California Adventures of the Yosemite and Bay Area

Last week we took a train into San Francisco for the weekend and earlier that week (on Tuesday to be specific) we spent the day hiking to the top of Yosemite Falls.  It was a super week!  In between adventures we worked hard in the gardens.  We set up the 1st stage of our soon-to-be-elaborate drip irrigation system and began construction on raising the 38 raised beds another board height.  This, in conjunction with deterring critters from just walking right into the beds (which were previously at ground level) also allowed us to amend the soil with 3 wheelbarrow loads of manure and 3 loads of mushroom compost.  This turned out to be a rather large project (we are still not finished as of the writing of this post) but luckily we had the help of Caesar, one of the seasonal workers, for some of the construction process.  We've also been watering our seedlings, which after a brief attack by an unknown predator(s) are now looking good and are hopefully in the clear.

We had worked the previous Sunday so that we could take Tuesday off to head into Yosemite.  Our friend Alex also had the day off so we went with him.  We were going to take the van but it was smoking from the muffler area and the engine was shaking around more than usual so we sidelined it and took Alex's car.  The van is currently in the good hands of a local mechanic named Luke who used to work for GoWesty.  We're very happy to have found him and he's already diagnosed the smoking as a slight power steering fluid leak.  He's going to upgrade our headlights for us (finally!) and the Zinger should be back in action for our next Yosemite trip.  Anyways...

After Alex broke into his house to retrieve his car keys we were on our way.  The road to Yosemite is winding and scenic.  As we followed along the Merced river (which appeared to be flowing uphill at times...) we joked about how they could film a car commercial on this stretch of road and Alex informed us that a few weeks prior they did indeed have a portion of the road closed off for a car commercial.  We arrived at the park to find a decent amount of parking spaces.  We had came on a Tuesday before the real tourist season had begun but there were still quite a few people on the trail.  We can only imagine how crowded this place must get in the height of the season!  Our challenge for the day was to hike to the top of Yosemite Falls, a 7 mile roundtrip hike filled with steep switchbacks and breathtaking views.  We saw huge trees growing from the rock cliffs, birds of prey circling the skies, hikers young and old, and of course the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls.

From looking at the top of the falls from the parking lot we could feel the excitement in the air!  The falls are the tallest in North America and we ended up scaling almost 2,500 vertical feet to reach the top.  Out of the three of us, Kim looked the most like a normal hiker.  Curt had worn his work jeans and carried our 'water bottle' aka a gallon jug of water (which turned out to be a pretty good amount of water for the day) and then there was Alex, who appeared to be dressed as if he were about to walk down the street to a cafe for a cup of coffee.  He had way too many clothes on for a strenuous full day hike and had brought more alcohol than water.  But he had just turned 21 and was apparently in training for his trip to Peru where they drink lots of alcohol and go on strenuous hikes at much higher altitudes...

We were quite the scene compared to pretty much everyone else we saw on the trail that day!  After several hours of amazing hiking we made it to the top and enjoyed a nice bagged lunch courtesy of the Yosemite Bug.  Eating a BLT on top of Yosemite Falls was probably one of the best places anyone's ever eaten a BLT...  After lounging around the top for a while we made our way back down.  Going downhill looking out into the valley was great!  We caught the sunset and made it back to the bug in time for dinner- what a day!

Our next adventure came a mere 3 days later when we wrapped up work on Friday and took a bus/train/bus combo into San Francisco.  Because we were 'employees' of the Yosemite Bug Hostel we got hooked up with a complimentary 2 night stay in the Downtown Hostel (San Fran has 3 hostels in the downtown area!)  The bus picked us up right outside the Bug and took us into Merced where we caught a train into Emryville and then another bus that dropped us off right near the hostel.  We had a brief scare when we were waiting for the train to pick us up.  The train was running late so we decided to call the hostel and see what time they stopped taking check-ins.  Luckily it was 2AM but when we pulled out our confirmation papers we realized the dates were for the wrong weekend!  We say brief scare because everything got sorted out pretty easily.  They changed the dates for us and put us in their overflow room, which was way better than the alternative of putting us in male and female shared dorm rooms.  Hostels are great!  The next day we made the excellent decision to go full-on tourist and pay the money to get day passes on an open-top, double decker bus that ran all through the city.

We could hop on and off at our convenience and could listen to interesting facts about the city as we rode around.  It was pretty fun and definitely allowed us to see way more of the city than we otherwise would have.  Unfortunately we didn't realize the details of the on-and-off system right away and ended up missing the Haight/Ashbury stop (apparently no one else wanted to get off there?)  We did end up taking the bus driver's advice and hopped off at the Golden Gate Bridge to walk across which was really cool!

 We cruised through the city learning all sorts of trivia and historical stuff.  Just riding on top of a convertible double decker bus was entertainment in itself.  When we got hungry for lunch we hopped off in China town and found little restaurant where no one seemed to speak English.  China town is pretty overwhelming, we're sure we could have found a better place to eat but we were kind of afraid of getting lost.  The food ended up being pretty good albeit very similar to American-Chinese food only more expensive.

We hopped back on the bus and went past the Fisherman's Wharf district but decided to skip a walk through because it looked too crowded and we wanted to get some rest in for our nighttime event, a Dark Star Orchestra concert at the Great American Music Hall, conveniently located several blocks from our hostel.  For those who don't know and/or are interested, DSO is the biggest and best Grateful Dead cover band in the land, known for recreating actual Grateful Dead performances song for song.  We were getting to catch the end of a three night run at the Great American Music Hall, a famous venue that the Dead had played back in the day.

The show was sold out and we were excited as soon as we walked in.  The venue was really cool and not too big and the band had only one drum set on stage which according to Curt meant that they'd be playing something from '71-'74 and it was guaranteed to be a good show (no offense Mickey).  The show was in fact incredible and we had an amazing night dancing and singing and making friends, we even met Curt's West Coast identical twin- wish we had a picture of that!

Back at the Bug things have settled down, we're still working on the same types of projects and nothing too exciting has happened which is fine by us.  The nights are still cold but the days are getting hotter and hotter, next week is supposed to be upper 80's.  Luckily we should have most of the labor intensive work wrapped up in a few days and then we can work on finishing our drip irrigation system and start planting!  We'll keep you posted... until then check out some more pictures from our adventures!