Yosemite National Park, California

After San Francisco, we drove south toward Monterey for lunch, before heading east to Yosemite National Park.


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Monterey is a nice coastal town, in a similar way to Dun Laoghaire, with a Fisherman's Wharf (pier with shops on) and a yachting harbour. We only stayed long enough for a sandwich above the waves, before we were chased east by some serious looking weather.

We crossed big country on some small roads, passing nut and fruit plantations, and as we headed up into the hills, some meadow.


As we drew closer to our lodge (Tenaya Lodge, near Fish Camp, just outside the park) we stopped in Oakhurst for a quick hamburger - this was our first Carls Jr, and what a burger! Best fast food type burger I've had, hands down. Anyway, I was glad we had this snack. As the road snaked its way up towards Fish Camp, reasonably steep drop-offs protected only by trees on the downhill side, the amount of snow and ice still around markedly increased.

Was I nervous? Well, I was hoping we weren't driving into somewhere that we'd be unable to drive out of 3 days later because of snow, and there was more ice on the road than I expected, so it was a little tense. We got up without snow chains, thankfully!

And Tenaya lodge is a lovely spot to arrive at, with braziers burning outside the front door, and a huge lobby inside. We got our keys to our apartment, and made our way there. Some of the snow had stuck.



So that was nice - about 0 degrees in the evening, dropping as it got later. There was a nice electric fire in the room though, so it was pretty cosy. We had been following the news a little bit on our trip, and were wary that that US Federal Government were potentially closing down because of a stalemate over budget. With that in mind, and assured the Park would be open on Saturday anyway, we booked 2 seats on a bus tour.

Boy was I glad! I could enjoy the scenery, I wasn't driving, and there was plenty of snow and ice on the roads so the rangers were sticky on having snow chains fitted (we of course in a rental car, didn't have such things!). We had a nice day touring all the spots in the park, stopping for the occasional photo op,

El Capitan.

and picnic lunch in the valley floor (by Yosemite falls, but more on that later). A couple of snow showers fell just to upset the nerves (were we being snowed in!!!!!???) but other than that the sun shone all day.



The park is stunning. The scenery, the rocks, the mountains are just amazing, and really very imposing.



You could spend weeks in here photographing the place, it's hard to get a bad one (though I managed, I can assure you!) Sometimes disappointing because there is nothing to give you scale, but these are just a couple of the photographs. More to be shared later!




There are a few more images at my pix.ie album, here.

The Diesel Revolution?

I saw, on the way home this evening, fuel prices advertised at a fuel station of all prices. Interestingly, diesel was 4c per litre more expensive than petrol, at 116.9 and 112.9 cents/litre for diesel and petrol respectively. I expect this is a general trend which we will see over the coming months, as more and more of us choose diesel cars (thanks to improved performance, cleanliness and quietude).

Will it become less economically superior to drive a diesel? Let's see!

Interesting.

Latvian Visit, Part the second, of the second visit. (incorporating a discussion of the Crocodile)

The next day, we went to Western Latvia. Primarily, the purpose of this trip was to see the statue of the crocodile in Dundaga. Yes, I know you're curious, and the legend goeth thusly. A man named Blumenthal from Latvia is regarded as one of the prototypes on which Crocodile Dundee is based - A man who left Latvia in 1945 for Australia and went on to become one of the most famous crocodile hunters (obviously based on his experience with Latvian crocs......?) in Australia.

That was pretty much it for Dundaga, there's a nice looking castle there, but we had a bit of a drive ahead of us so we made tracks after a traditional picnic of bread and cheese. And orange juice. We took a local road (!) across country and became very adept at avoiding potholes.....actually we didn't. That was impossible! We had to take turns driving here due to the tiring nature of being pounded by potholes. Occasional sections of slush and ice added to the drama. Any queries in relation to the state of Irish roads should in future be referred here for comparison.

We arrived in Kuldiga a little later that afternoon and parked up for a while. A church we wanted to see was closed unfortunately, so we just wandered around. The river through Kuldiga was still frozen, and there was a dramatic flow through, so I didn't push himself in, tempted as he was by the fact that the ice looked remarkably like potato au gratin. That meant that the widest (possibly, but also amongst the smallest at about 1.5m high!) waterfall in Europe was not visible. We had a ridiculously cheap coffee and dessert here before making our way back along fog-bound roads to Riga.

The following day we took a shorter trip to the south of the country, and visited Rundales palace. This was the home of the dukes of Courland (follow through the link for details). This is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Latvia and rightfully so, as the decoration here is incredibly ornate and intricate - restored of course if I'm correct, but impressive nonetheless. 2 tasty omelettes and a drink each, and lunch came to a ridiculously low price of about €4 or so.

As this was a shorter day, given the driving extremes encountered on Saturday, we got back to Riga fairly early for dinner. I'm not sure when we saw these churches, but I'll leave you to marvel at their prettiness before finishing my reporting later this week...!

The War of the Worlds

On CD, quite a good listen too. But I was shocked to read in the sleeve notes that Thin Lizzy are a "British Band". Why can't people do any research before writing things that they're going to sell? Whatever about me being wrong occasionally (it's happened folks), if you're selling sleeve notes they should be correct.

The fog lifted overnight, it's nice to be able to drive easier again, and it actually was a little surreal to be able to see in front again! It was very heavy fog here for about 3 days, maybe 100m visibility or so, which made for tough driving conditions.

Finishing work tomorrow, and looking forward to the break.