Biking Before Hiking

Monday started off wonderfully. I woke up from the deep sleep I had been in all night on a plush pillow top mattress in my luxury tent cabin…oh wait, no, I didn’t. I didn’t really sleep Sunday night, much like I already told you I didn’t think I was going to. Toto woke up at 7:30ish and informed me that it was time to get up, as we had things to do! I sleepily refused and rolled over muttering about having gotten something like 4 hours of sleep, MAYBE the night before. Toto was very apologetic but told me it was still time to get up. So I crawled out of my warm and stiff cocoon of woolen blankets and sleeping bag and sat down on the steps of our cabin waiting for Toto to hand me my breakfast (a bowl of cereal).

After my bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats (I brought them from home) and a Diet Coke I was finally coaxed into getting dressed and getting on my bike and setting off on an adventure: exploration.

Our first stop was Mirror Lake. It was tiny, smaller than Oregon’s Mirror Lake but just as pretty. Next to it, was a pile of rocks; actually, hundreds of piles of rocks. We called it The Zen Garden. It was really pretty. Of course, Toto and I each had to make our own pile of rocks.







Next, Toto wanted to show me the Ahwahnee Hotel. The cornerstone for this hotel was laid in 1926. It was designed by the same architect who designed the lodge at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park and the Lodge on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (where I had that amazing BBQ Salmon Panini). All the other hotels in Yosemite were prone to burning down, so when this hotel was designed, it was designed to be fireproof. Now, when our tour guide, Rebekah, told us this I was a little bit skeptical, I mean, it’s obviously made out of wood. Well, no, not obviously. The reason I thought that the place was wood is because it was built out of concrete using wood forms to put the pattern of the wood onto the concrete. Then it was stained an orange-brown color. So while it appears to be a wooden structure, there is actually very little wood in the structure (and it is a large structure). The biggest bit of wood used was in the entryway to the hotel. Originally the front door of the place was going to be what is now the back lawn. Most of the windows for guest rooms in the hotel face out onto this lawn. Ten days before the hotel’s grand opening, someone realized that having the cars pull up there would make a lot of dust go up into the windows (this is before paved streets). So they hastily built a wooden portico and walkway into the hotel. The boardwalk still squeaks because it was built so quickly. An interesting tid bit of trivia: Robert Redford used to work at the Ahwahnee Hotel. It has also has hosted the likes of Queen Elizabeth, President John F. Kennedy, Lucille Ball (who actually got kicked out of the main lounge for being too loud on the piano), Mel Gibson, and several (like a ton) more celebrities. Apparently, once it was added to the National Historic Places list, it wasn’t considered a luxury hotel anymore (it still is, just a different sort), so celebrities didn’t visit as often. It is packed with history. If you ever get down here to Yosemite, go and take the historic tour of the place (it’s free and very informative).



After we left the Ahwahnee, we went to the Ansel Adams gallery and over to the Yosemite Village Store. There are several villages and little areas in the Yosemite Valley. We are staying in Curry Village, which is towards the east end of the valley, Yosemite Village is in the middle, and Camp 4 is on the west end. The awesome thing about California is that the government isn’t involved in the sale of alcohol, so they sell it EVERYWHERE! We found it in a gas station about an hour and half outside of Yosemite on Highway 120, and we found it in the Yosemite Village Store for three dollars cheaper than at that gas station! We didn’t buy any though. We scouted some “I made it to the top of Half Dome” shirts, but you can’t buy one until you actually do it (or well at least you SHOULDN’T) and then we headed back to the tent cabin.

Many people have heard of the giant Redwoods on the Northern coast of California. What a lot of people don’t know is that those tree’s cousins, the Giant Sequoia’s live in Yosemite. They are similar trees, but the Redwoods get much taller where the Sequoia’s are shorter but rounder (diameter). We drove up to Mariposa Grove to take a look at these giant trees, but were only there for about 45 minutes. The reason for this is because the parking lot at the grove was full, so we had to park ten minutes down the highway and ride the free shuttle up. Well, we got there at 5ish, and by the time we got up to the grove on the shuttle it was 5:15ish. Then the shuttle driver kindly informs us that the last shuttle runs at six, and if we miss it, they will pick us up at about 9am the next day. So Toto and I hoofed it up the trail as fast as we could without killing ourselves and saw a few things. Then we high-tailed it back down to the parking lot to catch the shuttle.



