Days 4, 5 & 6: Berkeley, Napa and Two Days in Yosemite

So, great Reader, there’s be a hiatus.  It’s not that I haven’t had time, though that’s part of it (the card game last night interfered with writing & Monday was a late night), but the bigger problem is WiFi/cell service!

We spent the last two nights at a cabin “in” Yosemite National Park.  “In” because technically the park border is like a quarter mile away.  But it’s a “cabin,” in the middle of mostly nowhere and there’s no real wifi in the cabin and no cell service – the front desk warned you might pick up a call on Verizon, but it would drop, mostly likely.  Think “can you hear me now.”  And the place with the strongest wifi, the rec center, last night had so many people on it that the young woman next to me last night and I were competing to see who lost the white screen first.  We both lost. :)

So, a quick (my companions laugh out loud at my definition of the term) recap of the last three days.

Monday we visited Berkeley.  We started with brunch, at a place near campus called the Elmwood Café.  We all had the waffle with blueberries, lemon curd, and maple syrup.  The picture seems to have disappeared. 

Then to campus, which isn’t as impressive as Stanford (we all agreed).  Passhe schools have a way to go, but it’s very tight in the city, with a view at times of the bay, but jumbled, tight, and not as pretty in architecture or space as the rich private school to the south.

Then to Napa.  We started at Gloria Ferrer, “famed” for their Spanish style sparkling wine.  Michael had the mixed tasting – their Chardonnay and Pinot with two sparklings.  There’s a pic.

HERE’S THE FIRST LINK

Then to Domaine Carneros, whose Brut Rose we had at Waterbar on Friday.  We added a cheese and charcuterie plate. 

Michael and Barb were pretty tapped by now.  Michael kept telling people he was “three sheets in the wind.”

After the third place, where he told the server he was done, then tasted both Karen’s red flight and Barb’s wine flight, he told the guy “Now I’m six sheets in the wind.”

The third place was Pine Ridge.  They had a Chenin blanc that both women liked and bought.  It was that wine that took us there our first time and it was good on return.

Then a fourth place, Raymond’s.  Turns out no one was really up to tasting, and, by the time Karen was ready, the tasting room was closed! 

We had early dinner reservations in Yountville (in the Napa Valley), at a place we ate two years ago.  It was another excellent meal – food porn on the link, with Barb and Karen having the house specialty short rib, Michael a steak, and Karen opened the bottle of Merlot (not fucking Merlot!) from Raymonds.  Dessert was raspberry sorbet and I had dark chocolate gelato == because I thought I’d had enough ice cream the last couple of days.

Then the three hour and twenty minute drive into the mountains and the cabin.

How rustic is it? Well, it has running water and electricity.  No air conditioning, and it’s been in the mid 80s.  But it’s a dry heat. Right? :)

Then yesterday we got around and headed off to the horse stable.  Due to the fact I couldn’t make weight restriction (they made me keep on my shoes), we couldn’t go.  Adjustment to schedule. 

Yosemite is approx 1,200 sq miles.  There is no real road from north to south.  State road 120 runs through the center east to west, through the mountains.  All the roads are windy, at most 35 mph, and two lane.  So, you don’t move quickly. 

Our first goal was the largest falls in North America, Yosemite Falls.  It took us about an hour, with scenic stops, to get there from the stable.  Here’s my best picture of both the upper and lower falls.  It falls like 5,600 feet.  !!!  You’ll see a pic of Karen and I (see the bear) at the base of the lower falls.  Yes, you get damp standing there.

Then we drove more than halfway, Michael did all the driving (more on that later?), across 120, and those pics are of the mountains, the tallest seems to be Mt Hoffman at over 10.000 feet.  There was much snow on the ground.  We ended at Tenaya Lake, where “my guide” shows off “our” rainbow trout, fresh caught. :). Then back to the cabin.  Michael and I went in the pool (okay he went into the hot tub, which was NOT a time machine – except for his joints) & then we had the poolside BBQ for dinner – spare ribs, salmon, andouille sausage and two kinds of salad.  The pool is right next to our cabin. 

