We're just back from a Pacific states road and foot trip. The battered Matrix's 4 cylinders led us through 4 state capitals -- in WA, OR, CA and I don't how the hell to abbreviate Nevada. By the way, isn't it interesting how each of these states has a second tier city as its capital? I mean -- Salem? Sacramento? Huh?
Somehow "what happens in Carson City stays in Carson City" just ain't got that swing. Speaking of Carson City, it was fascinating how a bone dry city presented a lush, overgrown forest on a single square city block, a block upon which the state legislature is located. Wtf? I guess the NV [got it!] legislature is rolling in all types of green.
Our 4 limbs (yeah, the arms got involved) kept us moving along a piece of California's John Muir Trail, among other trails, and up and down Yosemite's enormous granite monolith, known as the 'half-dome.' More on that later, but I'm pointing at it below...
We hit 4 national areas along the way. I'm sensing a number pattern here.... 4 cylinders, 4 limbs, etc. To keep this numerical mojo going, I should mention that I cried out for my mom 4 times along the trail. Ok, enough. We hit 2 national parks, 1 national monument, and 1 national seashore. In the same day, we saw the sunrise in the high Sierras...
....and the sunset at Pt. Reyes National Seashore - a narrow peninsula that pushes out 10 miles into the Pacific and lies about an hour and a half north of San Francisco.
We have a friend who's a National Park ranger there, and she lives adjacent to the historical lighthouse at this far western edge of the California coastline. The view from her guest bedroom was nothing short of fantastic....
However, before that, during the final morning of our backpacking trek in Yosemite, we had our breakfast with a black bear...
Ok, no photo here...I wasn't quick enough with the camera. When a juvenile male bear sneaks up behind you while you're filtering water at the river, you're more likely to accidentally pee on the camera in your pocket than use it. Rest assured, I didn't piss myself.
Please accept the following substitute:
The day of the early morning bear encounter - the very same day - we made our way down the last stretch of hiking trail and had our dinner in the inner national park metropolis known as Yosemite Valley, replete with multiple tourist villages, hotels, a supermarket that would rival any Seattle grocery, food courts and an elaborate and crowded public transit system. Tiff and I bizarrely stepped off a backcountry trail and ran to catch a packed bus. After several days on lonely hiking trails, camping under the stars and full moon, it felt a bit like Shinjuku station in inner Tokyo.
Also, after burning approximately 1,234,500 calories a day, and having had only water to drink and freeze-dried food to eat, we took advantage of Yosemite Valley's amenities and gorged ourselves at a junk food cornucopia. It was the first time in my life that I actually finished a 'half-dome' cheeseburger and basket of fries, along with a Yosemite Falls quantity of fountain soda. I'm ready - supersize me!
This all began with a water filter that Tiff convinced me to buy nearly a year ago at an REI sale. Since then, we'd accumulated enough equipment for a backcountry trip in Yosemite. And it was a trip that was ethereal at times.
Not 10 yards into our backpacking adventure, the trail languished at the bottom of a snowmelt-swollen lake. Later, beneath snow fields 10,000 feet up, we lost and then found the trail several times. We saw bears, coyotes, and marmots.
The denouement in our trip, of course, came in summiting Yosemite's skyscraping icon, the 'half-dome.'
Getting to the top first involves an arduous uphill hike through the woods. Phase II is a climb up the hump of the monolith via a seemingly endless granite staircase - utterly exposed to the hot sun all the way. For the final ascent up the sheer, smooth wall, one must don gloves and grip onto cables held up by posts drilled into the rock wall. The cables are necessary because the climb is so steep (near vertical) and the rock has worn smooth by rain and hundreds of daily footfalls. It sometimes felt impossible to get a foothold. One slip of the hand or foot and the unlucky visitor falls out of the cables to his or her death.
Hats fell from heads, water bottles fell from backpacks, and the sight and sound of them skittering down the polished granite was unmistakable. We heard full bottles slide off the edge -- and then nothing but silence. We never heard them hit bottom. More than one person ahead of us had to turn back, and several people were weeping in fear on the way up (I plead the 5th).
This is high elevation rock-climbing for unharnessed amateurs.
We brought carabiners and straps, but the cables were too big to hook onto, and so we went without. Tiffany Leilani was forced to give me a pep talk in line. It is the sort of thing for which words and photos are inadequate, but I blog on with words and photos nonetheless.
As we neared the top, I wondered what to expect there. Perhaps a contemporary artist had installed a coin-operated Stairmaster as a sort of ironic commentary on the American post-war sense of self, body and nature? Maybe I'd find the busiest Starbucks kiosk in the Northern Hemisphere? Saddam Hussein's missing WMDs?
Instead, we simply saw blissed out, slightly dehydrated backpackers feeling happy to be alive. It was incredible. There was an ironic commentary of a sort...
Mini Stonehenge! "Spinal Tap" anyone?
I should also mention that along the way we hit Crater Lake, OR...
San Francisco, CA....
Lake Tahoe and Devil's Postpile National Monument, CA...
Innumerable coffee shops, WA, OR, CA, NV....
And, of course, we orchestrated intricate campsite fashion shoots....
More pictures of our adventure can be found at Tiff's flickr site (www.flickr.com/tlban808)Feel free to bypass it if you like. There are now so many pictures of Tiff and I up there that the inventor of the internet (Albert Gore, you remember him) recently emailed Tiffany with a cease and desist order regarding uploading 'Karma and Tiffany' photos. The moratorium has begun.
