Yosemite Day 1 - The Valley

Today we departed our waypoint accommodation early in the morning to make our way to Yosemite National Park. During the 4.5h drive we saw the landscape change from desert to mountainous forest - it was quite interesting to see the subtle change, the landscape getting greener and greener, trees starting to pop up, until you're in a full blown forest.

With the forest environment also came the abundant squirrel population, many running across the road and some unfortunately didn't make it past our car. We also came across a young coyote, who leisurely strolled across the road whilst Simone hit the brakes in time to slow down enough.

We entered the park around 11am and after frequently stopping to take photos, we arrived at our destination, Yosemite Valley, about noon. By that time there were a lot of visitors in the park, and we grabbed some lunch from the deli before making our way on some hiking trails. We saw the lower Yosemite waterfall, saw all the major cliffs/mountains and we also watched an interesting documentary in the visitor's center.

The photos below really don't do the majestic mountains justice.

Towards the evening we made our way westward to our stay for the night, which I managed to arrage the day before. All accommodation within the park was fully booked, so the only place close enough to the park was a place called Yosemite Bug Rustic Mountain Resort. It got good reviews on the net and I managed to book a room in a cabin with a shared bathroom. Tomtom couldn't take us all the way due to the street numbers not matching, but it was easy to find, just on Hwy 140.

The resort is a large backpackers, with a mixture of cabins and tents. It actually looks worse than it is for someone not keen on totally roughing it. Our cabin is roomy enough, has a sofa, queen bed and a bunk bed. Everything is clean and there is an airconditioner. The bed is comfy and the adjacent bathroom, which is shared with the room next door, is clean and everything works as it should. The shower is actually quite nice, a strong water flow compared to some of the pissy little watersaving showers we had in some hotels. If the water doesn't press my skin in when it hits it's just not strong enough dammit!! So taking a shower here felt good.

We had dinner at the resort cafe, and their menu was small yet had a good variety of meals on there, about 8 I think. The cafe has a proper kitchen and everything is prepared fresh, no microwave in sight, which was a welcome surprise. All softdrinks (iced tea, lemonade, sports tea) are made fresh here and you can refill as often as you want. I had a thai salmon burger with peanut sauce and spinach, coleslaw on the side with a garden salad. It was very tasty and you could tell it was made fresh to order. They also grow their own produce here, so a lot of the veggies are home grown. Simone had a vegetarian lasagne with mushrooms and eggplant, garlic bread and garden salad on the side.

Tomorrow we are going back into Yosemite (our pass is good for 7 days) to do a longer hike in the morning before making our way to Lake Tahoe.

Las Vegas day 2 and trip to Tonopah

Our second day in Vegas included the much anticipated Penn & Teller show in the evening. During the day we checked out some location we had not seen the day before, including the MGM and the Bellagio amongst others. In Caesar's Palace shops we walked around and checked out the Atlantis fountain which contains a saltwater aquarium.

We also had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, which btw has a menu that is way too big. The menu is a book about 1cm thick. Simone had a giant milkshake to start with.

Hot spinach, artichoke and cheese dip, so good!

I had the chicken chipotle pasta, very yummy

Simone had the chicken quesadilla

and the Reeses peanut butter chocolate cake. We could not finish it.

The "garden" at the Bellagio. Very pretty.

 Chocolate fountain at Jean Philippe and various other sugary delights

A few photos from our walk in the evening

The Penn & Teller show was great, we had seats in the front row centre. When walking in you could see a pianist and Penn on the bass playing some jazzy tunes, and members of the audience were encouraged to inspect a wooden box and sign an envelope on stage. People were climbing into the box and giving it a good look over. The box always stayed in full view and was moved around on rollers by different audience members. Eventually and without leaving the view, when the show started Teller came out of the box! Amazing.

Unfortunately some of the tricks they did I had already seen on their various TV appearances, but they were still great. They did a lot of performances with audience members, the best was a little girl, maybe 10 years old, who was asked to help Teller with his water bowl trick. The expressions on her face were priceless, you could really see the sense of amazement and wonder in her eyes.

I even caught a prop (a lemon) they threw into the audience after a trick.

After the show both of them stayed in the foyer and we got photos and autographs. A great experience!

The next day we picked up the rental car and made our way to Tonopah, which is our waypoint before we get to Yosemite. The mountains looked like they were fake, like in the Truman Show. And driving through the desert sort of reminded us of WA :)

Alien Travel Center, obviously on the way to Area 51. We turned right before hitting that road.

 

Nobody on the road except us. 

We have now checked into our first low budget "save the money for better things" motel in Tonopah after checking out a few other motels in the area. $55 a night with free wifi. No frills, but clean as far as we can see. Tomorrow we are leaving early to drive to Yosemite.