The Hills of San Francisco

Well after enjoying the random offerings to be had in the city, Toni and I thought it a good idea to see some of the massive nature surrounding San Fran.  Hooked up with a Jucy camper van we set out to do this.  Our first stop on the road was the Napa Valley just an hour outside of SF.  Here we visited one of my fellow South American travelers Emily.  The Napa region is known as a wine region and is a place for the well to do.  Here I got to eat my first American cheese burger, which I must say was way better than I had thought, indulge in a number of local brews (my favourite being the white Belgian wheat beer called Blue Moon) and whoop ass on the local dart boards. 

Robin Hood of the darts world!

But it was really Yosemite and Big Sur National Parks that we had come to see.  People had been hyping them since I arrived in the US and I was getting carried away in the enthusiasm.  Toni, peaking out about the potential cues at the campground entrances of Yosemite had me wake up at 3am in the morning after a night of beer drinking to start the 6 hour drive from Napa to Yosemite.  I was more than enthused to say the least.  So that I had nothing to complain about she threw out a token offering to drive if I was too tired to do so.  When I saw one eye deviated from the other, I knew it was all me.  Thanks T.

So six hours and one extended discussion at a rangers station about the ways and means to make a safe fire we arrived at the gates of Yosemite National Park.  Low and behold, a camp ground was easy to find.  You need to book way in advance to camp within Yosemite Valley, but outside it is easy to get impromptu places as long as it isn´t the weekend.  So we spent our first day deliriously exploring the Yosemite Valley area.  The scenery was gorgeous but dry.  It was somehow reminiscent of Switzerland with the large granite formations.  There was a heap of hype about bears and such getting into your cars and ripping them apart in search of food.  Hence every camper was provided with instructions to keep their cars clear of food and to store everything edible in bear boxes (big steel lockers bolted to the ground).  To hammer home the point, many a photo was shown of cars that had been peeled open by bears.  And I mean peeled.  They had a wicked system going; basically they started at the top corner of your door window and peeled the window and metal back until they could fit in your car.  Then they tore that sh!t up!  But apparently if you came across a bear it would basically hoof it.  These were black bears, not the big bad assed grizzlies.  On the other hand the warnings for mountain lions were more interesting.  They read something like this:

WARNING:  In the unlikely event that you confront a mountain lion DO NOT break eye contact.  Make yourself look big and be very loud (The very loud bit is for non-American residents.  Americans just be yourselves...).  If you are with others, join your bodies together to look collectively larger (if your name is Andrew Couse, you are huge enough).  If you have children with you, pick them up off the ground and put them on your shoulders.  Do NOT bend down.  Do NOT run.  If the mountain lion approaches you, throw rocks and swing sticks.  Do NOT bend down.  If it attacks you, FIGHT BACK! 

Delightful...  So do I carry rocks to throw at these things or do I only pick the ones up at waist height to prevent me bending down?  Little vague on that one...  I might have added a few captions for added affect....  Guess which ones....

Bears bust´n cars.  How about them apples  

In the end however all we saw were deer that thought they were dogs tending to follow people and just mooch about, prairie dogs that peeped and darted around the plains and the odd squirrel.  Every time I saw a squirrel I lost my sh!t to the disinterest of Toni who had seen “a million and one” squirrels before.  Well neh, they were new to me and damn they could smash it about those trees! 

Giant Sequoias.  Pretty big.

Yosemite Valley.  Spectacular indeed and a nice place to do some fly fishing.

A crazy red thing.  Oooo artsie...

The Jucy rocket ship.  It turned a few heads.

Days two and three of our time in Yosemite were spent in the highlands.  These were less populated with tourists and allowed for some more remote trekking and a greater array of wildlife encounters.  This was more my thing.  Come dusk and dawn, travelling on the roads was precarious as we nearly hit a number of deer.  And the remoteness of it meant that we were bathing in mountain streams fed from snow melts.  Quite refreshing! On our first trek into the highlands Toni didn´t believe me that there was actually snow on the large mountains.  She hit me with a whole heap of pseudo science as to why snow could not possibly exist at this time of year.  A snow ball to the face changed her perceptions quick smart haha!  Yeyeah! 

Snow Toni, snow.

Mountain topping.  This is like 3,500m up.

And a random hunting cabin.  Up in the snow Toni, the snow.

Each evening we would head out to the plains and watch the wildlife as it moved from the wooded areas to the grasslands to graze.  But there were no bears to be seen.  Maybe I should have brought that picnic basket... 

Its a tradition now days.  This is atop Lambert´s Dome

One cheeky squirrel

One of the many mountain lakes.  Cold as heck!

I love these little guys.  Hazah for prairie dogs!

Naaaw, baby prairie dogs.

A cold place to bathe!

The storm clouds that rolled over the plains at this time of year were dramatic!

On the fourth day we decided to up anchor and head for Big Sur.  This is a national park on the coast just south of SF.  People had told us it was “the most beautiful place on earth”, “God´s country” etc, etc.  And so this had to be explored!  Driving through some pretty varying countryside we made our way back to the coast.  This is where it really hit home that Americans have an innate knack of over hyping things.  Yosemite was nice but not world beating by any means.  Big Sur however was nothing much on my radar at all.  It is really a clear water river (nothing too huge) that runs to the ocean surrounded by heaps of Americans in big RV´s.  The coast line is windswept with a number of treks to be done but none really to write home about for the seasoned trekker/traveller.  I was happy to hear people’s enthusiasm for the area, but I could not bring myself to mirror it.  Again I have to reiterate however how friendly and outgoing Americans are.  People were offering us firewood if we needed it, food if we wanted it and I even had an offer of accommodation!

Big Sur coastline....

One of the cool things we did manage to do in the area though was see the large sea otters which hang out in the floating sea weed beds along the coast line.  They are willey little critters though that tend to be pretty hard to photograph without a telephoto lens.  One of the little buggers had me stalking the heck out of him climbing headlands and rocky outcrops to no avail.  They are smart!  Road runner smart!  And pretty cool too, breaking molluscs on their bellies with the use of a smashing stone.  There were also sea lions about.  We spotted our first one in a cove from atop a cliff.  At the bottom end of this cove was a swimming beach so I thought it a good idea to swim out and say hello to the little guy we had previously seen.  Two things....  the water in this part of the world is ridiculously cold!  My man bits were hating me and the overall burn to the submerged portions of my body was insane!  Secondly, getting to the seal was hard!  They hammer it around the sea weed beds with ease, I don´t.  That stuff is thick and spiny yo!  So when I saw the sea lion poke his head out at a distance from me I tried my best to get his interest and attract him.  Waiting for him to reappear after submerging my body started to shut down from the cold.  Just as I turned to head back in I heard something pop up behind me and breathe.  Damn!  That sea lion was a little bigger than I expected!  I headed for him but at the sight of this he shot back down again and I wasn´t going to stick around and become a dudecicle, so I headed in.  Toni sat on the beach all the while.  What a girl!  

Look for the otter head!

In search of a sea lion.

After two nights in Big Sur we were happy to move on.  We followed the promise of good coffee chains north back to SF.  Along the way we passed through Santa Cruz which seemed to be a pretty cool little place full of trendy cafes, shops and the like.  It also had a place just north where you could go and see elephant seals!  Unfortunately we missed the closing time for this little adventure to the disappointment of Toni.  Back in SF we finally handed the keys for the van back to the RV hire place, paid our excess mile charges (1000 miles in total, 300 over our quota) and headed back for the commune, oh I mean Co-Op.  Yay hippies!  This began the time for the hatching of our next set of plans haha!