Yosemite

We left Swall Meadows the cool and quiet mountainside with the purples and blues and white topped distances. It's all happening now because it's Yosemite day, Yosemite that I've wanted to go to since forever that mountain place, that valley place that glaciers made that is protected from man but man can visit and not just that but stay and be in it. My maps said roughly a 3 hour drive and it's a pleasure to get in red orange car knowing everything that lies between will be good and at the end of the drive there will be Yosemite.

June Lake

After that sweet breakfast I described we go and stop in June Lake to do a loop around it on the way and now everything is dark green with expansiveness sweeping out in front with lakes dotted everywhere on the way to Mammoth Lakes, and rounding the corner there is a crystal blue lake sprawled out and it's so quiet and then stepping out the car the warmth hits you and the insects buzzing in the bushes and that smell as you look out over the lake. Obviously we need to get to the lake and touch the clear blue and we drive through a little holiday town with people getting their boats and syrup pancakes for the day. We drive down a wrong road a tiny dirt track right along the river it says private then down the end of the tiny one way track there is a sign saying PRIVATE but this time with a picture of gun on it so I do some skillful and swift reversing back to the road so getting to the lake, and there's a little car park it's so big here and always somewhere and space to park. It's empty now and early in the morning and the lake is turquoise blue and inviting. There are 2 Chinese tourists taking selfies but that's it. We take our snacks out the car because there are bear signs again and watch the water and sit on the white rocky sand and take our own photos and the tourists leave the beach but leave their jacket and camera case and when we call to them they looked confused and slightly panicked and pick up speed maybe they thought that we were shouting that a bear was going to pounce on them. 

The water so clear, so clear you can see to the bottom and icy fresh all I want to do is get a book and lie there all day but this is just the start of the day to Yosemite and feels good to be back on HWY 395 so we stop in a garage that has that good food that a guy way back in Lone Pine tells us to go try but we buy flip flops and petrol only. The petrol station was on the turn onto HWY 120 which was closed until only a week ago due to snow and would have caused 6 more hours of driving if it had been closed so were a bit lucky and now turned onto it with the other SUVs and motor-homes and drive up winding up and up through stony green hillsides and the scenery is getting big and stony behind and in front. The first stop came upon us suddenly and meant a bit of gravel skidding and it was next to a lake that was half frozen and had the same turquoise look of June Lake but dramatic covered in ice with some mountains running into it, we're high up now and it's otherworldly because I'm just not used to blue sunshine and lakes and ice all at once. 

Someone in Bishop tells us to stop at Olmsted Point and I feel so grateful for these passer-by’s who tell you something almost in passing because they know, they get it and can see you will too, these defining points in a road journey that you might otherwise have driven by not knowing what lay right there to your left, so grateful and may we always pass these nuggets along the road and keep realising how much they mean and define our adventures. So Olmsted Point now start to imagine what it felt like to stop and look over it. As if there was a great cauldron of molten rock but not hot, cool and grey and soothing and it’s been poured over a deep valley like warmed marshmallow and then add pine trees dotted around you can see them clearly but they are tiny, they are far away and also close at every level. Then you notice a stream or the sound of a stream and the smell of pine comes up to the hot place where you park and you see little ants which are human ants scattering around and exploring the marshmallow hardened grey fresh pine rock. And the views you can see they stretch all the way to Half Dome in the distance, that famous rock the Apple Screensaver. And not only can you look at all this but you can hop down a path and walk, walk all over it through the dwarf pines made so by being restricted by rock, growing small like oversized bonsai's and be one of the ants all over the cool grey rock going down until you hit a terrace of more trees and water trickling from the melting snow this is Olmsted Point. Don’t forget to tell people to stop there or the people who tell you to stop there. After scampering around this weighty paradise on the return we get lost coming back over smooth grey rocks and through the wet pine forest because the snow is melting everywhere and I think bears and how we left the snacks in the car this time but then we come out almost back where we left the car.

