The motel we stayed in last night was like something from Psycho. It was functional, yet slightly grubby, and deeply eccentric in a somewhat 1970s way, right down to the coffee machine in the bathroom! We sat out on the balcony outside our room for half an hour last night, but, if the truth be known, we're falling asleep almost as soon as it gets dark at the moment. This is largely due to the fact that we're tending to get up at dawn. This morning I was up at 6. The sky was full of streaky red clouds and it seemed to take an age for the sun to appear over the tops of the mountains.
We drove back into Yosemite National Park. The ranger who waved us through was delightfully charming and complimented Nathan on the tattoos on his arms, "they match your eyes" he said, flirtatiously!
Yosemite at dawn is one of the most magical places I've ever visited. The air was thick with a mist which smelt strongly of smoke. We later discovered that it was actually smoke. Lightning causes fires to break out all the time in the park and the wardens also carry out controlled fires. Fires are actually very good for nature. They create highly fertile soil and allow shoots of new life a chance to take hold. The places where fires have raged are often hugely verdant. We passed one such area. The pine trees which had been destroyed in the blaze looked liked giant pointy porcupine quills sticking out of the hillside.
We didn't actually see a fire, but in some areas the fog was really rather intense, its deep and sometimes acrid stench entirely catching the backs of our throats. The smoke nevertheless gave everything a deeply nostalgic quality. I think we all felt as though we were in a dream.
Our journey took us up into the mountains and we stopped briefly to look down into the misty abyss. The river snaking its way along the bottom of the valley was glinting in the sun in a way which made it look like a long, snaking pit of orange fire. It was genuinely one of the most breathtaking sights that I've ever witnessed. As we stood and watched, another area of the river started to glow orange through the brown mist. I doubt I shall ever forget that sight.
The road took us higher and higher. Signs told us we'd reached 5000, 6000, 8000 feet. Surely higher than I've ever been outside an aeroplane? The landscape changes somewhat restlessly. At first you're driving through lush forest, with the odd small, enticing-looking lake, and then giant granite rock forms start to crowd the sides of the roads. Some resemble huge, gently tilting platforms, others ascend into the air vertically like primitive art. One vista will be entirely purple and mauve. The next might be shades of deep green. Then everything you drive past will suddenly be monochrome. And, when the sun tries to inch its way through the smokey fog, things start to turn the colour of apricots.
We stopped off at the most delightful, ice-cold lake called Tenaya which Sam assured us his sister had recommended after honeymooning in the park twelve or so years ago. He says she described the water as being like angel tears, although he is subsequently trying to deny this particular fact, based on the likelihood of Katie actually reading this blog! It turns out that angel tears is a perfectly decent description of that soft, cool, delicate water. We all had a swim, staring, misty-eyed, at the mountains rising up from the water, which, when we arrived, was reflecting the sun like diamanté-encrusted cowboy boots!
I bought myself some Raisin Bran for breakfast, which I ate in a plastic bowl by the side of the lake. Heavenly. A fish jumped out of the water and back in again.
As we swam, the smokey fog descended on the lake, and everything turned an eerie shade of blue.
Further up the mountains, we found ourselves travelling through giant meadows, where babbling brooks carried snow water down into the valley. At times we found ourselves above the tree line in eerie lunar landscapes. At above 9000 feet I got a little light headed and started giggling uncontrollably.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the day was discovering a snowy field high up in the mountains. And yes! I said field of snow! Whether it was a glacier or destined to melt by the end of the summer I'm not sure, but it was deeply surreal to have a snowball fight in 90 degree heat in the height of August.
The mountains got higher and higher. Every new vista generated another gasp until we were almost all gasped out. A veritable embarrassment of nature's riches!
As we drove out of the park, we were confronted by a long, winding road which snaked its way somewhat perilously down the most enormous slope of scree I've ever seen. I should think it was 2000 feet tall, and the ridge where the road was, was exactly half way down, with no barriers. I have seldom felt so sick. I found myself tensing every muscle of my body as we slowly made our way down. Never again!
The landscape changes constantly as you head towards Nevada. There are huge grassy plains and then suddenly you're in desert landscape. Salt lakes. Stacks of slate. Weird cactus-like trees. Yellow earth. Brightly-coloured grasses. Red tails ride the thermals in the air above. The sky is bright blue. Telegraph poles stretch in V shapes to the horizon. The roads are like twisting rollercoasters in mountainous areas and then, suddenly, when you hit the plains again, they turn into single carriageways, stretching out for miles in front of you in dead straight lines, the white lines at the side of the roads and the bright yellow stripes in the middle creating the most curious optical illusions. And then, of course, come the mirages. The glowing, watery apparitions on the road which you never quite manage to reach. Temperatures were always high in the nineties, although it's an incredibly dry heat, so you never really find yourself getting sweaty. I think the sweat dries immediately.
You ought to be able to drive like the wind on those roads, but they send people up in aeroplanes to do speed checks. Seriously!
As we passed from California into Nevada we saw our first tumble weeds and then scores of dust devils dancing around and over the roads. There's a long stretch towards Beatty where vehicles are told to drive with their lights on during the daylight hours because dust storms are so prevalent in those parts.
Beatty itself is a horrible place. It took an age to buy petrol. Our foreign debit cards sent the system into meltdown and, in the end, we were forced to guess how much petrol we were going to need and pay up front. When we couldn't get that much petrol into our car, we were refunded. But there was a queue of massively fat people buying sweets to contend with every time we went into the shop. We wanted to stop for food and walked into a diner full of rather threatening-looking, bemulleted people, but it smelt of dead dog, mops and dirty flip flops, so we skipped lunch.
We went instead to Rhyolite, a ghost town which, for a brief period, from 1901 to 1913 had a population of 7500. In 1919, the Post Office closed. In 1920, the population had dropped to 14. There was gold in them there hills for that all too brief period and the place had shops, community centres, a bank and three railway depots. I'm told the bank had electric lights, steam heat and a marble floor, so someone in the town was doing alright out of the gold rush!
These days it's an incredibly eerie and highly atmospheric spot. There's not much left of it, and most of the buildings are too unsafe to go inside, but it nestles in a series of hills made of extraordinary coloured rocks. Reds, oranges, yellows, mauves...
There are some wonderful shells of buildings: a few shop fronts, a railway station. You wander from ruin to ruin wondering, making up stories, trying to build a picture of the place in its heyday. These days it's often struck by lightening. One of its best preserved buildings recently burned down as a result. The site is full of rattle snakes, chipmunks and hares. We saw a lot of hares. They're odd looking, very skinny creatures with enormous ears.
As we walked around, the sun got lower in the sky and the shadows lengthened. The whole experience became more and more magical.
Our hotel is in Death Valley, which we avoided like the plague on our way down, knowing it very regularly poles the hottest temperatures on the planet. We arrived as the sun was setting. It's a bleak, post-apocalyptic-looking place full of salt deposits and rocky soil. The mountains on the two sides of the valley were glowing in shades of lavender and it looked very similar to the area around the Dead Sea in Israel. Despite it being almost dark, we were astounded to discover that the temperature was 109 degrees! It's actually at an elevation of -190 feet, so somewhere between Yosemite and here, we've dropped like a stone! We parked the car and piled out onto the barren rocks. None of us had ever been anywhere so hot! Sleeping might be an issue tonight! Wind literally whipping us with oven-like hot air, which actually made me panic. That said, the sunset was quite spectacular!
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