well, more a small time local salsa gangster rather than actual mafia… The first hint of acceptance was when I got ushered into the ring at a local girl’s birthday dance. I don’t know if I’ve explained this one: here, when it’s some lucky (usually female) person’s birthday, the DJ puts on a salsa version of “happy birthday” that lasts, ooo about an hour, and a big cirlce of guys congregates and dance with her in a kind of “may I cut in?” way, but much cooler. I’d enjoyed watching these and wished I had the guts to try it myself. Well a couple of weeks ago I bumped into a couple who also went to the tango class, and it was their friend’s birthday. It was funny: I had a bit of trouble figuring how to cut in so they even helped me out with a small shove!
But the real turning point was last night when two girls were trying to dance with one guy. They looked to me like they were having a little difficulty deciding who should dance (though come to think of it I might have spoiled a 3-up… but if it was a 3-up it wasn’t a very good one…) so I waited for an opportune move and scooped his current partner away. After half a song, he kinda threw his partner away and grabbed mine, so I picked up the spare… very cool. Don’t know what the etiquette is in these situations but hey it was fun and nobody seemed to give me the evils afterwards!
The rest of the morning didn’t go all that well - though i did get to see the general grant grove which really was awe inspring, and got a couple of bad photos of the miniature badger-faced squirrel (I learned later in the gift shop that these were chipmunks, though they weren’t quite like any of the specific varieties in the book so BFSes they will always be to me). I started to get annoyed with the americans and the tourists, scaring the wildlife and loudly reading all the signs to one another and asking aloud really banal questions. Then, after I’d tried to see a bunch of sites that had been recommended by the info people, to find the roads closed (in case of danger of someone getting freaked out by the presence of snow and wheelspinning their 26-foot RV with own satellite into a ravine, no doubt) I started to get annoyed with the trees too. Definitely time to leave.
Half the trip had been in the Sequoia National Park and the other half in the Sequoia National Forest. The distinction is quite noticeable: the emphasis in the national park is on maintaining the nature just-so, whereas the National Forest allows lumber and tourist industry to spread more. As a result, the best roads and the best view of the giant sequoias was in the northern, National Forest, part, but the vibe was FAR better in the National Park, with the shakier roads and much sparser signs of habitation adding to a good atmosphere of being in the middle of nowhere.
The homeward trip took in 200 miles of tedious highway 99, driving through flat inhabited desert with nothing much to look at apart from people cutting you up or suddenly braking… But after 99 I broke off across country intending to plunge through the Carrizo Plain national monument and check out a soda lake there. But after 50 miles of flat cultivated desert my hackles were starting to raise, and when the gas station at the turnoff for the soda lake and the uncultivated desert was closed, I took this as an omen. I didn’t fancy heading into the unknown without a full tank of gas and a full bottle of water, so instead I followed the road along the groovy dry bed of the river Cuyama, through the ‘towns’ Cuyama (didn’t see it) and New Cuyama (pop. 526). New Cuyama was very cool, about the size of a large sixth-form college. I bumped into both the local sherriff and a Feisty Senorita as I headed to pre-pay for my fuel, and got drawn into a long one-sided conversation that sprang from the newfangled silicon chip in my payment card and quickly got onto the merits of web-tv. I left town past a bone-fide trailer park wondering how a pasty white boy like me gets to meet Feisty Senoritas like that. Probably by becoming a volunteer at the Single Moms Of The Desert Child Alcoholism Concern group or something.
Trying to get a bit more focused and touristy today, i’ve been making fewer stops. I set off for the Lost Grove, found it (amusingly it took me 2 tries!) and made some more attempts to capture some of the majesty of the great trees. When i got back to the car i noticed the clock needed setting to Daylight Saving Time - once i’d managed this i looked up and there was a deer, lapping at the road! I’ve just had a similar thing happen while I was writing this with a cool miniature badger-faced squirrel (no, that’s not the official name!) but it was scared off by two kids in a noisy jeep. These moments are the ones that make you feel privileged to be here, not standing behind a railing, being one of many tourists trampling the root systems of the most massive trees on earth. The trip I’m having probably wouldn’t suit the likes of Pete, as you never feel that you’re that far from civilization despite the tiny communities and the distance from the cities. But just east of here there is no road access through the great western divide mountains and access is on foot by backcountry pass only, which is cool.
