deralte | Round the West

Day 29 - Since our budget hotel had no breakfast (and instead bestowed a possible bed bug bite on me. gah.), we ate at a lovely little bakery round the corner. From there, it was a five minute drive to the Winchester Mystery House. I've been wanting to go to this place for years, ever since I saw a documentary on the place. For those of you who don't know about it, Mrs. Winchester the wife of the famous Winchester family who made all those rifles, went a bit insane in her later years and, so the story goes, believed that the ghosts of those killed by the Winchester rifle demanded she keep adding on to her house continuously to appease them. She held seances in her house in a room with a door that opens out onto the kitchen sink below. There are stairways going to cielings, doors which open on closets big enough to fit one suit in, cupboards that could contain and inch of storage space, and ones that open onto an entire wing of the house. There's a door that leads to nowhere, and the entire front section of the house was closed off after the earthquake in the early 1900s because Mrs. Winchester believed the ghosts had shown their disapproval. While she lived, they built 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. She had several entertaining rooms, but no one came to visit, and in fact, no one was allowed through the front door - she even turned the president away. It's a pretty fascinating house to explore in their mansion tour with beautiful, if weird designs. She was obsessed with the number 13 and spider webs and daisies so they show up in strange motifs all through the house. We opted for the behind the scenes tour as well which took us into the outer buildings and into the basement of the house - probably not worth the money all things considered, but still pretty interesting. The rest of our day was spent driving to Mariposa, a small town outside Yosemite park. It's not the best place to stay and our Best Western was the worst of the trip - I had to get my internet from the hotel across the street and up the hill (don't ask me why that worked and our hotel's didn't). It had a bad breakfast too, though I liked the beds.

Day 30 - Although we slept late, I was still quite sleepy driving into Yosemite and Dad was in a grumpy mood so we both did not approach the park with our usual reverence for nature's beauty. This wasn't helped by the fact that despite the cold and the time of year, the park was still teaming with tourists. I shudder to think what it's like at the height of summer. The road into the park is nothing special though it did go by (yet another) Bear Creek and once you got into the park, it was quite nice except for the traffic and people driving far too fast. You couldn't pull over anywhere because either people had parked to go hiking or you were risking your life getting out of the driver's side of the car. It's probably a good thing I was driving though since I a) like twisty roads and b) keep my temper very well when others are assholes though I can be pushed to my limit as was shown today when we were driving out of the park. I was tailgated by this woman who not only kept within three feet of me for well over a half hour going down windy, steep roads that required you to keep around or below the speed limit to drive safely, but also had on her bright lights to annoy and blind me. I responded by continuing to drive the speed limit (or below for the turns) and not responding to her bullying like she wished me to, namely, pull over to let her pass. There are no passing lanes on 41 going south out of the park so I had her behind me for a very long time, and I got to watch her cursing me when I slowed down to 20 in the 20mph zones. She eventually got fed up and passed over the double yellow lines in a 20mph zone *L* What lesson have we learnt from this children? Don't piss off New Jersey drivers.

Anyway, we parked in the main parking and walked the half a mile to the visitor centre (wtf?), bought a pin for my collection, gazed at the dry Yosemite falls, bought lunch and went back to our car. The chicken salad croissant and apple slices with caramel cream dip were the best food I've had in a national park so far (possibly excepting the expensive dinner at Old Faithful Snow Lodge in Yellowstone). My theory is that Californians won't stand for the crappy food you get in other parks. We then decided to do a quick loop around the rest of the valley. By parking at the other village, Curry, we were able to walk out into a wide field that had panoramic views of the mountains on all sides of us. Our need to take pictures satisfied, we made our way out of the park, stopping to view the tiny trickle going over Bridalveil falls, and then stopping for a beautiful view of the whole valley on our way out. We weren't all that impressed by Yosemite honestly. Yes, it would have been gorgeous when the falls were wet, but even so, I don't think it was worth the hassle of all the tourists and the traffic to see those few things. Sauron-chan did learn the peril of feeding bears though.

We stopped in Bakersfield for the evening, eating at IHOP and doing laundry (so almost like home). We're off to Los Angeles tomorrow.