The last stop on our list for the day was Glacier Point. This viewpoint is about 3000 feet directly above Curry Village. So it offers a wide view. We thought that we would for sure have cell phone signal and therefore internet signal on our Verizon Wireless WiFi card, so I carted my laptop up there. I got a lot of funny looks from other tourists when I plopped down on a rock and opened my laptop, and then started swearing at it for the serious lack of internet. We also had wanted to see the sun set from up there, but all the road construction on Highway 41 had delayed us quite a bit and we missed it. So we got back in the car and headed down the road, only to be delayed for another half an hour (at least) by the construction.



By the time we got back down to Curry Village, the only option for food we had was the Pizza Deck. So we got a pizza. We made friends with a group of guys (who were probably in their late 20’s) who had just done the Half Dome hike that day. They had enjoyed it, but had made the mistake of starting at Glacier Point. By starting there, you have to go downhill to te top of Nevada Falls, then go back uphill to the top of Half Dome. The problem with this is that that is a long and tiring hike, so by the time they hiked back down to Nevada Falls on the way back, they had run out of energy to hike back up to Glacier Point. They talked about the hike, and it made us a little less scared. Then Toto made friends with a couple who also did it that day. They had just gotten back to the village (and it was after 10pm at this point) because they had taken a wrong turn at some point and it had taken them a while to correct their error. We asked them how much training they had done for this hike and the answer we got was astounding: none. We told them we had been training pretty hard core for a month and they were really impressed. We all ate pizza together and then Toto and I went back to the lodge to see if we could get a little internet, but we couldn’t. While we were over there we chatted with a young couple (probably 18 or 19) that had done it that say as well. They had experienced some difficulties as well, in the form of dehydration. When we asked them how much training they had done all we got back was: training? It was good to know that all these people were up here doing this massive hike, and we were the only ones who had trained for it.

We went back to the tent cabin about 11pm. Toto made sandwiches with stolen condiments and I drugged myself (with melatonin) to try and ensure a better nights sleep than the one I had the night before. We went to bed hoping that we were tired enough from the previous night’s lack of sleep to allow us to get an adequate amount of rest for the massive hike the next day.



Playlist
Heart
Carrie Underwood

License Plates Seen
Michigan
Alabama
New York
Virginia
Pennsylvania
Nebraska
Alberta
Utah
Georgia
Maryland
Missouri
Louisiana
Massachusetts

Speeding Kills Bears

**NOTE** I wrote this Sunday night...keep that in mind as you read it.

The very first thought I had when I woke up this morning was “ugh.” The second thought I had was “Holiday Inn Express Breakfast BABY!!!” That thought fueling me until the actual food could, I jumped in the shower, a rather claustrophobic one at that, and got ready. Toto and I went down and scarffed some of our long lost friends, biscuits and gravy (though I held off on the gravy and stuck with a couple of biscuits and jam with sausage). Then we headed out.



We had stayed in Woodland, just north of Sacramento. As we entered Sacramento, Toto remarked that we were officially in the Sacramento Valley. My next comment was “If this is a valley, where are the mountains that make it one?” Apparently they were there, just out beyond my eyesight in the misty hazy air down here. We drove down to Stockton, and just south of there we got off I-5 and took Highway 120 to Manteca. Toto was supposed to stay on the 120, but ended up veering off or turning off or something off onto Highway 99, heading north. After correcting this little mishap, we ended up back on 120 (also known as E Yosemite Ave) and driving straight through the heart of Manteca. Right after we turned, we saw a few young girls (probably 12ish) waving “Support our Troops” signs. Then we saw another was holding a sign that read “Car Wash”. I guilt tripped Toto into turning in. There was a parking lot filled with Marines. Most of them were in t-shirts and tank tops and shorts, but a couple were in ACU’s. They had a great time washing our car. Three or four of them asked us what the crap on the windows (and the rest of the car really) was. Toto’s answer: “Pitch, don’t worry about it.” They also had a good laugh at all the fir needles built up in all the crevices in Toto’s car. They were pulling handfuls out from under the windshield wipers: which, side note, I broke one of yesterday. And I totally spaced putting that in the blog. Yep, we were filling up in Weed and I thought Toto’s wipers locked upright for windshield washing, and found out with a loud “SNAP!” that they don’t. Note to self, MY car’s wipers lock up, not Toto’s. Anyhow! Then the Marines brought out their best tool yet, a leaf blower! No, they weren’t using it to rid Toto’s car of needles, they were using it to jump start the drying process, before using the towels. Rather ingenious I thought!! Toto said to me after with a tear in her eye, “Everything happens for a reason. I had to take the wrong turn to come back past those guys washing cars.”



