angusmccoll

Hugh arranges to meet me at my hotel in Tulare. He has very generously offered to take me to the Sequoia NP. He takes his family there often and knows the area well. When he went to leave home his wife said to him ‘Well, will I see you tonight?’ ‘What do you mean? Do you think I’m going to run off with him and go backpacking around the countryside?’ was his reply. No, she thought I could be a murderer and I was going to do Hugh in! I must have made a great impression on her back at the Yosemite NP camping ground where I met them! Hugh tells me all this. He was a refuge of the Vietnam War, escaping by boat when he was 14 years old not knowing where he would end up. While held up in camps in the Phillipines, agents from various countries were there organising the next stage of their passage to their new home. Hugh could easily have ended up in Australia but the American agents were set up closest to where he was camped. ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘America’ was his reply. At 14 years of age he arrives in America and is adopted by a Lutheran family from Miniappalis and the rest is history. And now, here we are, our paths cross and he is being embarrassingly generous to me who comes from an incomparably softer background. He is a character and good value, and I won’t forget him. I will stay in touch.

Fortunately I find a campsite. It is busy here to but not as bad as Yosemite. We gave a but if a look around before Hugh heads back. We visit the General Sherman Tree, which is regarded as the worlds largest living tree in the volume of wood it carries. There are taller trees and there are wider trees but there are none more voluminous than the giant sequoias of the Sierra Nevardas. They only grow naturally in this high region. The General Sherman Tree is thought to be 2,300 years old! Can you imagine that? Its largest branch is seven meters in diameter.

Giant sequoias never die of old age. They just keep growing until they become to big for their shallow root system. For some specimens this can take thousands of years. They eventually fall over. What sort of DNA allows these trees to live endlessly? They can also resist fire and disease.

Giant Sequoias can grow to over 300 feet and they have been recorded at 3,200 years of age. The bark can be nearly a meter thick and the base can be over half a cricket pitch wide! And here you can walk through groves of them. You really need to be here to experience this. Their branches are unusual, they can be as thick as trees themselves. It is a unique looking tree in many ways.

I head for Tulare today. What for, it’s in the middle of nowhere? Hue, who I met at the Yosemite NP, has offered to take me to Kings Canyon NP where the giant sequoia’s hang out. These trees are the biggest trees in the world and some have been dated over 2,000 years old. I have wondered about these amazing plants since I was a wee lad flicking through library books in primary school. I remember a picture of a huge tree where cars could drive through. Apparently that tree has fallen over but is still there. I will see if i can find it. Tulare is on the way there for Hue.

The day starts with running errands with Larry. Every year they buy a bulk supply of peaches from a grower just out of town for preserving and making jam. My bus doesn’t leave for Tulare until the afternoon so I go along fir the drive. Larry takes me out past the new 5-year old University of California’s campus on the edge of Merced. It’s impressive and gas around 5,000 students at this time. The road takes us past an old disused airforce base. It knocked the town when they closed that down. Next door is a military aircraft museum with some classic old war planes dating back to World War II. There is a B52 bomber, which were used to carpet bomb the Vietnam Cong during the Vietnam War. And there is a B2 bomber spy plane, amazing. From there we pass through a failed housing development that stopped dead when the global financial crisis hit, then through acres of almond trees and other crops.

I catch the bus back to Merced and stay the night with Larry and Janice again. Larry is retired. He used to be in the printing business for many years until the owner took off with the funds and that was the end of his job. He became a handyman from then. Janice has worked in the hospital system for most of her life and still is involved. She manages programs at the local new hospital for high-school students to do community hours there. The students earn points for doing free community work, which then counts towards getting into college. Seems like a great system. Janice tells me some of these students will try all sorts of tricks to do as little as possible but she is on to them.

They live in a modest home in a pretty part of Merced. They have two sons who are truck drivers and a daughter who works in a bigger city close by. Merced is a bit depressed with unemployment running at 20%. Janice explains that gangs from LA and San Francisco extend their influence to as far as Merced and while they used to contain their activities to one part of town, they now cause mischief all over. But it is no worse here than Cairns. Our trouble-makers are just different.

