Yosemite National Park, CA

Friday 28th: Lone Pine, Death Valley to Yosemite

http://www.yosemitepark.com/yosemite-lo dge.aspx : Room 3204

I slept poorly and was awake from 3am. I gave up at 6.30 and got up to try out the coffee machine. It only took 2 attempts. Mark and I went for a walk up the road to check out the village by foot. There were a few camping and hiking stores as that is a popular activity in this area with the magnificent Alabama Hills and Mt Whitney range so close. Mark was most pleased to find a ‘Buff’ at a reasonable price so we called in to pick one up after checking out from the Motel. The camping store owner informed us that many of the great Hollywood westerns, starring the Lone Ranger, John Wayne and Roy Rogers etc, were filmed up in these hills That all made a bit more sense now as the rooms at our motel had actors names on them. We were in the ‘Dale Evans’ room but I haven’t had time to Google her. More recent films though have used the area as a backdrop to represent Afghanistan!

We had a 4 hr drive to Yosemite and this was much more pleasant as there were other vehicles on the road to reassure us and the scenery had a little more life to it. Some cell actiivity by way of photosynthesis with some green plants although the signs to indicate ‘cows’ revealed little in that way of any fauna!

We made it up to the Lee Vining /Tioga Pass turn off to head in towards Yosemite by about midday and bought some lunch items before entering the park. We drove on a bit further and stopped by a small lake to have our sandwiches. A pesky squirrel came out as we made our way to leave though. He cleverly realised that we were bound to have dropped some crumbs. We wondered though if this was ‘Basil’, Manuel’s Siberian Hamster, from Fawlty Towers! (Ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_q4S7lZ eik)

We had a great journey into the National Park thanks to a CD I had purchased from an enterprising, US based gentleman. Our 4 hr trip from the Tioga Pass park entry into Yosemite Village was made much more interesting and meaningful thanks to the informative commentary from Kris Corey.

We finally arrived to Yosemite Lodge at the Falls at around 4.30. We settled and lazed in our room for an hour or so before heading over to an early dinner at ‘The Mountain Room’ restaurant, a 5 min walk from our room. We had a lovely meal there looking out to the cascading Yosemite Falls. There were some more ‘Siberian Hamsters’, aka squirrels, playing outside to entertain us during our meal. Tom, though, recalled the ‘Steve vs Alan’ You Tube clip and wondered if it might have been this character instead! (Ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgvR3y5J CXg)

We wandered back to our room for an early night as we were all tired after our long day of driving, listening and looking. The plan for tomorrow is to take some walks and drive up to Glacier Point.