Drawing to the end of a long day: approximately 9 hours in the saddle and a couple of hours’ traipsing, I’ve covered over 300 miles, and in the last 40 or so have gained about 6000 feet. I’m kipping in the Wuksachi lodge, a cross between a luxury apres-ski restaurant and a travelodge, tucked in the deepest part of the park currently accessible by road. At the foothill station, the tourist info, I’d asked whether I could just show up, and I was assured that yes, it was the quiet season and I’d be able to get a room for $66 instead of the in-season $300. I shew up as the light was failing (singing the Joy Vibes’ near-hit of the same name to myself) and asked Misty, the nice, overworked girl behind the counter, if there was a single room going for one for one night. I’d decided I’d pay up to $120 for one with a bath as my whole body was starting to complain by now at its cruel misuse at the hands of its owner. I was in luck, Misty informed me, as a room had just become free in the last few minutes, until which point they had been full. It was $129 but did indeed have a bath, as well as a shower, minibar, trouser press etc.etc.etc. Huzzah!
$149 (inc tax) later, and I was making my way to my room, reading the “bear aware” warnings earnestly, having signed a dotted line to say I appreciated the gravity of Yogi’s activities in the area…
Well, I’d read that it’s impossible to take a picture that conveys the hugeness of the Sequoia tree, so I’d got it in my head that I would try to do it justice. It’s so huge however, that you either can’t get it all in the picture, or if you can then anything else in the frame for comparison becomes insignificantly small. The problem I had was that after spending all afternoon making my way up the canyon, from the huge boulders in the foothills to the awesome vista off moro rock, the trees aren’t actually that big. What I was beginning to realise is that it’s not that the trees are big - after all there’s only a small grove of them in this huge canyon - it’s that we people are so damn *small*. Standing on the top of moro rock and surveying the canyon below, stretching from mountain range to mountain range in all directions with the only signs of man the road I’d arrived on and the railing between me and the 4000 ft drop to the river below… (well, OK I wouldn’t have fallen all the way in one go, I’d have bounced a good many times I expect) … where was I… ah yes, standing on moro rock I couldn’t help imagining what the pioneers must have made of this, and even more awe-inspiring, thinking of the aboriginal people who roamed or settled those slopes with even less technology at their disposal. The idea of heading back the way I’d just come on foot was a daunting once which thankfully I didn’t have to consider except for the fun of it.
This would be a great place to bring a S.O. at this time of year. There’s something about a snowbound mountain lodge that makes you feel very hornyromantic…
This is, I assume, due to stoopid people having huge cars. The really annoying thing is they didn’t just make an option to go round, they forbade people to go through it. I assume this is because of the Stoopid Masses who aren’t smart enough to realise they should look if a hole is big enough to take their SUV or RV before heading into it…
Wow! California is great! Set off this morning for the Sequoia National Park. 6 hours, 300 miles and half a tank of gas (nearly $30 worth!) later, and I’ve seen some incredible landscapes. Western cal. seems to consist of a bunch of plains each surrounded by a ring of mountains. Periodically you got the impression you were snugly contained in a 25-mile wide bowl. Landscapes varied from reminiscences of England, Scotland, Wales, Spain and Holland (or Norfolk) but all turned to 11 and with wonderful sunshine. For some reason, whenever I passed one of the mountain crests into the next plains, accordion or mariachi trumpet would break in over the top of the English language National Public Radio and I’d spend a moment realising how I really am in a foreign country. Even though much of our entertainment is imported from the US, we don’t have the US at home by a long throw.
There were also some really horrid industrial spots.
There seemed to be a theme that the left side of the road was yellow and the right side was green. haven’t been able to come up with a compelling theory as to why this should be yet.
I’ve just polished off a gorgeous salad (Baby spinach salad with bleu[sic] cheese, candied pecans and cranberries with raspberry vinaigrette) after going to the visitor center to get the lowdown on what the park has to offer and whether I’m being stupid to consider making it to san francisco tomorrow before santa barbara by midnight. I kinda knew what the answer would be (SFo, SB and Sequoia form a roughly equilateral triangle whose sides are 5 and a half hours long by the speed limits) so now I am on plan B where I will take my time, get some of the atmosphere, and probably kip in the park somewhere. I was disappointed that the crystal caves are closed at this time, but that was nicely balanced by the accommodation’s off-season prices being 1/5 of what they’ll be in May.
OK. I’m ready. I’ll just pop the lunch litter in the locking bear-proof trashcan, then it’s time to start the afternoon’s tour of the park. By this time tomorrow I should have seen the five biggest trees on earth and missed the 14,494-foot Mount Whitney on account of the 13,802-foot Mount Kaweah being in its way. I will also have failed in my mission to see the tree I saw in National Geographic when I was about 7. The pic of the redwood with a car driving through a tunnel hewn into the base of its trunk has always stuck with me and I thought it’d be a cool pic to send to bro who may have recognised it. Unfortunately, though hardly surprisingly, the act of cutting off most of its connection to its already shoddy roots system and paving over the same caused some degree of resentment in the old monarch, and just to personally spite me, it cracked and fell over one winter when the wind blew.