Yosemite Valley

Today would be our last day in Yosemite. It felt a bit sad packing up the tent for the last time, though I was a little bit pleased with myself with the speed and efficiency with which I packed everything away. With the exception of one short section this side of Nevada Falls today's hike would be entirely downhill, as we returned to Yosemite Valley where Meg's car was waiting for us.

We set off at a decent pace and were quickly at the falls. In theory we had a choice of trail at this point, however, we had been advised that one of them was closed (despite people coming up that trail, but they may have tried to go that way and found it closed and had to do a U-turn). So our only option was to go down to the valley via the John Muir Trail. I was very happy about this. John Muir was a Scotsman, who emigrated to the USA and was, among other things, a mountaineer, botanist, environmentalist and was an early advocate for the preservation of wilderness spaces in the United States of America. He also co-founded the Sierra Club. It was Muir who in 1903 met with President Roosevelt in Yosemite and persuaded him to create a national park, thereby protecting the site from 'development' and preserving it for future generations. April the 21st in John Muir Day in California. So, all in all it felt right to be leaving the mountains on the John Muir Trail.

The first part of the trail went alongside a rock overhang that ran for a good distance along the trail, and it was like walking through a shower as a fine mist or water rolled off the edge. It was a nice spot to stop and look back towards Nevada Falls, after a few pictures were taken we carried on.

The trail was very busy, there were loads of people coming up the trail towards Nevada Falls, possibly because the other trail was closed. Chris' knee was still giving him a lot of bother so Meg said to Laura and I to go on and she would stay with Chris. So, we set off. I had become very fond of Laura so I was looking forward to a chat on the trail...but it's hard to chat when you are hiking at 200 miles an hour. She was fast, and with my short legs it felt like we were running down the hill! The path zig zagged reasonably steeply down the mountain, so, it was short stretches with tight turns. We did pause a couple of times and again the views were great, but there was a steady stream of people coming up the hill, it was like being on Princes Street in Edinburgh. We eventually arrived near the bottom of the trail where we met the young and super fit Evan and Hannah. There was an actual toilet there, apparently it was built for a visit of Queen Elizabeth II, but she never used it. Meg and Chris arrived and under Meg's expert guidance we set off on an unmarked trail (it was a pony trail I think). The really good thing about that trail, apart from the fact it was quite beautiful, was that there was no one else on it. We had a very pleasant and much more leisurely walk back into the Valley.

We found our way to the car park, which was really busy, there were cars just driving in circles hoping someone would pull out of a space. We dumped all our stuff in Meg's car, and she, Hannah, and Chris set off to drive up to our starting point and the Mono Meadow trailhead to collect the other cars.

The rest of us walked into the town, and it was a surprisingly long walk, the first thing we did was go into a shop and buy ice cream and a beer. It was great. We were not expecting the others to return with the cars for a while, as it was a 34-mile round trip. Fortunately that meant that I was able to go into the Ansel Adams Gallery. I remember as a young teenager seeing some of his photographs and being amazed by them. The Gallery is very well laid out with a selection of Adams' prints but nothing tacky, as well as stuff by more contemporary photographers, and artists. I really enjoyed wandering around, and I ended up buying some cards and a print.

We then went to a standard tourist store and with a lot of help from Laura and Evan I got some souvenirs for the tribe back home. Laura wanted to post a card from the Yosemite Post Office so we headed there, she didn't have enough cash so I gave her a dollar. She wanted to give me the change but I said I wasn't taking American coins home with me, just as she was putting the coins away she noticed that a quarter in the change was a Yosemite/John Muir quarter, and they were hard to get. It was a really lovely moment.

We met up with Meg, Chris and Hannah in the car park where Chris had charged the car earlier, redistributed our gear, and then we set off, it was going to be a long drive back.

It wasn't long before the range anxiety kicked in. We stopped at a town where there was supposed to be a charging point, but after driving around it was clear that the only charging points were Tesla. So we had no option but to keep going.

Some time later, we arrived in the town of Atwater where we had stopped on the way to Yosemite. The four chargers were still there and available. Chris pulled in to one then out again to another one. A large electric SUV had pulled in at the same time then out again then in to another one and then out again. It turned out that the one Chris had chosen was the only one working.

Whilst the car was charging we went over the The Habit fast food restaurant we had visited on the way a few days earlier, and the food was, if anything, even better than before.

We changed things around a bit for the final leg back to San Francisco. I went in Meg's car with Laura, and Meg went in Chris' car. We were using the built in SatNav but we had also opened up the navigation app on Laura's phone, whihc turned out to be a good thing as during the drive Laura made a noise laughing or something and the built in Sat Nav read it as a new set of instructions. So, we basically navigated with me holding Laura's phone with Google Maps open, and I would give directions every time we were approaching a junction of any kind. I don't think it was easy for Laura to do the driving as she wasn't totally sure where she was going and it was dark and there was a ton of traffic, and the occasional crazy driver. However, I definitely couldn't drive but between the two of us we managed not to get lost, and we arrived back at Meg's around 10pm.

Everyone was exhausted, and we quickly unpacked the cars and headed to bed. It had been another long but wonderful day.Read more