(This may be a very long and rambling post.... but what is new, there?)
Part of this may be due to the fact that, although it was quite frankly "awe-some" in the old "solemn and awe-inspiring" sense of the word, I have a gut-instinctive reaction against thinking that anyone on the internet cares or needs to know my opinions and thoughts about everything (hence my avoidance of twitter). Which, of course, also explains why I hardly ever post on this blog. It seems megalomaniacal to assume that people care what I think or what I do, especially strangers on the internet. But this is all besides the point, and perhaps should be the topic of a different post.
So. My brother (M) and I left LA one Saturday evening and headed north. We slept in a "campsite" called Walker's Pass, which was mostly just flat places where you could park or set up a tent if you wanted and an outhouse. It was isolated and absolutely breathtaking in the middle of the night. The stars were sharp and clear. The sun rose over the desert slowly and relentlessly pretty early in the morning, and woke us from where we were sleeping in the car. We got up and drove and eventually stopped at a town that was big enough to have a Laundromat to check e-mail and do laundry since M had been on a retreat.
We then headed farther north and stopped at Manzanar, one of the Japanese internment camps from WWII. It was interesting to see the spaces and read about what happened and it also frustrating and angering.
A few hours later, we reached Yosemite. Driving that road is just fun and gorgeous. It was late spring, so most everything was green and flowers were still out a little, and there was still snow on some of the higher slopes heading into the park from the East. Among other things, we saw El Capitan and Half-dome, (briefly, because the sun was heading down) and watched a solar eclipse for a little while.
In one day we saw both some of the worst of humanity and the best of creation. We listened to "This is My Father's World" as we wound our way along the road out of Yosemite.
We drove most of the night (up through a corner of Nevada and back into California) before stopping at a rest stop for a few hours. again, we woke up to a gorgeous sun rise, especially since the car was parked facing East across a wide, flat valley, and the colors were seeping in through the Windshield.
We made it up through most of Orgeon (with a stop at Powell's city of books) and on to family in Washington. The landscape changed often, and our choice to go up NOT via the 5 made for a much more interesting and beautiful and fun drive. We stopped for Monday night at our aunt and uncle's house.
Overall, it was great first leg of our trip. We ended up going much faster up to Washington than we had planned, mostly because we didn't want to stop driving because we were having so much fun. Both of us took turns on the winding roads and in the weather (some sunny and hot and some pouring rain) and took turns sleeping as well. We had the off-brand version of Crystal light "energy" mixes, so we'd just fill up our water bottles and dump in a packet. I don't think we bought soft drinks once. We had a cooler of food, sandwich making stuff, and snacks, so we went to a few places to eat, but mostly used the groceries we had with us. Neither of us remembered going to Yosemite before, and it was a good time to do it, before it was over-run with tourists too badly. Other than that, though, it was a familiar drive (or similar to the familiar drives we'd had before), so we were looking forward to heading into the unknown.
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