We then had about two hours of driving to look forward to. I couldn’t bring myself to continue the audio book from the previous day, so we listened to fun music the whole way. It looked like pretty standard desert for a while. Then the hills started to roll and even though everything was some shade of brown, it was beautiful. We began to notice that there were trees on some of the hills ahead of us and Toto recounted the line line: “They know their line!!” This, you may remember from the Nevada blog entry from the really big trip in June. It has become one of the most often used phrases in the Newberry house. We began to climb a rather steep hill. It was nearly 90 degrees outside and we noticed that there were old Clorox bottles on the side of the road in pull outs that said “H2O for You” on them (incase of an over heated car). It was a nice gesture by some unknown person or company.

We drove a while longer and then we finally made it into Yosemite. We stopped to take pictures by the Welcome sign, and discovered that one of the metal letters on the sign, the E had been lost. To replace it, someone had used duct tape and formed an E. The greatest part was that we didn’t notice it at first.



After getting our maps and all that jazz at the check point, we drove into the park. The first sign we saw was a speed sign stating that the speed was 25 MPH, and a little sign next to that said “Speeding Kills Bears”.



Ok, so that is the big thing about today. Bears. I am not a fan of anything that is big enough to eat me. So, therefore, not a fan of bears. I realize that they are less likely to attack me than say, my own dog, but still. In Yosemite, they have learned how to scavenge for people’s food. So every tent cabin and campsite has a bear proof food storage box. It’s a big metal box that has a really weird handle and you lock it with a padlock. Well, I researched the whole bear thing before we came. On average, bears break into 100 cars a year down here, looking for food. They can smell it, through metal and glass and plastic and everything. The “interesting facts about bears” thing hanging just above my head right now says that their sense of smell is several times better than that of a blood hound. After we took a picture of that sign (the “speeding kill’s bears” sign) we drove on. As we came around a corner, there was one of those electronic flashing signs, but instead of insurance point values flashing on it, it said (in three flashes) “In 2009 27 bears hit by cars.” The next words out of my mouth were “Good, then there will only be 73 cars broken into by them this year.” Bad Sean. I took pictures of course.







Shortly thereafter we came around a bend that yielded all of Yosemite Valley to you. We could see all the way to Half Dome. It was impressive, though maybe not as much as Toto had chalked it up to be. After hearing for 23 years about how majestic this place was, it was a little less impressive than I expected, but it was still very beautiful.

We got down to Curry Village about 3:30pm. We checked in and discovered that you can not park by your tent cabin. There is a HUGE parking lot for all the campers to park in and then you have to lug all your junk to your cabin, which locks with a padlock as well, and the keys don’t have holes to attach them to key-rings. You just have to keep them in your pockets and hope not to lose them. It took us like eight trips back and forth to get everything to the cabin. AND THEN we had to organize the bear proof locker.



By the time we were done, it was almost five, so we headed over to the bar. Yes, there is a bar. In fact, there is a whole little village, with three or four places to eat, a lodge with electrical outlets (the tent cabins don’t have any of those) and internet access (which I will get to) and a bunch of other stuff. It is a great place to people watch. We scored a table on the main deck and had a few drinks (I had three whiskey sours and Toto had a couple of Blue Moon Hefs) and some chow (nachos, garlic fries and a cheeseburger). Then we made some friends. The deck was pretty crowded, and we were only two people at what was easily a 6 person table. There was a man and his wife who needed a table, and they inquired as to whether the extra space at our table was taken. Since it wasn’t, they joined us and we had a nice little conversation. They were from Boston. They flew out because they were kidless for a few weeks and were leaving tomorrow: heading out to San Francisco to see some friends before flying home on Wednesday. Right as we were getting ready to clear our dishes and go find the internet (so I could do my homework) their friend came over. We chatted with her for a few minutes, gave her the link to this blog, and went on our merry way. Her name is BeeBee (like the gun, and I probably totally butchered it just now). She is from Texas, and ended up on a four day backpacking trip with Ann and her husband (our Bostonian friends).

