National Parks

Death Valley

From Las Vegas we drove directly to Death Valley, and stayed one night at the Furnace Creek Ranch. Death Valley was everything we had expected. A vast desert with majestic scenery, hot, arid and barren, with almost unbearable heat radiating from the rocky ground. Much of the valley is well below sea level. Peter loved the area, Michèle was uneasy with the desolation. But there can be no denying its stark beauty. The changing colours of the rocks, the white of the salt flats, the brilliant blue of the sky.

But there is life even in these very harsh conditions. Brilliant desert flowers, particularly in Spring. Salt water creeks teeming with pupfish and insects, and birds feeding on them. Not somewhere to stay for any length of time, but well worth the visit.

Sequoia National Park

Suddenly the weather changed, From the bright sun and blue skies of the desert, Sequoia National Park was grey and wet. We found it extraordinary that there could be such extremes of weather so close together. But of course the Sequoia National Park is high up in the Sierra Nevada. We spent one day looking at the giant sequoia trees. They are as big as the kauri trees we saw in New Zealand, and quite as imposing. But Peter still prefers the kauris: the timber from sequoias is too brittle to be used in cabinet making, whereas Kauri wood makes the most exquisite furniture. Apparently the General Sherman Tree is the largest tree in the world; not the tallest (that’s a redwood), not the greatest in girth (that’s a kauri), but the greatest total volume of wood.

Had the weather been kinder, we might have stayed a little longer to walk in the park. Instead we went back to our luxurious room at the Marriott Hotel in Visalia, where we had booked two nights at a knock-down rate. It was Michèle’s birthday, so we went out for a good meal at an Italian restaurant. The waitress just happened to be an opera singer, and every now and then she delighted the diners by bursting forth into an aria. She sang remarkably well, and, in due course, sang Happy Birthday in Italian for Michèle. We are now firmly of the opinion that more waitresses should also be opera singers; it makes a good combination of talents.

Yosemite National Park

We had three nights booked at the Narrow Gauge Inn, just outside the boundary of the park. A curious place of rapidly fading elegance. Dark, damp and a little smelly. The dining room festooned with stuffed animals. There was no sound insulation, so we could hear whatever was going on in adjoining rooms. And the beds creaked badly, The shower delivered water at whatever temperature it felt appropriate. However, the food was excellent.

Still high in the Sierra Nevada, it was gloomy and raining for our first two days in the park, although we did have some sun on the third and final day. The Yosemite Valley and the surrounding countryside are quite majestic, and in this season the air is filled with the roar of waterfalls. We were just a couple of weeks too early in the season for some of the park’s best features. The Spring flowers were not yet in full bloom. The road to Glacier Point (one of the most spectacular panoramas) was still closed for snow. But the scenery was still stunning: the granite cliffs shaped by glaciation, the waterfalls, the streams and overflowing meadows, the pine forests. Water was everywhere.

We spent much of the time walking. We also had a guided tour of the Ahwahnee Hotel, a treasure of art-deco interior design. However, a far greater treasure for Peter was the abundance of morilles (wild morel mushrooms) in the hotel grounds. No one collects them or even recognises them for what they are: the most sought-after fungi in the forest. What a waste!

There were signs everywhere saying “Be Bear Aware”. To our great disappointment we did not see any. But we saw plenty of deer, squirrels and birds.

Conclusion

Three parks with very different characters, each one stunning in its own way. But sunshine makes all the difference in the mountains, as we discovered on the morning we left.

Next stop San Francisco via Carmel-by-the-Sea, just to drop in on my mate Clint.