Merced to Yosemite NP (Monday 15 August)

Today has been a distressing day and easily the worst of my time while travelling. I get to the campground and within hours of setting up and going for a walk, all of the food and some camping gear that I had prepared for six days of hiking in the national park was stolen…gone…unbelievable…UN-bloody believable.

This place is crazy. There are a billion people here. The volume of tourists is overwhelming to me. There are traffic jams and lining up is standard procedure for everything it seems. To get a campsite was a bit of a triumph in the first place as I got the very last spot but to lose all my food and some gear is a setback. This is the end of my multi-day hiking ambitions here. The park rangers said this is very unusual to happen but I wonder. There is talk of ‘transients’ coming through and taking advantage. One Ranger explained to me ‘You’re a rich Aussie (news to me, I think you have me mixed up with somebody else), just restock and get on with it’! I spend a miserable night contemplating my next move. It is so hard to organise anything here unless you have booked well ahead. To turn up and try and do things means lining up and hoping for the best. To get a permit (and you need permits for everything here. ‘Do I need a permit to crap?’ They were not amused. The staff are tired and humourless). The system is complex. You need to book permits and then you need to book campsites on the trails. And you have to line up from when the doors open! Anyway, none of that matters for me now. I will camp in the grounds and do day walks. The landscape here is extraordinary, but the effort to do what you want is also extraordinary. I’m so soured by the experience I have forgone any ideas of visiting other national parks in the US.

When you set up camp you are warned to put all food stuffs into animal proof metal boxes. I did this as soon as I found my spot, went for a walk, had a snooze and when I went to make myself a cup of tea, my designated food box was completely empty. The park rangers can do nothing.

My campmates are a family from not far away, Bakersville. Hue and is family enjoy camping and do it when they can. They are battlers and are real victims of the collapsing property market. Hue’s over $500,000 house he signed up for halved in value overnight, then he lost his high-paying job in the IT industry. His story is a sad one but they battle on and don’t forget the important things, quality time with the family. He has three beautiful young children. They generously offer me food but I decline. They are Chinese-Vietnamese and Hue used to go back to Vietnam each year and help his old community there on projects. He hasn’t been able to do that for a while. His problems have certainly put my problems in perspective!