I’m not the only boarder this time. There is a lady from southern France who admits to being more Spanish than French, ‘Madrid is my Capital, not Paris’. She has been traveling Route 61 in a hire car with a friend and is on her way home now. Tong is a young Chinese man, very tall and thin. His nickname is ‘root’ because of his design. He has been studying at a uni in Atlanta for the last two years and is on his way home to China. He is a keen photographer and carries two very heavy high-end Canon cameras with him. He has a Canon EOS 10D and 5D, which are serious cameras and he has adapted specialised non-Canon lenses for them. His photos are beautiful but lugging these heavy cameras around in his backpack can’t be easy. On his travels he needed to get from a town to the next, which was over 80 miles away. There wasn’t any public transport and he had no luck with hitching a ride so he bought a pushbike on the Internet and rode it in a day and a half with his backpack on his back and the cameras set up on the frame of the bike. His backside is still sore he says, but he got there. he was amazed that in those parts, petrol stations were often over 50 miles apart. I laughed and explained they can be I lot further apart than that in Australia. He doesn’t believe me.

A curious thing about the traffic in real America (not tourist areas) that I have noticed is that they are very curtious to pedestrians. Many times I have stopped on the side of a busy road in preparation for crossing and the cars stop. I don’t see that in Australia. Big pick-up trucks are king here. All the car-makers seem to have a model, even Toyota has one called ‘Tundra’. It is huge!

Feeling a bit sore from my walk to the top of Yosemite Falls so I plan an easier day today. The falls are a consequence of Yosemite Creek dropping off the edge of a 800 meter sheer granite cliff. Yosemite Creek, as explained previously, only works half of the year and is fueled purely from ice melt. An unusual snow year has Yosemite Creek still working, which is great for the tourists.

Today I do a short circuit trail up to Vernal Falls and the Mist Trail. The Mist Trail is so named because it is constantly wet from the spray of Vernal Falls. It is beautiful and green but the many steps are steep and constantly wet. This doesn’t stop the ‘billions’ of tourists here from attempting it. I’m still trying to cope with the volume of tourists here. The stairs are clogged with people going up and down to the falls. I feel so uncomfortable amongst all these people but this is what the iconic national parks in America are like at this time of year I am told. Anyway I try and see the wonder of Yosemite beyond the mass-human element. You can escape many of them by taking the steeper trails. Verana Falls are impressive and there is a look-out area right at the edge of the falls where I fight for space amongst the masses.

I get back to the camp and the English climbers haven’t had a great day. They did a climb that wasn’t quite as interesting as they were told. This climbing is a specialised sport. Climbers scale seemingly impossible sheer rock walls using just the cracks in the rocks and crags they can find for a foot-hold. For protection the are attached to ropes that have to be put in place first. They use a lingo that I can’t follow. I admire their skills and the mental side of this sport must be huge. Lose focus and it could hurt!

There are many different trails here of all levels of intensity. Today I walk to the top of the Yosemite Falls. These falls are a striking feature here and are very visible from the camp grounds. I think they sport some record of being the highest in the USA (yes, that gas just been confirmed). There is plenty of water coming over, which is very unusual for this time of year. California is experiencing strange weather and there is still melting snows up in the Sierras that are contributing to keeping water courses unseasonably alive. To get to the top of the falls is over 900 meters of continous up. The views from on the way up and at the top are stunning. There is a lot of shear-faced granite and huge pine trees. There are cute squirrels everywhere as well. The variety up here in the hills seem different to the cheeky ones that scavenge around the tables at the various eateries in the village area and pinch food from campers at every opportunity. These wild ones are reasonably quite and don’t mind their photo being taken.

The crew in the camp ground next to me are from England. They are a young group of men and women here to climb. Climbing is very popular and people come from all over the world to test their skills against some iconic climbing rock. El Capitan is one such site, as is the distinctive Half Dome. This group is more used to the limestones of Britan and have come here especially to experience some hard shiney granite. Each night the climbers get together and discuss their day.

