A California Experience

It's cold outside and I've been having to go to work so there hasn't been much time for travling so I'm gonna tell you about my trip to California in 2004. There for a few years I spent a lot of time in various parts of California: Redding, Clearlake, Monterey and LA. In the summer of 2004 I had to go to LA for 3 months. On my days off I would get in the car and drive out of the city and go exploring. I went to all sorts of places but some stick in my head better than others. Yosemite is the best one. I actually didn't start out going to Yosemite..I just happened up on it. I headed north out of LA toward Death Valley on an early June morning. When I am at home in Mississippi I just get in the car and drive so that's what I did. Southern California is mostly desert and roads are limited and somewhere along the way I missed my turn and ended up in Independence, Ca. It is a small town lying between desert and mountains. I stopped for gas and a diet Coke. It is here that you get a glimpse of the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, Mount Whitney. Its elevation is 14,505 feet.

I continued north, mostly because the view was so spectacular. Suddenly there was a road sign for Yosemite. How could I pass it up? I couldn't. The place is beyond words, a jaw dropping experience.

Yosemite covers 1,189 square miles in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with sheer granite cliffs, waterfalls, Giant Sequoia Trees, lakes and wilderness. More than 3.5 million people visit each year. I was lucky, it was a weekday and the park was not busy.

John Muir was a naturalist and active in the preservation of Yosemite. In 1903, he convinced President Theodore Roosevelt the area needed federal protection and then in 1916 Yosemite was transferred to the National Park Service.

"No Temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite", "The grandest of all special temples of nature". John Muir