Yosemite Sam

Yosemite National Park is huge. Across America there are plenty of national parks and recreation areas to get away from the dull towns and cities and this is the most visited. You know it's a big and wild place when in the visitors centre a park ranger asks a visitor,'So have you got a snow spade with you to dig yourself out if you get stuck?'. Dig yourself out!? What? The main thing you've got to worry about in the national parks of England are which pub will have the best pint!


Another hint of the size of the place comes when you enter the park and a sign tells you it's 25 miles to the visitors centre!
The trails here can be serious stuff in winter as the snow is deep and out in the wilds it's nothing short of desolate. Nobody lives in national park land so once you set off into the wilderness you may not see anybody for the entire time. Until, that is, you get back near the main visitors centre and suddenly you're surrounded by snap happy tourists from all nations, like us! Going out into the wilderness sounds good but not at this chilly temperature in the midst of winter and you have to be somewhat prepared for these things.
Oh and did I mention the bears?! Eat anything around your tent and a bear will smell it, from 25 miles away! Even eat something before camping without changing your clothes in-between and the bear will still be able to smell the food on them and come looking. It's also been said that even a chapstick can be sniffed out by the bear. I don't need that. You can make precautions by storing food in a bear-proof canister and all that but I prefer to store my food in my belly whilst lying on a king-size bed in a cosy motel room.
For us it's good enough to walk a few of the shorter snow-filled trails and check out the main attractions of this place. Generally these are the huge granite cliffs that seem to rise straight up from the ground. Half-dome is one of the most distinctive mountains that is smoothed over at the top before dropping to a vertical face.


The other most striking view is of El Capitan, a large vertical rock face that imposes itself over the park. Snow is everywhere and a few of the trails are closed aswell as one of the entrances into the park itself.


There's a handy free bus that takes you around the park to the trails so you don't have to take your car everywhere. Unbelievably people are actually camping in tents in the surrounding thick snow, hardcore nutters right there.
We walk a trail towards a frozen lake and chat with a Korean guy who's on his last fling around the American west before returning to a job in Korea. He'd been studying in Washington State and seemed to have mixed views about America. 'The good is really good, but the bad is really bad.' I see what he means.
Yosemite is a stunning place. You could spend a lifetime backpacking through the wilderness and still never see it all. But you can also come and be lazy and still be in awe of the amazing scenery or be somewhere in-between and walk around a bit.


We head back to the small town of Sonara for valentines and guess where we eat? In a Mexican. Lovely it was too. In fact while we were in there another first was checked off the list. 2 Policemen on duty came in and sat down for a full meal in the booth next to us. They even get a 'Happy Valentines' from the waitress including a free romantic dessert without any sarcasm at all. Odd. Even odder was that even on Valentines Day the restaurant closed at 8:30pm! Mental. That's about the time us Europeans go out for something to eat so don't even dream of getting more rounds of drinks in and chatting away until midnight oh no. These Americans have to get home for their favourite TV episode of some over make-upped over-acted drivel that actually only lasts 5 minutes when you deduct advert time.
The next evening we stop in Fresno in what is the worst room of the trip in America so far. Suddenly from endless stunning wild scenery we're back into the generic nothingness of America urbanism with zombie-like hobos staggering in the streets. We need to get out of here and back into the wilderness, of sorts.