A Very (It Turns Out) Sentimental Journey To and Through and Around Yosemite National Park 2
Day One. (continued)
So we drove, and drove. And drove. To people from smaller countries (say, Ireland, England, New England, Belgium) who don't realise this, due to the somewhat smaller nature of your own country, you can drive improbably far without hitting 1) ocean, 2) civilisation, or 3) France without really trying in California. That's the second thing you notice about it, if you happen to be on the roads. The first is your passenger telling you about the bears, the second is that you've been driving for a pretty damn long time.
"Jesus, have we not hit Canada yet?" may be one of the things you hear whilst driving in the car in California.
The disconcerting thing about those distances is not that you might accidentally drive into Canada. It's not that you might not have enough to eat along the way (hell, we had to eat all that food, anyway, otherwise we were bound to be ripped to shreds by bears within twenty yards of the park). It's not the long roads that seem to stretch for miles and miles with not a whole lot of anything on them... actually it is that.
Normally, you give me a road, a really long one, and I can look at it and go, "Yep, that's a long road." No overwhelming fear or disconcertedness. I get over it pretty quickly.
However, when you give me a really long road in conjunction with an address that fails to resolve in your favourite online mapping software except to say: Here's the zipcode you wanted, and here's the general direction you want to travel in, good luck with the details. Well, then I get nervous. Especially when the last direction is "Go 64 or so miles on highway 140 and you're there!"
This nervousness was compounded by the accompaniment in the car who would probably notice if I started backtracking and then retracing my steps (figurative, of course, because we were in a car) when we approached the 64 mile mark on highway 140. It's just I develop a real distrust of my math skills, odometer's accuracy, and directions that don't quite go all the way to the final destination.
Luckily, I would find out, our final destination was a well known hotel. Not for bears, unfortunately. Well, they thought it was for the bears, but the mild notoriety about a certain set of murders would be the leading reason nine out of ten people we would meet would know the hotel.
This we would find out... later. For the evening, pulling into the well-lit parking lot, well, the only thing that was on my mind was let's take in all the damn food from the car, including water bottles and the maps, in case any water had spilled or grease from our fingers stained them during the course of the trip.
We hit the river the next morning, bright and early.
To be continued...
disclaimer:
As if in corroboration, just this week the San Francisco paper has run a story about the bears run rampant in Yosemite. Sure, sure they have.