Anyway...I had my one night in Vegas, saw all the sights, and felt ready to move on and more importantly get out into the fresh air and get away from cities in general. I've had enough of being pushed and jostled and hustled and panhandled and generally overloaded with everything.
I got up early, having had my dorm to myself, and sat reading downstairs for a while (this is at the Sin City Hostel, as my attentive readers will recall). The hostel proprietor was a gentleman called Kelvin, very friendly and also very well-travelled. We discussed our shared fondness of Budapest. Kelvin must have had a cold this morning, because he went into his office and I heard him taking what must presumably have been some kind of nasally-administered decongestant. It seemed to work a treat, because he displayed no cold symptoms when he emerged, and indeed he was in an extremely sunny mood overall.
I got a Greyhound to Bakersfield, California. It wasn't too crowded so I got myself that all-important double seat, and watched the Mojave desert drift by. We stopped for 'comfort breaks' a couple of times, in places so hot that I was sweating in the shade. At Bakersfield it was a short walk to the Amtrak station, and then a comfy 3-hour train ride (got a double seat again!) to Merced. This latter journey was made more tolerable yet by a couple of bottles of chilled Corona. I like the way American menus list 'beer - domestic' and 'beer - premium'; I like the implicit admission that American beer is piss.
At Merced I was met at the station by Larry, proprietor of the Merced Home Hostel, in his pick-up truck.The Merced Home Hostel is basically the home of Larry and Jan, a very friendly middle-aged Californian couple,with two bedrooms converted into bunk-bed dorms. Tonight I was the only visitor. I was served ice cream while Larry took me through the Yosemite maps and gave me some very sound advice about what to do and what not to do.We also discussed American property taxes and lottery taxes - I hadn't been aware that if you win $100m in the California state lottery, you have to give 40% of it to the federal government ('Uncle Sam', as the very patriotic Larry called it with audible distate; that's one of the things I like most about Americans, their ability to distinguish clearly between the nation and the state).
Went to bed and was up at 6am yesterday morning. Larry gave me a lift back to the Amtrak station, where the Yosemite bus arrived shortly afterwards and took me all the way into the park, a drive of three hours or so.(I took some pictures and should have them uploaded into 'Images' within an hour or two of this post.) It was Saturday, so the park was fairly full of tourists, so I contented myself with just meandering around and picking up some provisions and then got a bus out to my hostel, which is actually on the periphery of the park, an hour's bus ride from the Valley. But the bus is only $6 each way, and to stay in the Valley itself would be very expensive.This hostel is only $20 per night.
Before I forget - I can't seem to get any mobile coverage in Yosemite at all. In the event of any real emergencies, this is the Yosemite Bug Hostel and I'm checked in under my real name!
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| Yosemite, and a Stella |
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| Yosemite Falls |
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| on the Greyhound out of Vegas, through the Mojave desert |