After supper we went to the lodge to get online, as we had little or no cell signal to allow for the use of our WiFi card. The internet in the lodge was great…for 10 minutes. Then it kicked me off. Right in the middle of the homework I was trying to finish (that was due at 9am Monday morning). I sat and tried to get on for the next two hours, while writing and thinking and doing the homework without being able to get on to the online portal for the class. Eventually though I got so fed up with it (after learning that several people were having the same issue I was) that I went to the front desk and told them there was an issue. The sweet little gal there informed me that there is a cap on the network so that only a certain number of people can be online at a time. I had suspected something like this earlier, about having only enough bandwidth for so many people, but I told her I was trying to get my homework done and had been trying to get online for two hours and it was due tomorrow, and well after seeing how flustered I was, she told me she would reset it so I could get online. It worked. I got my homework all posted up online for my teacher to grade, and right in the nick of time too: a few minutes later it was 10pm and the lodge was closing for the night.

Toto and I came back to our little cabin and got ready for bed. The way these things work is there is a bed (or two in our case) and you have to make it. There are blankets and sheets in the cabin, but you got to put it all together however you like it. I was wigging out about the bears, and I ripped the wool blanket back to reveal an older mattress that the cover had torn on. I mock yelped and said to Toto, “BEAR CLAW MARKS!” this filled her with mirth so we recreated the scene for your viewing pleasure!











I am carrying my mace (which is bear spray strength) everywhere with me here. No chance a bear is going to eat me. Although there really is little of that. The gal at the registration desk told us that there haven’t been any reported injuries in a while, unless you count the guy who was BBQing. What happened was said guy was making steak for dinner. He turned his back for a second, turned back and a bear had taken the steak off the grill. What did the man do? He tried to take the steak out of the bear’s claws. What did the bear do? He slapped the guy.

On that note, I bid you goodnight. Toto is asleep next to me, and it is nearly midnight. I don’t presume to think I will sleep much tonight on this wonderful bed (and by wonderful I mean really hard and uncomfortable), nor will I sleep late as I am in a partially canvas building, the partially being the roof where the light comes in at dawn.

Playlist
Miranda Lambert
Jo Dee Messina
Lifehouse

License Plates Seen
Washington
Oregon
Maine
Ohio
Nevada
Texas
Colorado
Illinois
Connecticut
Oklahoma
New Mexico
New Jersey
Florida
Arkansas
South Carolina

And You Thought The X-Files were Over…

On a dark and rainy Friday night in March Toto was at the gym with Dad and our friends Steve and Enrique. They were sitting in the café part at a table drinking beer and eating peanuts talking about birthdays and age and that her 50th birthday was coming up. She mentioned that if anyone was going to throw her a birthday party, me and her friend Marguerite would have to be the ones to do it. Then, out of the middle of no where she says “You know what I really want to do on my birthday? I want to hike Half Dome in Yosemite.” Five months and some crazy training hikes later here we are on our way to Yosemite National Park.

Toto and I (yep she’s still Toto) started our first day off by bustling around the house like chickens with our heads cut off. I had gotten all the clothes that I planned on taking in a laundry basket the night before and had gone out bowling with some friends (Ashley Burson, Kyle Smith and Jared Brownlow). Toto thought I was crazy for going out and coming home late (got into bed about two am) the night before we left for our grand adventure (well I guess this is our second grand adventure this year). We managed to get everything packed and in the Tahoe by about 12:30 and pulled out of the driveway at 12:53. Our plan was to be gone by noon but Josh had spent Friday night elsewhere and Dad had gone to work, so we couldn’t leave until JD got home to watch the wee man.

I have homework due Monday morning for my Romanticism class (that’s the English Romantic literary era thank you very much, NOT smut books) so we had to stop at Borders so I could pick up a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. I have it on audio book and we listened to it in the car, but I wanted to be able to highlight it and make notes in the margins too, which is hard on an MP3 file.

