Yosemite.  Towering granite pinnacles.  John Muir.  Teddy Roosevelt.  Indian pogroms.  What American doesn’t want to visit?

I didn’t particularly, but I was invited to camp with the Noble Supersmith and it has been too long off the road for the truck and I.

Packed, equipment triple-checked, truck oil and fuel nominal, departed the Pacific for the Sierra’s 0700 on Turkey Day.  The 200 mile one-way route is a simple one: Go to Hollister, verge over the Pacheco Pass and then Los Banos, left turn just east of the once mighty San Joaquin River, now sere ATV race course, turn right at Merced and go to the end of the road.

Just south of Merced, but this could be a picture of almost any two-lane in the San Joaquin.

This slice of the San Joaquin bisected by Route 152 could be anywhere on the Great Plains, anywhere there’s intensive 12 month of the year agribusiness.  Piss on a plate flat, ranches spotted to the tule fog horizon, lines of breakwind eucalyptus, pierced by the low dykes of irrigation channels.

And at this time of the year, this time of the day, I had the roads to myself.  Which is as it should be.

Took me all the way to Hollister to shake off Home Johnson, but 45 minutes into the voyage, found Road Johnson.  Not bad for a guy out of road trip practice….

Topped off the fuel bowser in Merced – petrol is down to $3/gallon – then found 140 East.  Merced had, even in the low winter sun, a sad tone, people on the streets looking furtive for a way out, even though Amtrak must make a least one stop a day.

About 20 miles east of Merced there is the junction with The Old Highway.  Wouldn’t you?  It is a remaining slice of the first road, constructed in the 1850’s, to the upper valley of the Merced River, otherwise known as Yosemite.

The name derives from the Miwok term for the polyglot of Indians – renegades from multiple tribes – who inhabiting the valley and means “Those Who Kill.”  The Yos s e’ meti themselves called the valley Ahwahnee, which means bear’s mouth, a reference to what the silhouette of the lower valley looked like to them.

Anyway, back to The Old Highway, it was first a pack trail, and then widened and improved by men, shovels, and TNT to allow wagon travel to Mariposa.  Mariposa was a boom town during the Gold Rush, and the location of the fabulous John C. Fremont’s ‘floating rancho.’  Whenever a new gold strike was found farther up the creeks that punctuate the dry hills, Fremont’s diseno, or boundary map ‘floated’ upstream to cover the new bonanza.

As I lazily drove the road, and I wasn’t expecting pavement and didn’t get it, this was patch upon fill upon patch upon patch, I thought of all the mules that died hauling the hogsheads of flour, beans, sowbelly, and whiskey up this grade, and all that were killed dragging down the bullion.

The Old Highway, built with drag plows, sweat, and TNT.

And as I bumped and lumped up and down and around I thought of the 1920’s era motor coaches which would have taken this road, collected the hearty campers from the rail station in Merced, or maybe at the railroad hotel in Merced early in the morning since the motor coach would require all the daylight hours to do the 70 miles, with a luncheon stop in Mariposa, of course.

Mariposa.  For the motor tourist, it offers a whiff of Gold Rush Days divertissement in the physical shape of old buildings, old whispers, ghosts and tchotchke shops.  Like many of the gold mining era towns on Route 49, Mariposa was and is scattered up and down the narrow gulch of a creek, Mariposa Creek, like pebbles tossed across a furrow.  The gold was where you panned it; the camp, ur-town the same.  It was actually good that today was Thanksgiving, otherwise the handful of enticing saloons would have drawn me in and very likely I never would have made it to Yosemite.

Even the 1854 courthouse, the oldest still serving courthouse in California was shuttered for the day – a holiday of justice.

I climbed out of Mariposa, the day’s side-light seen to, to ramble.  The road climbs and twists and drops and climbs more, and this the modern all-weather road until it drops 1,800 feet inside of 7 miles into the valley of the Merced River.

From here to where the pavement ends is a sinuous track along the Merced River.  On the far side is a ghost railway, the Yosemite Valley Railroad, which operated from 1907 to 1942.

The road is like the river, but it’s flat and paved and the wheeled metal canoes only infrequently upset themselves on a boulder.

The line backed up at the toll booth, annoying both for the wait and for the money I have to pay when I already own the park.  But once my twenty spot was handed over, I was in the upper valley almost before I knew it.  There’s El Capitan shining like a rock glacier.

The Upper Pines Campground is about as far into the valley as one can go on pavement.  My compadre’s had arrived the day before and so they and their tidy little encampment was there to greet me.

Shown here, just past our tented Dining Hall, is the site of the generator-running yahoo’s – picture does not convey the BWWWWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH resonating through our heads for six hours daily.

Also there to greet me, not forty feet away, was the adjacent cheap, unmufflered generator; twenty feet away was the bus-sized RV, its on-board power generation unit humming like an idling engine.  Generators are permitted to run 0700 to 0900.  1200 to 1400.  And 1700 to 1900.  Daily.  Without fail.  Imagine the sound of someone mowing their grass for six hours a day.  In your living room.