Half Dome in the distance to the right 

That's me

Dwarf tree

Now we need to go slowly and pass all the happy healthy walkers with fresh cheeks on the mountain roads through the many many pines, winding and coming out to view after view and screeching into small lay-by's to crane necks around mountain sides to get a view of those famous rock faces with Half Dome as the daddy as we get nearer through the valleys. Getting closer to Yosemite village there are more cars and people and we see a shuttle bus but everyone is absorbed and disappears into the big pines and there is a crazy one way system that I think if we miss the turn off it will take us and hour to come round again and I make Danny sweat with the responsibility of finding the turn-off but we find it and get there and we see the white canvas tents through the distance it's the tented Curry Village (now Half Dome Village) which has been there since the 1800's. We shuffle into the reception office and they give us a map and we're a bit spaced out after the longer than expected drive and all the views and blue and white grey rock that is now towering above us, we find our canvas tent which is just tent, beds and a big metal box to keep the bears out your food and it's squished amongst hundreds of others but still feels spacious like everything here. We're deep in the trees now, tall tall pines but through the trees you can see the steepest of steep grey rock towering above like a city of skyscraper rocks but one long skyscraper that has a wall that wraps you into a valley like tiny ants and it's majestic and just electric, in how different it is to anything you've ever seen. It's hot now and there is a pool right nearby and swimming there looking up at the grey rocks with people on their outdoorsy holidays is just novel to the maximum. We are also near the food place a large wooden deck that makes pizzas and burgers and there is beer too so that's what we do, it's busy but so exciting. 

Every time you look up there is a waterfall 

What's also exciting is that Matt our friend the bassist in Danny's band and his girlfriend who also live in London just happened to be in Yosemite Half Dome Village that very night purely by chance I mean how crazy is that all the way from London on a different trip going opposite directions and here they were. They tell us of some star gazing activity that night and it's too late to buy tickets but we tag along anyways navigating the looped bus system at dusk and ending up somewhere with a group of people and a very enthusiastic astronomy student taking us in the dark to a field to look at and learn about stars, he was like those camp leaders you see in movies really exaggerating his excitement and knowing the right PG jokes that cracked everyone up each night and I was loving it lapping it up because it was impossible to be cynical at anything at this point. We don't yet understand the weather here and leave the house in nothing warm and in the mountain it gets very cold at night so we shiver on the plastic sheet on the ground in the darkening field and look up at the starry night sky while he tells us facts. The sky gets darker and darker and he points up with a laser although not when an aeroplane comes over because you can later pilots eyeballs and he tells us that 1m earths fit into the sun and if the sun was a pea size then the next nearest sun was a beach ball size, and that there was a star as big as a circle with 40 people sitting inside it. Just think on that for a little bit, I know how you feel we felt the same. The sky got darker still and the stars got brighter and he drew the outlines of constellations with his laser stick and it was magical. I was tired and sticking my nose into Danny's chest with cold but still managed to have a little shivery snooze and then it was over and we had to navigate back in the darkest dark Yosemite Park to our huts.

The canvas hut was cold but there was a huge wooden food cabin that could fit about 500 people that had hot oats in the morning and obviously Danny went straight for pancakes and syrup, there was just so much to do and see and I couldn't contain myself so we opened up a map of the nice walks and decided to start easy. It began with a gentle walk to Yosemite Falls getting on the shuttle bus and crossing wooden bridges and hearing roaring water and walking up pathways with many others with the huge imposing comforting slate walls all around us, the falls were big and heavy and spraying water and everyone wanted a picture and it was so refreshing to be near it and smelling the pines and the mulchy wood forest floor. We wandered aimlessly through the trees just soaking it all up the smells that you just can't believe and the presence of the rock and the trees! It's so hard to describe these old reddish giants sucking me in so that I want to touch every one the temperature rising now but so cool in the trees. We walk and walk and try find another little lake and its getting hotter still, and the well-worn paths take us past big boulders that have likely lain there for millions of years that have cool moss with fresh cool air blowing out from under the rocks so you feel as if you're walking next to a fridge, and I want to climb and run all over and under them to get cool and just to step on these million year old things. There is a rattle snake in the path in front and the family walking ahead screech but then carry on walking when it's gone and we do too. At the end of one walk we see a refreshing dipping spot and take off the boiling hot shoes and step in but the water is so icy it makes your feet numb so we just splash instead. 

Yosemite Falls

If you ever need to cool down

We head home and out again and try use the car but then get stuck in the one way system so back on the shuttle bus and then got off the wrong stop for our next destination and as we're wondering what we're doing a hippy guy with no shirt and bright flowing trousers ask us directions and we laugh because we don't know and he tells us cool places to go in San Fran Cisco and Danny likes him. We are supposed to meet Matt and Jane at 3pm but it's about a mile walk away and legs are aching and everything is hot and there's another rattle snake in the path but as soon as you forget that the walk is awesome again so we get to them on time sitting at a bus stop where I pick up a nice stick for walking and also start to feel like maybe we shouldn't have walked so much before meeting them to go on another big walk. They tell us of another great waterfall that of course we want to see and I take my big stick with tired legs now we walk up the steep incline of smooth grey rock. I will say over again how hard it is to describe the majestic huge swathes of grey granite rock face that surrounds us and when you look up there is a shelf of trees way up and you just can't get over the scale so much so that I feel hard vertigo and a bit dizzy looking up so look ahead until we come to another huge white spraying waterfall that gallops and crashes under the wooden bridge that we stand on and it's so cool and refreshing with the water, and you look up through the valley and see more waterfalls higher up in the rocks and they look small now but they're actually huge and I look down now instead of up, down where the water is rushing and I feel just overwhelmed and emotional by the power of the water that is melting off the snow somewhere and coming down in vast gallons of galloping elephants. It just looks so powerful careening in between the huge boulder and I feel tiny and that this place is somewhere humans could never dent or master and how it’s how it was millions of years ago and I am overwhelmed again by time and scale and earth and the taste of the cool clean air going through my hot body.

I think this is it the end of the waterfall walk but Matt tells me this is just the middle. I thought when I started I would be too sore and tired but there is new life in my legs as I fill the water bottle and we see people coming down the other way totally soaked and realise we're going to walk into a waterfall. UP and up, rocky stairs and white water rushing in the valley up and up through the pine trees and now steps and more up and more very wet soaked people, then we see the next one up in the distance and it looks huge and can hear it now and the path gets slippery and wet and precarious but up still now there are metal railings and we're like ferrets clinging to the wet rock and the spray starts to reach us. It becomes crazy like are we really walking into that there waterfall and yes we are and then through the trees and rock we see the biggest waterfall I've ever been close to with crushing white water horses made of heavy iron and white racing down the mountain side make a huge wall of water smoke and there is a pine tree sticking up no branches they have come off with the weight of water drops and 1 big rainbow across our path, then 2 then 4 we are surrounded by rainbows of all sizes looking at this powerful thing and then I realise this is one of the defining memories and sensations in my body that will stay with me for a long time I don't even feel like I'm Talitha in my own body. I stand with my bare skin on the edge getting sprayed and soaked and just breathing and not knowing how to absorb it all. 

HUGE Vernal Falls spraying us with water and making rainbows 

The billion tons of water careening down the valley 

The happiest I could probably ever be

We walk up to an even higher ledge and all stand with our bodies facing the roaring lions of water and just stand there. Then up still, more wet steps and hugging the rock and stepping carefully climbing now, until we get out onto a ledge and are standing ON TOP OF THE WATERFALL, yes the waterfall that made me feel all that and now we were on a giant smooth rocked ledge looking out in to the valley and all the sheer granite cliff faces and looking up and even bigger mountain rocks and the sun is coming down and still warm drying us off and I just don't think I could feel more blissful. We stay there warming ourselves like lizards and eating snacks and I do some yoga moves for a pic and a funny guy who might have been stoned and loving life came and did some yoga moves for my pics too.

Image by Frank Kovalchek, that's where we were sitting 

Yoga dude

Matt & Jane

Back at the camp now with achy legs but loving life even more there was a big dinner buffet from the huge wooden hall of dubious boiled veggies and an eggplant bake thing which was leathery but I didn’t care because I was happy and we sat on the wooden deck and played songs on Danny's new mini guitar child and sang with Jane and Matt and then we learned that Matt could really play guitar he's a dark guitar playing horse and we drank beer until it was bed time, they were going to drive all day to the Grand Canyon the next day and I think that was a day where I've seen some of my all-time favourite things and I still get shivers thinking of that waterfall.

Now we had our walking legs and the aches and pains from the day before made us strong to walk again the next day and our last in Yosemite. We were going to do the Panorama Trail hike 6-8 hours of walking and it was a hot day now, we had to get a bus up to Glacier Point which was sold out of bus tickets but we managed to squeeze on anyways and it had a driver and tour guide who had worked in Yosemite for 35 years and he drove the bus and told us facts, especially fire facts about how for over a century they had been wrongly putting out small fires but this disrupted the natural way of the forest so when lighting struck instead of making small manageable fires it made huge fires that killed all the giant sequoias so now they were trying to maintain small fires and he also said how people drive a bit crazy in their motor homes and the bus was freezing with air con but he said it was better than being boiling hot. Up at Glacier Point there is a big tourist spot where the bus lets off bus-loads of people because you could see all the way down into Yosemite Valley and see our canvas hut village and all the waterfalls and again you were struck down by the scale and insanity of the idea that a glacier with some boulders came itching down this mountain millions upon millions of years ago to make it. 

We got a good amount of snacks now from the shop which included a tuna sandwich some nuts and dried fruit and some chocolate for Danny's big sweet tooth and also a coffee drink because we had around 6 hours of hiking at least on the Panorama Trail (you will see why it's called this) and it was almost 12pm and boiling hot. We walked down an easy path hugging the sides of the whole valley and it was utterly beautiful and exciting to see the whole valley in this way with red giant pines dotted around and waterfalls tiny in the distance the ones we had seen so close up. The way was hot and people were resting in the shade all along and we made it to a point which was a sheer cliff with a big rock to sit on but didn't want to go to the edge and I realised this was the line of trees I had looked up at from the valley floor the day before, the top of the sheer cliff that made me feel so dizzy with vertigo and we were sitting ON it. 

