Safely ensconced in Yosemite! :)

I’m here! In Yosemite! Eating a really excellent salad, and with a pizza waiting for me. Well, okay, I’m devouring the salad — got excited about getting to Yosemite tonight, and waited too long. Ravenous! Salad’s still delicious, though. No coverage here, so I can’t access the internet, but I can set this up for later transmission.

It’s about 7:30pm as I type this, and I’ve heard a rumor the park is full; no surprise there. I’ll have to see if I can park somewhere quiet and just fall over in my van. The van itself is gorgeous, by the way! It was rented from escapecampervans.com, who are tremendously nice and straightforward folks, and who have beautifully painted vans for rent. Mine is called “Dark Star,” which I love! Love their slogan, too: “The Freedom to Sleep Around!”

Pizza’s darned good too. I suspect there’ll be a lot of train-of-thought postings for this next month, actually. Makes it much easier to eat & type simultaneously. ;)

So, where to start… it’s oddly hard, at least for me, to be the one who’s leaving. It helps when there’s a deadline, like an airplane departure time, or when there’s a group of two or more going together — but when it’s just me leaving whenwver I feel like it… procrastination is so much easier! I had more packing to do, or I wanted to celebrate my sweetie’s & my 26th anniversary of togetherness, or I wanted to finish this chapter… by the way, he thinks it’s our 24th, but he’s wrong! ;-D

One of my housemates suggested that if my sweetie wanted to celebrate our 25th twice, I should let him! Apparently the 25th is the silver anniversary, but as I told my gleefully conniving housemate, silver jewelry makes me look sallow, so I do not wear it — despite the fact that this leaves me defenseless against werewolf attack. My housemate’s straight-faced reply was that I should look into other silver items, like flatwear & swords. I have great housemates. ;)

So eventually, on the date of the third biggest holiday in the US… I took off on my adventure: The Great Summer Road Trip! So far it’s been quite fun. I took the advice of a good friend to avoid the big highways, and took 120 to Yosemite. That allowed me to weave around, back and forth through the hills, admiring the views and getting to see a bit of the countryside. California is a beautiful state, in a country of amazing beauty. The fields were lush and beautiful, the hills were tawny gold, and the many short outcroppings of rock nudging up through the wild grasses looked rather like little bony protuberances on the flanks of some huge, mountain-shaggy creature.

There were a great many places, though, which were abandoned — sometimes lovely commercial buildings, but clearly empty. Some of the barns I could see were falling-down decrepit too. I love living in the country, but it seems to be financially fruitless in our society to do so. I wish there were a way around this problem.

The little towns are incredibly quaint and kitschy, the closer you get to Yosemite. Their main streets are always nice looking, but it’s weird how dramatically gas prices vary. Just tootling down 120, I’ve seen everything from $3.63 — which is what it is at home — up to $4.79! They’re very white-bread too, and the few people I interacted with were friendly to a white girl like me.

Yosemite is huge — I had to drive 23 miles just to get from the entrance to the main valley! I made a mistake and didn’t eat soon enough, so I was charging along, taking quick glances at the gorgeous scenery and promising myself photos later — after food! Then I came around a bend and saw the most gorgeous view — and I just couldn’t go by it. I pulled off at the scenic outlook and took a few photos. Hopefully they came out well; I’ll upload them tomorrow. The internet connection here is limited, and the shuttle to my little camp stops running at 10pm. Since it’s almost 9:30pm now, I’ll have to head off soon.

Amusingly enough, as I was pulling away from the scenic view I spotted a sign commemorating that spot. Apparently John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt shared a campfire there — that was where they first decided it was important to save some of the lands from development. It was certainly a dramatically gorgeous view of El Capitan, which I discovered was the mountain’s name after going around one or two more bends in the road. I’d like to get a few shots of some of the beautiful streams as well, if I can as I leave tomorrow. Yosemite is close enough to home that I’m not going to spend a ton of time here — I’d rather come back later and do it right.