The Biggest Little City in the World

I bet you all know which city I am talking about now. Of course, it’s Reno. The second largest city in Nevada, after Las Vegas, and yet still much larger than the State Capital of Carson City. Reno is essentially a scaled-down Las Vegas, and would suffice if you didn’t get the chance to get to Vegas itself. According to the guidebook people go to Reno for three things: to gamble, to get married, and to get divorced. James and I would be doing none of these things (hopefully!) as we were only in Reno to pick up a hire car. The reason was simple – Greyhound didn’t go to Yosemite National Park so we would get there by ourselves! After doing our research we settled with Hertz, as they are a reasonably well-known company and were offering a good deal. We had booked an automatic Kia Something (Picanto maybe?) that was the cheapest and seemed the most economical with a decent (for the US) MPG so we wouldn’t spend an arm and a leg on gas. When we finally found the Hertz place – it was INSIDE the Hurrah’s casino....obviously – we were advised that we would instead be getting a gold Chevrolet Malibu. Just our luck, a small and pokey car resembling a Fiat Cinquicento or something. This would have no street cred whatsoever and would probably make us look like a couple of dandies. Or so I thought. When we reached bay 365 we realised that we had already walked passed our rental car once because we were looking for a small matchbox car. What we saw in front of us was a sleek saloon car, much like a BMW 5-series. It turns out that the Chevrolet Malibu was a 3.6L beast with cruise-control, sunroof, massive boot, heated seats, and much, much more! It was a bit of a change from Bernadette (my small silver Peugeot 106 back in England) and reversing it out of the parking lot was a challenge in itself as it was parked in the corner by some motorbikes. The kind of motorbikes that you DO NOT want to scratch/mangle/knock over. The next challenge was to navigate our way to Highway 395 to drive the 200 miles or so to Yosemite. Unfortunately The Beast was lacking Sat-Nav, but it did have a small digital compass in the rear-view mirror. We only worked this out after we had spent 10 minutes trying to identify which road to take south out of Reno... 

One gold Chevrolet Malibu

Soon we were on the open road and getting rather used to the automatic gearbox and the American way of driving. Figuring out how to get the cruise-control working meant that we could set the pace accordingly and (almost) sit back and enjoy the ride. We finally arrived into Yosemite at around 4pm at we navigated our way to our chosen campsite. This was White Wolf, a cool-sounding place that would be sure to have some bears or coyotes nearby, or so we thought. And “campsite” I hear you say? But we have not mentioned buying a tent. That’s right. We hadn’t. There are certain campsites that you can camp at without a reservation, and also ones that will let you sleep in your RV/car. And White Wolf ticked both those boxes. And when we arrived it looked lovely – nice and quiet, facilities available and people happy to help. But it was full. And no amount of persuasion by ourselves towards the camp supervisor could change things, he simply shook his head from the moment I began negotiating with him. An unseen voice from a nearby tent advised we could try Yosemite Creek campsite as it was always the last one to fill up. So we left White Wolf muttering under our breath and set off to find Yosemite Creek and hope that the mysterious voice from the tent was correct and there would be space for us. 

The Great Outdoors

There is a reason Yosemite Creek is the last to fill up. That reason is the mile or two length of winding, bumpy track that twists and turns all the way down to the campsite. It was a very slow 20 minute drive along a surface that the Chevvy Malibu clearly was never really destined for. But we finally made it to the camp, grabbed a ticket stub and set it underneath a rock on top of the iron post, for that was the reservation system employed by the campsites. As it was gone 5:00pm we knew there was only a certain amount of time left to go and explore before the sun would be setting and we could be at the mercy of anything Yosemite could throw at us. We ventured outside the camp and into the rocks along the river. We figured that the river (or rather creek) would be a great indicator of the way back to the camp, and also may have some bears fishing in it (we lived in hope anyway!). We climbed, we hiked, we got bitten by mozzies, we had some quiet time at the top of some exposed rocks. And then it was time to head back as the sun began to set between the trees. Dinner that night was crisps, raisins and chocolate as the diner place at White Wolf was shut and that is all we could buy from the shop. A few games of cards before it got too dark to play and we decided to hit the hay at about 9:30pm. An early night for both of us, but after the one night at Salt Lake City sandwiched between two Greyhound overnighters we needed some kip, and we were to be up early in the morning to explore Yosemite Valley. 

The sun goes down in Yosemite

Thankfully, the Chevvy Malibu had very moveable seats and reclined almost to horizontal. How bad could this night be compared to the loud noises, disgusting smells and lack of legroom on the Greyhound? It turns out that it was even worse. Sure, there were no other people around to disturb us but it was just soooooo cold in The Beast. We had no sleeping bags to speak of, merely thin “sleep sheets” and layers of clothes to keep us warm. We had figured that it would be warm enough with the two of us in there, and it was summer after all. But it wasn’t to be. We both felt the cold and struggled under the various layers, both trying to inadvertently pinch an extra bit of the extra blanket that we had between us. Thankfully there were no attacks by anything around us and all that we woke up to was condensation on every single window of the car. I went for a quick walk/jog to warm up and ended up on top of the rocks above the car basking in the morning sun like a lizard. It didn’t work, so I climbed back into the car and turned the electric seats on to warm up, wiped the condensation from the windows and drove out of the campsite and down to Yosemite Valley.