“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.”----Richard Burton
“Don’t give up your day dream.”----Anonymous
The Reason For The Season
Everybody knows this guy. The dedicated worker, not particularly fond of his job, who is obsessed with attendance. Hasn’t missed a day in five years, matter of fact. Probably piled up 400 unused vacation days and proud of it. Then he gets corkscrewed into the ground by a piece of falling space junk. No hits, no runs, 1 error.
Or the zillionaire like Scrooge McDuck with the money bin in his back yard. Six cars (five undriven), two boats (languishing at the marina), a country manor in Carolina (rarely visited). Leaves the house only for business or to attend the funerals of important peers. Believes there’s plenty of time for the frivolous stuff after he acquires another zillion. Then his limo has a hiccup crossing the railroad tracks and is promptly bashed by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. Oops. Can we have a do-over?
Peggy Lee used to sing that manana was good enough for her. Maybe so, but it wasn’t much use to the two guys above. We’re only given so much time, and nobody knows when The Big Froggie is going to plunk his Magic Twanger. Even among the living, there is a time limit for everything. Nobody wants to be like Lucy Jordan, who suddenly realized she’d never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.
Travel is more than adventure, seeing the sights, plastering a silhouette of State Visited #42 on the rear window of your RV. Travel is expanding your horizons, increasing your resourcefulness, overcoming challenges, seeing things through more educated eyes, getting in touch with yourself, forming new relationships, jumping out of the day-to-day. Travel is a gift you give yourself, a present to the man who has everything. Travel is romance. Travel is food for the soul. Travel is freedom.
“I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences….Gaze at the moon until I lose my senses….I can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences….Don’t fence me in….”
Iconic Half Dome, above. The exotic view from Glacier Point, below.
Yosemite
“It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter.”----John Muir, 1868
The grandeur of Yosemite National Park defies the old---and usually correct expression---Anticipation exceeds actuality. Approached from the East, even in July, the traveler is greeted with booming snow-capped mountains, then the lovely expanse of Tuolumne Meadows, a favorite resting place for backpackers with its 69 canvas-tent cabins, available from mid-June to late September, weather permitting. The Tuolumne Lodge (alt. 8700 feet) is about 60 miles from Yosemite Valley, to give you an idea of the scope of the place.
Yosemite has over 800 miles of trails, perhaps the best being the trek to Half Dome, one of the two major icons (along with El Capitan) of the park. Early on, hikers experience the Mist Trail, named for the wind-blown precipitation that dampens---or soaks---climbers on their way to Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls. The elevation gain from the trailhead to the top of Nevada is 1900 feet. The Mist Trail is the signature trail of Yosemite NP, and many people stop at Nevada Falls. For those continuing on to Half Dome, the trail extends through forested land a total of 14.8 miles (including the Mist Trail), a 10 to 14 hour walk in the park. It is recommended only for “very experienced adventurers,” but we went anyway. It took us about 12 1/2 hours, counting a half-hour stay on the top of Half Dome.
Climbing The Rock is not a piece of cake. It looks to have more of a curve than it actually does. When you’re standing there looking up, it seems like a vertical wall. There is a pile of used gloves from previous climbers at the bottom of the Dome, the better to aid future aspirants in grasping onto the rough cables at the sides of the path. The cables are attached to poles which extend out from the rock, and climbers use them to pull themselves up from stop to stop. The stops being very frayed wooden “steps” placed about twelve feet apart. Just to encourage folks not to dally, there is a sign next to the glove pile reminding everyone that lightning strikes the top of the dome almost every day, so take a look down at the valley, snap off a few photos and get back on the trail post-haste before Thor picks you off.
One of the most memorable sights on the ascent was the large number of would-be summiters sitting down goggle-eyed clinging to the poles, afraid to continue up and just as scared to go back down. Some of them were a quarter of the way up, some further, perhaps expecting the NP fire department to dispatch a ladder truck for their rescue. Somewhere along the line, they got the message: this ain’t Disneyland, folks, you’re on your own. Sooner or later, they must have sucked it up because I didn’t see the same clingons on the way down.
At this stage of the game, most of us won’t be climbing Half Dome or clambering to the top of El Capitan. Yosemite also offers river rafting. You and your pals can paddle down the beautiful Merced River on six person rafts, with or without a guide. We know what you’re thinking. Images arise of rafters being dumped into roiling waters and swallowed up by swirling eddies. Relax. The rafts are only rented on days when the river flow is such that even rookies are safe, always assuming the rookies are advocates of the Dirty Harry philosophy: “a man has to know his limitations.” Stay off the alcoholics unanimous raft.
Landlubbers might like to stick with a nice bicycle trip, taking a rental bike to the top of Glacier Point in your vehicle, then riding back down the mountain to the valley floor. Still too scary? They also have horseback riding in Yosemite, with unambitious equines safe enough for tiny toddlers. There are also short, beautiful pathways to spectacular sights like Bridalveil Falls. If you’re too fragile for walking, the Tioga Pass road from the valley floor to Tuolumne Meadows is one of America’s most scenic byways. That should cover everybody from Evel Kneivel wannabes to your lazy Uncle Ernie.
