Yosemite or bust!


From San Francisco we rode across the Central Valley to the mountains and Yosemite national park. The Central Valley is an extraordinary agricultural production house. Fields of almonds, peaches and strawberries. Massive irrigation systems and roadside packing houses. Here and there bands of agricultural workers, mainly Mexicans, work in the fields. Each gang accompanied by a portaloo. They say the only people who got rich from the gold rush were those who sold shovels. The winners from this agribusiness are the toilet hire companies.

The roads up to Yosemite from Mariposa are some of the best we've travelled. Great surfaces, constant radius curves, well signed. They rise up through the foothills and then alongside the Mariposa River until you enter the high meadow of Yosemite Valley. This really is one of the extraordinary natural spaces in the world. Ringed by towering granite cliffs, the flooded meadows and pine trees frame every view. 

After a night at the Big Trees Lodge in the park (evidence if any were needed that government run hotels and restaurants operating in a monopoly situation are not a good idea) we went back to the valley to walk one of the many trails.

While the roads in the valley are choked with cars, as soon as you start walking it gets a lot quieter. Three hours and 1000ft takes you to spectacular viewpoints which, while you are not alone, feel a lot more like the wilderness that John Muir hoped to preserve. Sadly we didn't have the time or the equipment to do some of the longer climbs to the top of El Capitan or Half Dome. Another day.

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