the long haul - day 5
This post is part 3 of the "dv-2006-09" series:
the long haul - day 5
Today was a very long & tiring day. We left Death Valley just before 7AM for the drive out to Sequoia National Park. This meant that we were effectively making a huge circle, as we drove around the southern end of the Sierras, first west on CA-190, then south on US-395, then a large chunk west on CA-178, then north on CA-99, and finally east into the park on CA-198. The drive went fairly smoothly until we got to the park.
CA-178 is actually really beautiful & scenic route, first passing through a rather large Joshua Tree forest, then a lush river valley at the southern end of the Sequoia National Forest. The last bits going through Bakersfield weren't too great, but overall, I wouldn't mind driving it again sometime.
I made a really stupid mistake and decided to drive out to Mineral King, the southern-most road in the park. This road is notorious for having one of the highest concentrations of horsehoe curves & switchbacks per mile of any road in the US. I read somewhere that someone counted the number, and it was something like 500. The road itself is 25 miles long, yet it feels so much longer. It took roughly an hour to drive the 25 miles, and quite honestly it wasn't worth it at all. I'm not entirely sure why, but the park service has made virtually no effort to make the Mineral King area user friendly. Sure, I understand that parks shouldn't be convenient, but this was quite a bit less than convenient. There are no trailhead signs (that I could find), there's basically no signs anywhere identifying any points of interest, or anything at all. In fact, it wasn't even clear that I had reached Mineral King, other than the fact that the road unceremoniously ends with a giant 'NO PARKING' sign. Part of the misery of driving the road was that I got some fairly severe motion sickness from being literally swung side to side repeatedly at every switchback & horseshoe curve. Oh, and on top of this, the road is in poor condition. Its mostly paved (there's this odd dirt section about 22 miles in, as if someone forgot to pave it), but its washboarded, rutted, uneven, buckling, pot-holed, and quite often not wide enough for more than 1 vehicle to drive at a time, even though its a two-way road. And one other thing. Nearly the entire length of the road is a sheer drop off into the canyon, several hundred feet, below on one side. So if you screw up (drive too close to the edge, lose control on a switchback, lose control on the washboard, swerve to avoid oncoming traffic, etc), you will go off the cliff. I will admit that the scenery was quite pretty, with the standard Alpine surroundings (tall granite peaks, cold mountain streams, lots of pine trees), but it wasn't worth an hour of torture to get there (not to mention another hour to get back to CA-198). Once we got there, I figured that I needed to decompress my head before going back, so David & I went on a few short walks. I was actually trying to find two separate short, 'easy' hiking trails, but since nothing was labeled anywhere, I found nothing. We ended up walking up the road a bit and just looking at assorted scenery, then driving down to the end, walking down to the river. David ran his fingers through the very cold water, and was amused. We drove back a bit, hiked down to the river again, where David pretended that he was fishing by dipping this long tree branch into the water. After that, it was back in the car for the arduous journey back to civilization.
At this point it was nearly 3PM, and I figured we had an hour on the mineral king road, plus roughly another hour driving up into the park to our hotel, Wuksachi Lodge. It turned out that my estimate was both right & wrong. Due to some road construction inside the park, the road was closed to one lane of traffic, and they were only allow it through once an hour. We ended up sitting for nearly 30 minutes. I did spot a woodpecker attacking a tree, and got a few nice pictures. I also tried to call Denise for the first time since Friday evening, and got decent cell phone reception only to end up learning that she was out grocery shopping.
After the construction delay we came around a bend in the road to find all these cars just sitting in the road with people standing around madly pointing & taking pictures. I figured there had to be some kind of animal nearby, and as it turned out there were 2 bear cubs in a tree. One was easily a few hundred feet up near the top, and was barely visible. The 2nd was probably just 85ft up, and was slowing making his way back down. I got a few decent pictures, and David was so excited to see a bear. I think this was easily the highlight of his day. Unsurprisingly, the bear ended up wandering into the woods, away from the cars, and we continued driving, and got to the hotel just after 5pm.
I hauled our stuff up to the room (which seems quite nice), and prepared for dinner, only to find out that there's only one open restaurant within an hour's drive (part of the hotel), and it was booked up until 8:15PM(!). Beyond being irritated, I was frazzled from the long day, and unsure how David was going to last that late without dinner. On top of that i still needed to figure out lunch for the next day, plus I wanted some time to relax, and all of this was going to hell fast. I decided to drive up to the nearest market (which was about 25 miles north) to get some sandwiches for lunch plus gas, and then drove all the way back. I was hoping to call Denise, but the cell phone signal was complete crap. I found that I could get 1 bar if I stood on a bench, and managed to talk to Denise for a few minutes before the call dropped out completely, and I couldn't get a signal any longer (I don't understand how this is possible if I hadn't physically moved, but whatever). While walking back to the hotel, we spotted a relatively large deer (it had fairly sizable antlers) just standing perhaps 80 feet from our hotel room, munching on some shrubs. It didn't seem to be the least bit frightened by people, and David was again super-excited.
I managed to keep David reasonably sane & entertained, and we finally went to dinner. One thing about this hotel is that they seem to have gone out of there way to avoid light pollution at night, which means that the grounds are nearly completely pitch black. I made a wrong turn coming out of the parking lot going to the restaurant for dinner, and ended up having to make a u-turn. Then we were walking in the dark from the parking lot to the restaurant. One good thing was that we saw a huge number of stars.
All throughout the driving ordeals, David was incredibly well behaved. Not once did he complain. I'm incredibly proud of him, as I know I was feeling pretty crappy after mineral king, and just all around exhausted & frustrated after the construction delay. I did make a 5:45PM dinner reservation for tomorrow night, so that we'll hopefully have some sanity.
This post is part 3 of the "dv-2006-09" series: