El Capitan

It seemed like only a short trip in the car to get to Yosemite Valley, but took us much longer than anticipated, partly due to having to negotiate the track out of the campsite and partly due to having to top up the car with a bit more gas. The problem was that neither of us could identify whether the car was petrol or diesel. Not being grease-monkeys we didn’t know if all automatics were petrol, where to look to see what juice was needed in the car or what type of petrol (if indeed it was petrol) was required. A brief chat with some random guy at the gas station indicated that the car was more than likely to be petrol, because it had spark-plugs, maybe. We chucked $15 in (as it was obviously a much higher price within the park) and continued our trip to the valley.

James and the Giant Car

The road took in some fantastic views and there were plenty of stop-off points where people would pull into without really indicating (a feature of 95% of American drivers) and it was very clear when we got into the valley itself as there were sheer cliffs on either side of us stretching up far into the sky. This area was the main reason people came to Yosemite, and rightly so as we had begun to think that everything was a bit “samey” the day before – rocks, trees, river, mozzies, rocks, trees, mozzies, rocks, mozzies, etc. But here it was a different story. Simply replace “mozzies” with “tourists” and that’s a start. Our first viewpoint was the Bridalveil Falls, a miniature version of Angel Falls, but still just as good. The sign said “Danger: slippery and uneven rocks” but that is like a red rag to a bull for me. Up I went, clambering and jumping until I got to the foot of the falls. A small group of Americans had been at the viewpoint debating whether to try and get nearer to the falls but seemed to be put off by the sign. As soon as they saw me hot-footing it across the rocks they were after me like a fox hunt. But none made it to the falls, they were called back by the parents who were still waiting safely on the path.

The sheer delight of Yosemite

The road through the valley had numerous points of interest along the way but as we were on limited time we had to chose our stops wisely. Our car had to be back by 6pm that night and we calculated that we needed to leave the valley by 11am to give us plenty of time to get back, give The Beast a once-over and hand back the keys. Our next stop was at a small “beach” area that was dramatically flanked on both sides by the huge cliffs, one being El Capitan. We even spotted a couple of deer but couldn’t get near enough before they pegged it. We took in a number of stops but unfortunately didn’t have the time to trek up to The Dome that overlooked the whole valley, or any of the other waterfalls that were just a little too far out for us to get to. As we were heading out of the valley there was one last point we wanted to stop off at, Valley View, but we missed the pull-in on the right hand side. I pulled in at the next opportunity to swing the car around and head back and “do a U’y” to make sure we got to see this last feature, but hesitated. And a good job too! The road through the park alternated from two-way traffic to double-lane one-way traffic, and on this road it turned out to be one-way. A good bit of hesitation, and maybe someone was looking down on us and prompted my caution, for had we made that turn we would have been heading straight into on-coming traffic. As we had missed it and didn’t have time to go all the way around again we decided that our time was up and we should head back, as it would take us at least an hour just to get out of the Park.

Time to leave Yosemite and get the car back to Reno

The sleep deprivation was kicking in so we alternated between driving and kipping most of the way back. The plan to hit Interstate 50 (the loneliest road in the world) was ditched as tie was not on our side and we continued through Carson City into Reno, with an hour to spare. Once we had got rid of all the garbage from the car and made it look at least a little bit presentable (there was still dust and pine-needles from Yosemite all over the place, and clearly looked out of place on a car like that) we handed the keys back and left the casino for the Greyhound terminal. We had not seen much of Reno, but then again we needn’t have worried as there wasn’t much to see that we hadn’t seen in Vegas. Arriving at the bus station in good time we booked our bags in and set about the long wait for our next bus This would get us into San Francisco at 1:30am which would mean a long wait in the station there, but hopefully it wouldn’t be another “Flagstaff” and would be open 24 hours.