Archive for the 'John Muir' Category

Thickipedia

Friday, April 20th, 2007

I see that today’s (20th April 2007) featured article on Wikipedia is Yosemite National Park. So lots of morons are deleting the main article, seemingly unaware that being a wiki we can see the old versions anyway. Sigh.

Blogging the train from Merced to Martinez

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

The bus from Yosemite made good time and actually arrived at Merced Amtrak station early. The station itself is just a small building, and there’s no cafĂ© - but you can buy drinks and unhealthy snacks from a machine, so I naturally made use of them. The train was perfectly on time, but I did [...]

Yosemite Falls - and I don’t

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

After two sunny days, today was more cloudy. Indeed it was snowing all day - just flurries, and nothing sticking. It didn’t seem to me to be cold enough for snow, but maybe I’m becoming acclimatised to Scotland. Certainly Yosemite Creek was full of slush formed from the spray from the fall, though with the [...]

Scotch mist trail

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Today I took the well-travelled (by the at least slightly fit) trail to Vernal Fall and the onwards and upwards to Nevada Fall via a series of seemingly endless stairs. I now have a new mental image of the Stairs of Cirith Ungol. The path is called the Mist Trail, but to be honest a [...]

Beauty as well as bread

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

I’m reminded of what Bill Bryson said of Yosemite in the Lost Continent (from memory): “When you arrive in Yosemite, your first thought is that you have died and gone to heaven. Your second thought is, that means you are going to spend eternity with a lot of fat Americans in Bermuda shorts.” But don’t [...]

Toddling in John Muir’s footsteps

Monday, April 16th, 2007

One day, perhaps, I shall arrive in Yosemite during daylight, and really experience the drive into the valley. This time, as last time, I arrived in darkness - seeing nothing beyond the road ahead picked out in the car’s headlights. Yet in some ways this is the ideal way to experience the valley - to [...]