This was not the only horror.  It’s a campground, I knew this going in, what I didn’t expect was the insane proximity of the paved campsite spots.  It was like camping in a pine dotted parking lot.  But with bears.  I could smell the ass crack of the guy crawling backward out his tent in the adjacent site (parking space).  This is the punishment for taxpayers who resent being charged to visit property they already own.  This is the hellish purgatory inflicted upon the willing, like sado-maschochism by the lemming-like desire to be in one of America’s signature rustic destinations.

I unload the firewood, deploy my bedroll and am read to piss into the gas tank of the generator.  In this I am dissuaded by my compadres, who were right, at 2 PM the generators all shut down and something like quiet ensued.

As quiet as an acre packed with 19 RV’s, 14 trailers, and 18 tents all occupied to a greater or lesser quietness.

Supersmith had worked out, over the previous months, the techniques and technology necessary to grill a turkey, in this case a quite respectably sized 14 pound bird.  The bird is sheathed in metal foil, and is further protected from the direct heat of the propane grill by a serving tray, a trivet, and a wad of mashed up foil.  Since the OEM propane grill was too small, top to bottom, to accommodate this size bird, two sheet metal bands encircle the carcass and it is on these bands that the grill top reposes.  Less-Than-Standard 20 minutes/pound.

Once my role as vegetable chopper was complete (Supersmith eschews bread stuffing for the turkey and instead crams the carcass with onions, carrots and celery, not including any of my digits, fortunately) I was free to tend the campfire, keep a weather eye out for marauding bruins, and sample the delicious bevvies from my cooler.

Hours later, we retired to the Dining Hall for the feast.  I suppose it was satisfactory, I really don’t remember, and about all I had to offer the company were the occasional grunt and/or belch.

Dessert was more bourbon by the fire.  Adequate.

I slept better in my nest in the back of the truck than I sleep at home.

Of the morning, and it was immediately obvious that 0700 had rolled around given the BWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA from our adjacent yahoo campers, and we were all going to be desperately late to stand in line at 0400 at Best Buy for Black Friday to riot over $20 off the yellow neon hair twizzler.

Despite testing my Coleman stove at base camp, it refused to burn properly here at altitude, about 4,000 feet and so I had to fall back upon Supersmith’s propane burner to make the morning eye-opener.

While my compadres were getting organized, I had the opportunity to walk over to the Merced River, about 300 meters north and at the untroubled stream I found the campsite we should have had, but could not enjoy as we were lacking a special dispensation from John Muir, the Park Service, TSA, and the Supreme Court.  No Parking Off Paved Sites, No Collecting Firewood, No Being More Than 20 Feet Away From Another Camper, Generator, And Scrofula.

When I returned, Supersmith was still not quite ready for the day’s adventure – a walk to The Ahwahnee – and so I perambulated to The Happy Isles, mere inconsanguinities amid the rushing tumult of the Merced, which were indeed smile-inducing.

Supersmith, on my return, was ready.  We walked the non-expected back way from our campsite (densepack) to The Ahwahnee.  Completed in 1927 and intended to be an all-season resort destination, its early years were rocky.  In fact, the idea of a premier hotel in Yosemite gestated for 11 years.

We parked ourselves on the sunny veranda, we had work to do.  Supersmith was to lead tours of the Lara-Soto- Steinbeck Adobe in Monterey for the yearly Christmas In The Adobes exposition.  I was to offer Steinbeck readings.  Hence, we had to choose passages across a range of Steinbeck’s work, emphasizing the period 1940 – 1945, as Steinbeck owned the Lara-Soto starting in 1944.

Our goal was to have 12 – 18 short passages, none more than about 30 – 45 seconds long.  In the end, we chose about twenty paragraphs, only one ran to more than the designated time.

It was thirsty work.

We repaired to The Ahwahnee Bar.  Less of a bar and more of a serving area, it lacked in anything like the ambience with which the rest of the hotel shouted.  But the service was adequate, the beers tasty and the antipasto, if overpriced, succulent.

The day’s (and for me, the voyage’s) climax attended, we hoofed back to Upper Pines, actually using one of the venerable phone booths.

Languor ruled the afternoon, leftovers the plates in the Dining Hall, bourbon the fireside cheer.

Saturday – the forecast called for rain.  This called for my departure.  Even if the accommodations were isolated, quiet and remote, I still would have decamped this day.  Had the highway pretty much all to myself, which would NOT have been the case had I joined the throng trying to get out of the park on Sunday.

Skittered through rain, some heavy across the San Joaquin to endure the never-anticipated drive slow in the fast lane nincompoops all the way to the 101 over the Pacheco Pass.

In Sum: Yosemite is a noble and worthy destination.  Off Season.  Stay out of the valley itself.  And take ear plugs.  Its location due east makes it the most accessible major national park available to those of us East Of Eden.

In inner regions of California – any county that lacks ocean – are flat, plumb normal and could be anywhere in Montana, Colorado, or Oklahoma.  Except for the cost of living.

Any perceived inconveniences associated with roadtrip hijinx are quickly forgotten washed away as they are by the sheer pleasure of taking in the highways and byways of the best state in the Union.  Nuf said.