements.  It turned out that we would be traveling with another couple.  They suggested that it might be a good idea to add some days on to the end of the trip so we could all go check out Yosemite.  My wallet started to protest, saying something about not having enough money, but I told him to shut up or I was going to trade him in for a nice aligator skin model that I saw at Marshalls.  That settled it.  Adventure here we come.

The conference went well.  At least I’m assuming it did.  While my wife and her colleague spent their days there, I roamed the city with the the colleague’s husband.  Time flew, and before we knew it, we were picking up our rental car to head out to the Sierra Nevadas.

We had two days to spend in the park.  That’s really not enough time to do it justice.  You could spend a whole season there.  As it happened, we were in town during the winter season.  There was three feet of snow on the ground in Badger Pass, and the floor of the valley itself also had snow cover.  This limited our activities somewhat, but it also kept the crowds away.  We tried cross-country skiing, took a guided photography hike, and went snowshoeing with a ranger at Badger Pass.  We also decided to check out the historic Ahwahnee lodge.  On the way there a couple of coyotes crossed the road in front of us.  Apparently coyotes are as common in Yosemite as squirrels are in Pennsylvania. But we weren’t from the area.  My wife and I are east coasters.  The couple we were traveling with were from England and France respectively, so this was super exciting for us.  We stopped our car so we could get a picture.  This angered the person in the car following us.  They honked and swerved around us, yelling something mocking like, “OOOOOhhh, looooook, a coyote.  Get out of the road!”  That upset our English friend.  He decided that this offense must be dealt with.  We followed this other person all the way to the hotel parking lot where he got out of the car and gave the other driver a proper English dressing down.  I’ve lived in New Jersey for around half of my life, so I am familiar with road rage and yelling at other drivers.  In all my years, I have never seen a more polite road rage incident.  Seriously.  Not one four letter word was used.  In New Jersey, a road rage incident without four letter words would just be called silence with a bunch of dirty looks.

Our last day in the park, we decided to go check out the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias.  The park office informed us that the road to the grove was closed due to snow, but we could all rent snowshoes and walk the two miles to see the trees.  We could knock that out in an afternoon.  Then they told us that if we didn’t have the snowshoes back by the time the rental shop closed, we’d have to pay for another day’s rental.  At this point, my wallet dared to speak up again.  “Hey Marc, I know you like that aligator skin wallet, and I’m not gonna lie, that really hurts my feelings, but we can’t afford to waste money on renting snowshoes for an extra day if we aren’t getting to use them.”  I knew he was right.  I made up my mind that this was going to be the fastest four mile snowshoe that Yosemite had ever seen.  Halfway through, I realized that the words fast and snowshoe had probably never been used together before.  My English friend, trying to be helpful, pointed out that normal human walking speed was three miles an hour.  This was completely useless information.  It’s like saying, “Hey I know you’re on a moped going 30 mph, but if you were riding a Harley you could be going 80 mph.”  Nevertheless, I walked as fast as I could in snowshoes and two feet of snow.  Long story short.  The trees are magnificent.  And,,,,,,,, my wallet and I were both happy at the end of the day.

I now have two kids who are mostly unimpressed with wherever I take them for vacation.  I think that it may be time for another visit to the Yo-Se-Might valley.  If that doesn’t impress them, I’m never taking them on vacation with me again.  I know my wallet will be happy about that.