Fun & games on the moist Mist Trail.
Bundling Yosemite
Since getting there is half the fun, or so say the travel brochures, you’ve got options. You can fly to Sacramento and enter from the west, a choice which allows you to combine Yosemite with a visit to California’s wine country. Sacramento is the closest large city to the park, less than a three-hour drive. You can also fly to Reno, take a look at Lake Tahoe and enter Yosemite from the east, which takes about the same amount of time. OR, if you’re not in a hurry (like us), you can start in Las Vegas, drive across Death Valley, overnight in Bishop, California and hit Yosemite the next morning. Don’t pay any attention to those signs in Death Valley that tell you to shut your car air-conditioners off. I mean, it’s 123 degrees out there, let’s get realistic. Let’s also make sure we’re driving a nice new rental car and not your Aunt Felicity’s old clunker. It’s a long trek to the nearest gas station and the mechanic only works on Wednesdays.
The biggest fly in Yosemite’s ointment when we went many years ago was the lack of nearby housing. That has probably been alleviated to some degree by now. Staying inside the park requires reservations made several months ahead of your visit. We stayed an hour west at the very nice Groveland Hotel, named after the quiet little town it settles in. The rooms are small but the hotel makes up for it by giving you teddy bears to play with. There are 700 of them on your bed when you arrive and no matter what you do with them, they will magically appear in the same place after the bed is made up each morning. There are also ghosts in each room of the Groveland, each with a colorful name, each with his or her own story. The hotel will tell you most of them are benign. If you get one which is not, well, you have 700 teddy bears to throw at him.
The storied Many Glacier Hotel (above) on Swiftcurrent Lake. Below, the view from Avalanche Lake.
Glacier
If Yosemite is not the prettiest park in the country, that title would have to go to Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana. For raw beauty and variety of terrain, Glacier is tough to beat. The drive on the Going To The Sun Road to the Continental Divide at Logan Point is exceptionally beautiful, rivaled in our experience only by the ride back down the other side of the mountain. The lakes passed are a startling blue, more like paintings than actual bodies of water.
On the eastern side of the park sits the ancient and extraordinary Many Glacier Hotel, a fabulous relic located along the shore of Swiftcurrent Lake not far from the Grinnell Glacier. The Great Northern Railroad built the place 103 years ago, modeling the building along the lines of a massive Swiss chalet. There’s a small beach nearby and mountain goats, bighorn sheep and bears prowl the area.
The Going To The Sun Road, which traverses the park, is a long and winding road. And narrow. With steep drop-offs and few protective rails. When I drove on the vulnerable side of the road, Siobhan sat in the back seat on the driver’s side of the car so she would not be the first one to hit the ground if we went over the edge. All this angst can be relieved, of course, by taking the reliable park shuttle (free) driven by experienced mountain negotiators, or even the famous Glacier Red Buses (not free), which stop often for photographers. The buses have canvas roofs which roll back to better enable picture-taking.
Where Yosemite has some overnight issues, Glacier is better disposed. The nearby city of Kalispell (population 23,000+) has a raft of hotels and is only 45 minutes from the park. Whitefish, a ritzy little town with clever eateries and good shopping, has a few more. There are also a reasonable number of flights into and out of Kalispell at decent prices. The closest large city airport is at Spokane, a five-hour drive and not much cheaper.
There are a variety of interesting hikes in Glacier NP, among them an easy jaunt with little elevation to Avalanche Lake. When you arrive at the lake, you will see a jaw-dropping four waterfalls in the distance, high up in the hills, a rare photo op bonanza. A second possibility is the Hidden Lake Overlook Trail from the Logan Pass visitor center. With this one, you get snow. Guaranteed. Even in July. Bring a walking stick, it’s slippery. And use hiking boots instead of sneakers. A caution: the parking lot at Logan Pass fills up very early. Take the shuttle and leave the driving to them. No fuss, no muss. Siobhan doesn’t even move to the other side.
If you happen to be in the area at the right time, there’s an annual art festival in nearby Big Fork that’s the equal of art festivals anywhere. This year, it’s August 5-6. Big Fork sits right on Flathead Lake, the largest natural freshwater lake by surface area west of the Mississippi, offering endless outdoorsy opportunities.
Siobhan wants me to remind you of her favorite Flathead-area resort, Wild Horse Hot Springs on the west side of the lake. If you can manage to find it, and there’s no guarantee, you’ll find the proprietress, Jamie, swabbing the decks of the dark, dank corridors, waiting for customers. You don’t need bathing suits at Wild Horse Hot Springs because there’s nobody there to see you and the evil things in the water will cause them to disintegrate in seconds, at least according to Siobhan, a notorious bacteria-watcher and hot springs cynic. But what do you expect for a lousy six dollars? Seven dollars with a towel. Eight dollars with a cookie. Nine dollars with a pony ride. Ten dollars with….oh, never mind.
Enjoy your vacation. Send us a postcard. If you get in trouble, don’t be afraid to phone. We have bail bondsmen on call everywhere. Competitive prices.
Grinnell Glacier, having a good moment.
That’s all, folks….