Then back to the cabin (no TV, no internet, remember) and the Slavins learned to play euchre.  They caught on quickly.  Michael and Karen won in the third game, 10-8.  Karen showed them some of her family’s slight of hand at cards…just sayin’, how did she keep turning up a jack??!?!?

Then today.  First, both couples had to find enough cell service – Michael ended up on the land line – so we could change where we stayed tonight.  From Ridgway (near the desert) to Fresno, a two plus hour ride from Yosemite. 

Then to Hetchy Hetch reservoir, which was “2 miles” from the cabin.  Two turned into more like ten, none of it fast.  The pictures from there are captioned.

This reservoir is the water source for San Francisco.  The sign there tells you that it feeds into  SF, 165 miles away, all without pumps – it’s all done by gravity.  It seems amazing.  There were also two waterfalls.

Then off to the Yosemite Lodge, where we had a quick lunch, then got on a bus to Glacier Point.  Glacier Point is the spot of some iconic photos – google them – one of the more famous has Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir standing on the rock there, overlooking the massive rocks you’ll see in my pictures. 

It was a four-hour tour.  Michael kept singing the Gilligan Song (“three hour tour…three hour tour”).   The guide’s name was Bill and he talked incessantly (if informationally) the WHOLE way.   We learned about the trees, the history of the park (it’s the oldest in the park system, in some ways) and more about Bill than I needed.

MY highlight – there’s a pick in this link – was a bear!!!  It was not far from the first campground we paid, not ten minutes into the trip!  He’s not a huge black bear (if you don’t know, they don’t have to be black), but he wasn’t more than 50 feet from the bus!  Rah rah.

Look at the LINK – the pictures are amazing.  Here’s one of the falls across the valley.

We were done at 5:30…and then rolled toward Fresno.

Dinner was at a Mediterranean restaurant.  See the pictures.  

In jokes:

One funny was our pulling into Gloria Ferrer’s and Michael asked “am I parking?” I said “do you think they have drive through tastings?”  He thought it was both funny and a clever idea.

Barb started us Sunday with a rude joke – the punch line is I’m remembering Mabel – and I responded with a bro-law Butch classic that ends with “the dog didn’t want to go either.”  Somehow the dog has become a yak (there was this place in Berkeley…) and

There have been thousands of jokes, mostly by me, playing off Michael’s advanced age (he’s 2 years older than I am) AND his memory loss.  I don’t remember why.  He is very happy about this…and has gotten to the point of snorting at either suggestion (you know, for instance, he gets the senior passport discount in national parks? :))

And, back to the bear tee shirt as part of the meme, it has long been suggested that Michael was our bear fodder here.  Though I’ve seen a yellow-bellied marmot (yes, that’s what they are called) and a fox (I have no picture of marmot, a black picture in the night of the fox).  So, there’ve been many suggestions about seeing bears, running from bears, and the signs have been ubiquitous “speeding kills bears” (Barb read aloud that cars killed 15 bears in the park last year!). That speeding might kill deer, people, etc…no signs.  But speeding kills bears.  Remember.

At the ranger station into Hetchy Hetch, he handed me a plastic parking pass and put it in the front windshield and said “it has to be back by 9 tonight.”  I said “we have to come back here?”  “Fella,” he says (yes, “fella”) there’s only one way in.”

When I came back, I said to the ranger (not the same one), I couldn’t find another way out.  He said, “You’d need a hot air balloon…got one in the back?”  Barb rolls down her window and quips “no balloon, but he’s got plenty of hot air.”  So funny.

To finish the day, Michael ran over the curb in the parking garage at the hotel, with a full-fledge “ka-thump”!  I pointed out he did it, but there was no coffee to be spilt!  Ha ha.