WATERFALL!

Lots of cliff edges 

Pic below is where we were sitting 

Taken the day before 

What we were looking at with our eyes was almost too much to take in, in its beauty and scale, the scale and colours and of things that were huge and roaring now tiny in the distance was just insane to look at now. The pine forest was beautiful and cool to walk through with all the smells and we hopped over and through little streams and walked for hour and hours as the path hugged the valley sides, coming to another huge ledge of smooth rock with a gazzilion tons of icy water flowing over and in the form of another majestic waterfall over the edge careening down the cliff edge creating masses of white cold steam and water smoke below, and you could go right up to the edge and look right down at the steep waterfall below you until you felt sick. Here you could see the big mountain tops that look so incredible from below, big boulder mountain tops and lizards and people drinking out of filter straws from the calmer parts of the water and we had run out so we had to ask to borrow a filter straw for more water and some people who liked Danny's hat didn't mind lending their straws to us.

See the rainbow in the trees?

Eagle Peak

Mountain Man

The day continues in this blissful way while we walk on the home 3 hour stretch still hugging the valley and we twist round and down and I can’t stop looking back behind me at the waterfall trying to drink in its dew and I get another chance as we pass by a ledge that has water pouring out cracks in the rock and showing us from above and it’s hot and the water icy cold so you kind of skip and jump through the shower. We get to a crossroad where you look up at the Three Brothers of Yosemite Eagle Peak Middle and Lower Brothers and the scale strikes you again because you were just there under one of those and now it’s rising up in front of you. A couple get to the crossroad and it’s a choice either a walk through Vernal Falls where we were yesterday having the outer body experience under the rainbow waterfall or there is a different way the John Muir trail and they can’t decide which way to go as the light starts to dip lower and the shadows grow longer and the day cools down so we tell them definitely go to Vernal Falls and walk under the rainbow but we’re going the John Muir way because we think we should see something different but we end up wishing that we’d gone back to Vernal Falls afterwards. After another couple of hours and now the legs are really starting to feel it we get to the bus that takes us home to our Canvas tent and rest. I try to look at the stars that night but there is too much light in our camp so I just end up wandering around the dark corners and mistaking trees for giants and rocks faces for glittering towers in the sky.

The Three Peaks

Cross Roads - Yosemite Valley, Vernal Falls, John Muir Trail

Can't get enough of this magical delicious powerful mountain water 

The next day it’s time to leave already but not before checking out El Capitan Dawn Wall where those amazing crazy climbers attempt to scale up like lizards and you really just can’t imagine the size of this rock face but know that it takes an experienced climber 5 days to finish it and they sleep in little tents hooked into the rock how’s that for your vertigo. There is small Indian man gazing at the rock face in the middle of the wooded path and he says he is waiting for his wife who walks really slowly because she’s lazy and he is still there around 20 mins later and we can see his small wife shuffling up the path looking none too pleased that he made her walk. 

I can't even get across how big this is - El Capitan

People are actually climbing this! El Capitan

Those are climbers!!! 

I can’t stop breathing in the forest and looking at flowers and pine needles and then looking back behind me as we drive out of this place to Lake Tahoe but not before stopping to look at the Giant Sequoias in Tuolumne Grove on the way out. There were around 6 of them set apart and also some ones that had fallen and been burnt by forest fires the good and bad kind and it was my first look at these Ents, orange and fuzzy they are the Viking uncles of the forest and can live up to 3 thousand years old that’s right you heard me they were around when the pyramids were being built but like everything they are suffering the effects of the human Lech. One you could walk under (Danny was very taken with this one) and one you could go inside even and see the roots of the fallen that were like a thousand octopuses suddenly fossilised while having a fight and also the cross section of the trunk of one which had fallen that had hundreds even thousands of rings and surrounded by scattered giant cones almost as if to prove it’s age to family members as they scurry by, proudly like a centenarian would proudly display their original teeth in a case to anyone that would take any time to listen.

Nerd

I wish you could see the patterns on this burnt tree

Octopus fight / Sequoia roots

Inside an ancient burnt out Sequoia 

Tree Man

Imagine getting to live or work here in Yosemite I mean I don’t think that anywhere can quite live up to its extreme nobility and scale, it’s icy cold waterfall mist or electric air or giants of rock or its power to make you feel how earth once was and our small size and the mighty adrenaline injection of pure love for life and the living. YOSEMITE.

The road out of Yosemite, those are the Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance 

Road out of Yosemite, another beautiful dwarf tree waves us goodbye