Matt's version of the trip across the US

I copied this from Matt nolan's Blog site http://mattnolan.blogspot.com/

The Road Trip Home - Yosemite

Sept 15, the day the year of the Ranch ended. Harris and I loaded up the last of our stuff into his volvo, and the journey that took me out of corporate America to the remote Northern California Mountains into the simple life of small town America was now taking me back home. We stuffed the volvo to the brink - literally there was no more room at all. When we left we both had eBay boxes in our laps and for the first 1000 miles the person in the passenger seat had to hold the food box in his lap. Our trip wasn't exactly a straight shot, in fact our first stop was directly below us in California - Yosemite.

We got there the morning of the 16th after a day of driving before, and went into the valley to check out the views from inside the heart of Yosemite. The place was a zoo though, with tons of old people and foreign people all over the place. It was like an outdoor disneyland, with people getting driven around on huge open bus vehicles for tours, and taking millions of pictures of some random stuff. Harris and I decided the only real way for us to experience the beauty was to get away from the crowds and do some hikes. Our first stop was Sentinal Dome, with a 360 degree view of the valley, and then we hiked over to Taft point where an immense dropoff cliff gave us some great views of El Capitan, the famous cliff across the valley. You could walk right up to the edge of these cliffs and look over - views that make your knees weak. In all we did around 5 miles of hiking.




We camped that night and the next morning started early to avoid the crowds in the valley. We hiked up to lower and upper Yosemite falls for some more amazing views. This time we were on the other side of the valley, so we could look across at where we had stood the other day.


There were also some incredible views of Half Dome. At the top we ventured down off the path to where the exact point where the river flows over the cliff to form the waterfall. The water was down, so we could walk around there, where we found this crystal clear pool that was deep enough to jump in, so of course I had to. I stripped down into my polypro boxers and jumped in.

As soon as I hit the water, my whole body siezed up from the freezing cold and I immediately began swimming to the nearest bank to climb out. I was also screaming like crazy...which drew the only other hikers in the area as spectators. There I stood soaking and shivering in my boxers..."I'm OK." We spent a lot of time taking in the views, praying, and enjoying the majesty that we were towering above. I could have spent days up there.

Then we busted it back down to head on to our next destination. We hiked around 10 miles round trip, and pretty fast without taking in too much water, which proved to be trouble since that night we both got dehydrated and woke up the next morning with what I'd call a hiking hangover. Although I am suspicious of that Quizno's steak sandwich...beware sandwich lovers.