Scott's Journals

Big Day!!! We did not get any sort of discount from Best Western. Oh well. I slept great, woke up around 9am and we headed toward Wawona (YNP's southern entrance). Along the way we saw a number of fruit/nut orchards and lots of little towns with nothing but spanish signs. We drove for a long time... We stopped in Mariposa to get some last minute supplies. It was a nice little town kinda like Waynesboro, VA. We finally got to Wawona and eventually to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias around 1pm. Absolutely amazing! When I was driving along the winding road, I slammed on the breaks when I saw the first "big tree." We hiked about 2mi. and saw most of the famous trees, the grizzly giant, the tunnel tree etc. We then drove to Yosemite Valley along another winding road north through YNP. After 40 minutes or so, we finally turned a corner and saw the tunnel view for the first time. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It was even cooler than anything I'd seen in the rockies. We pulled over and took a few pictures. Chris and I had our picture taken by a guy who was from Indianapolis. In the valley, we stopped a few places to take pictures; tunnel view, Bridalveil falls, El Capitan and then headed to the main part of the valley to go to the wilderness center. At the wilderness center we got an update from Jay who had written the snow depth reports that I had been reading for the past 5 months. Kinda cool except he had absolutely zero personality and was generally weird. Chris said a better description was "stupid." Anyway, we got Chris a bear canister and headed out of the park to find lodging. We stopped in Groveland to find a hotel. Not much there so we moved on. After 1 hour of driving through mountainous switchbacks and calling the cheapest hotel in the next city (Sonora) and finding out the Rodeo was in town and the rooms were double in price, we turned around and headed back to Groveland through little towns with populations less than 200 like Big Oak Flat and Chinese Camp. We finally settled on the Groveland Motel which was a set of cabins and a teepee commune. The head manager/owner was a complete hippie. In talking to her I found out that her two biggest accomplishments in life were a)having Ken Kesey as her chemistry teacher in college and b) losing 100 lbs. Interesting... We got dinner at P.J.'s across the street. I had a good pizza with sausage, basil, onions and peppers. And, of course, Bud Light, the one beer they had. After dinner, Chris and I went to the grocery store next door and get a six-pack of snowshoe pale ale (brewed in Sonora) and sat out, talked, and drank until bed. Not bad beer.

Comment Policy:

Only signed in members can comment on journal entries. Please sign in now or register if you would like to leave a comment. Comments are sent to the owner of this journal for approval before being made live on the site.

Home | About | Help | Privacy | Report this Page | Contact Us | Give us Feedback | Copyright © 2005 My Life of Travel