The very first thing we put on the iPod was Billy Joel. I think my subconscious was working its magic here because I know (deep down somewhere) that when Toto was my age and drove to Yosemite the last time, the only tape her 1980 Honda would play was Billy Joel’s “Innocent Man”. So it was all sorts of appropriate that I put that on first, though it wasn’t a conscious decision. After we went through that album, we listened to the audio book for a couple of hours, but had to turn it off somewhere in the windy hills of southern Oregon because we were both dozing from the narrator’s droning voice. I thought I was just dozing because I was tired from staying out half the night before, but nope, it was Frankenstein. Which I find entertaining because in the introduction by Mary Shelley herself she states that this story terrified her when she came up with it and she wanted to terrify her readers, and well, I was falling asleep. Granted, I hadn’t gotten to the scary part, just the background info on Dr. Frankenstein himself, though at this point in the book he is still just some guy that Captain Robert Walton picked up off a chunk of ice in the Arctic Ocean. It isn’t a horrible story so far, it’s interesting enough, I am just not loving the guy reading it.

We stopped in Grants Pass for gloves. The last 400 feet (that’s elevation, not distance) of the Half Dome hike is basically straight up the side of half dome itself. This covers about a quarter mile (that’s the distance), maybe. So there are 2x4’s and cables to pull yourself up that last leg. You NEED gloves for this, leather gloves. We hadn’t bought any in Gresham, and Toto wanted to get them before we entered the land of sales tax. I discovered the most amazing ATM in that Freddie’s (I am sure they are in other Fred Meyer stores as well): while depositing my first paycheck from WHBM I discovered I didn’t need a pen or a deposit envelope. The ATM has a special little mouth for checks and it just sucks it in, reads the check info and KNOWS how much it is for (when it is a paycheck like that). How awesome is that?! It pretty much blew my mind for the next 15 minutes or so. It was the most exciting thing of the day so far.

We got down to the California border without much excitement happening (aside from the aforementioned ATM of course). Toto had me hide the Subway sandwich we had gotten in Grants Pass when we approached Cali’s “Border Patrol” as she didn’t want to take any chances that they might take it from us because it might contain “fresh produce”. I told her what I have always wanted to do as we drove towards the flashing red lights and the incredibly bored looking border agents: Border agent: “Do you have any fresh fruit ma’am?” Me: “Yes. I do. But I’m not going to tell you where. Find it.” How much fun would that be?! They wouldn’t be as bored then would they? That got a good chuckle out of Toto, and we passed through the checkpoint without so much as a glance in the car after answering “no” to the “ya’ll have any fresh produce?” Right as Toto rolled up her window (which is a long process because it’s broken and the motor goes about four times slower in the drivers window than in all the others) I yelled “HA HA SUCKERS!!! WE GOT YOU!” When I say “yelled” I mean pretended to yell. I didn’t even yell loud enough for Toto to wince, but I didn’t really feel like getting detained by the California Fruit Police so I only said it for Toto and I to have a laugh at.

Immediately after this I looked up and saw Mt. Shasta. Toto had been saying that you can always tell which mountain is Mt. Shasta because it has the little side volcano thing on the side of it.



We stared at it for a while and then I said to Toto, “It’s like the circus freak with the half absorbed twin.” I made this X-Files reference without expecting her to know what I was talking about and she smiled and said, “I had that exact same thought about half an hour ago. This is like our X-Files themed summer.” The episode which we refer to is S02E20 and it is called “Humbug.” Here is a link to a weird site, but you can watch the entire episode there (it has a bunch of weird Arabic letters and things, but the episode is in English, don’t worry):

http://www.clipmass.com/movie/7721591282964

We drove until nearly midnight. All the little towns down between Red Bluff and Sacramento were all booked up for some random reason so we couldn’t get a hotel room any closer than Woodland. Woodland is to Sacramento sort of like Troutdale is to Portland on I-84. The first day of our trip concluded on several high notes: first, the hotel next to ours (a Hampton Inn) had little baby palm trees out front whereas ours were huge; second, the guy at the front desk’s jacket could have easily fit three more of him into it and he was a bit of a dunce (this proved entertaining for us at midnight after driving for 10 hours); and third, we got to sleep in a huge king size bed!

Playlist
Billy Joel
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
The Eagles
Sara Evans
Trace Adkins
Lady Antebellum

License Plates Seen
Montana
Georgia
California
Idaho
British Columbia
Kansas
Mississippi