From Desert to High Sierra, part 1...

From Desert to High Sierra… aka from Las Vegas to Yosemite and return via Death Valley… A road trip (part 1)

Gael and I are exploring… our relationship, the world, each other… 

This had lead to a short road trip… in part a test… how do we get along when on the road… for other trips are planned… and still exploring each other and what works… There is a larger, longer trip planned… to Alaska… a cruise… but before we fully commit a shorter trip is in order… Gael had never been to Yosemite… and this is the year of the falls there… so we planned a quick road trip to see the place… then added a night on the way in Death Valley… 

We left about 3:00 pm… (am would be just crazy) from Las Vegas… from Gael’s house… heading west… to the Freeway, to the road to Pahrump… and from there to Beatty then to Rhyolite a ghost town…

Rhyolite is has a bottle house… ghost concrete buildings and an intact railroad station… a railroad station with a caboose body… a caboose body that would fit into the collection of my railroad museum.  As well as an outdoor art museum… An outdoor art museum with a labyrinth… out front as you enter… Gael is something of a labyrinth expert, a promoter… and this is the second we have unexpectantly discovered… Beyond there are several white ghost sculptures… one referencing the last supper… a second with a bicycle… a third with a paint pallet… There is a telephone pole with shoes… all wondrous…

We spend the night at Panamint Springs… in the Panamint Valley… Panamint Springs is a weird but wonderful place…  An Australian style Road House along a road in the desert… We have reservations staying in a tiny house on the edge of the camp ground… overlooking the valley with its own fire pit… We dined at the bar/café… a burger and a patty melt… beer & wine… wonderful service (Gael works within the Graduate School of Hospitality at UNLV and understands service…. We discuss service several times over the course of the trip…) Beyond dinner, we sit by a fire… then letting the fire die, watch the stars… there are three shooting stars noted… 

We head west early Sunday… westward… passing the site of the U-2 “Joshua Tree” album cover shoot… We did not find or stop at the sacred site… (note to self… if we ever find the spot, it would be a good place to create a labyrinth…) 

We stop for gas at a Mobil station… Brady’s Market…  along Hwy 395 in Inyokern…  just before the Hwy 395/14 split… a creepy weird place, where they ask for donation for using the restroom… a restroom with broken bathrooms… In the market there are wart masks and silly cheap magic stuff for sale but with a broken coffee machine…  Another visitor to the place on yelp noted that they were selling Nazi flags… I didn’t see those but they seem in character.  After discussion we have declared We agreed that Brady’s Market might be the worst gas station in the world, ever… not just bad but aggressively bad…  A new standard.

Having purchased gas we detoured east, finding coffee… a clean working rest room and solace… 

We headed east… over Walker Pass… into then Kern River drainage… finding  a picnic site.. picnicking then heading on to the Kern River canyon… There are memories here… my memories from trips to the family cabin… and musical memories… Merle Haggard’s Kern  River… about white water and death… 

On to Bakersfield… then north on Hwy 99 for a fast transit to Fresno and Hwy 140, then into the foothills and Yosemite.  We were staying at Wawona… the former Wawona hotel but due to a copyright dispute now the Big Trees Lodge… 

This was Gael’s first trip to Yosemite…  She noted how the landscape changed as we entered the park… It does… in part because you loose the roadside development, but also because the NPS boundary is special, and a hard line between the just wild and the special wild.   

We checked in… carried bags and a large cooler upstairs to the room (the cooler had to come inside… for there be bears here… (of course we didn’t see any… )  The Wawona is an old hotel… dating to the 1870’s… with bathrooms and showers around back… with upstairs and downstairs porches wrapping about the building.

We wandered about… across the covered bridge to the historic village then beyond to the camp ground where people had horses… then back to the hotel for dinner… then on a whim up to Glacier Point… for sunset… We reached Glacier Point well before sunset… walked to the edge and Gael had a “Grand Canyon” style first Yosemite experience… below Yosemite, Vernal and Nevada Falls were all raging… As the sun fell the Alpenglow light first Half Dome, then the other faces… Everywhere there were people with cameras, people with tripods with cameras mounted… a Ranger appeared and began his evening talk… we wandered off… the place was beyond anything a talk could improve.

The drive back down was slow… 35 mph speed limit which at time seemed too fast in the dark.  Returning to the hotel, we sat on the balcony for a bit… then I sat by myself a bit longer… 

The next morning we arose (this is a good thing) then after showering went down and had breakfast, then packed a lunch and headed for the valley… 

Part 2 to follow