Merced is a service centre for the surrounding rich agricultural area. They seem to be able to grow anything here from stone fruits to chickens. Dairy is their biggest industry here and one of the local dairy’s boasts to being one of the biggest in the country. They milk 14,000 cows per milking session! Meat chickens are the next biggest industry with mind-boggling numbers of chicken wings being generated by a huge local farm. Then almonds are next. They produce 80% of the world supply of almonds here. And I think you would have seen Californian almonds in your local supermarket in Australia.

Merced has six and 8-lane roads running through it, which is amazing considering it’s population. This is another example of the American towns and cities being built around their cars.

There is a large community of Hmong people here from Laos. The Hmong people sided with the Americans during the Vietnam War and to avoid persecution from the winners if that war, many Hmong fled their home country. Australia took many in as did USA and many of those that came to America settled here in Merced. They are great market gardeners and are finally finding their place in the community here after initial prejudices.

I’m making for the Yosemite NP tomorrow, hopefully to do some hiking there. I doubt that I will get Internet access so You may not hear from me for a week or more. I hope the bears don’t get me!

I’m sitting at the bus station waiting for my bus and a Rick Perry (current Governor of Texas) has just announced that he is running for President. Vote for him and he will ensure America saves the world. Unbelievable! The world would be a better place if they didn’t try and save it! America is flat out saving itself. Who really believes this crap. This guy is an idiot. Take a deep breath…

I’m now in Merced at Wimpy’s burgers enjoying a burger with fries and root beer, and free wifi! I’m staying in Merced at a privately run hostel. Larry and Janice are an elderly couple who have converted their now childless house into a hostel. I’ve come to Merced to prepare for trekking in the Yosemite National Park. Merced is close and the park is very accessible from here with several buses running daily.

Merced is about three hours south east of San Francisco. About 80,000 people live here and according to Larry, was hit hard by the collapsing property market. Merced is one of the towns most effected by foreclosures in the whole of the USA. It isn’t obvious to my eye yet. The weather is much warmer than freezing San Francisco.

It has been explained to me that the weather is so cold here at the height of it’s summer because of what is happening in the deserts to the east. They are at their hottest and the resulting lifting of hot air sucks air off the cold oceans via a gap in the coastal landscape where San Francisco is. The cold air I feel is coming straight off the cold ocean currents and this hits the hot air and misty clouds are formed. This is a weather feature of the month of August. September and October are warmer! A spectacular side effect is a carpet of cloud streaming in over the hills to the east.

I didn’t get up to anything spectacular today, just some street walking. Market street is a major street that curiously cuts diagonally through the town. This creates challenging triangular spaces for designers and each building along here is the result of architects rising to the challenge. Some efforts are impressive with huge multi-story buildings coming to a narrow sharp edge on one side. Others are less impressive. Apart from the bridges and the bay, the streetcars and trams, San Francisco’s other defining feature would have to be it’s terraced houses. Much of the business and residential areas are solid with multi-storied terraced buildings of different colours and varied design. Casement windows are a common feature. These buildings are beautiful and contribute to the rich character of this city, and are condensed living at it’s most attractive. Many are timber constructions and there was an instance where one was burnt. Somehow the fire was contained and neighboring properties were left untouched. There is little room for gardening in these places. A lawnmower business wouldn’t work here.

There seem to be a lot of homeless people here but it may just typical of any large city around the world. Many sleep around the green spaces within the city and on the sidewalks. Some beg for money, sometimes in clever ways. A man today was standing on a busy street corner holding up a hand-made sign that read ‘My wife has been kidnapped. I’m short 98 cents for ransom’. Some have obvious mental problems. A middle-aged women was walking back and forth yelling at the cars driving by. I looked around to see what the noise was about and she locked eyes onto me. Why me? I looked away and bolted! How do these people get by in a system where medical help is only available to those covered by expensive insurance?

The area around my hotel is sterile and boring. There are a series of hotels along a major highway with a service station and fast food outlets within easy reach. There is a bar associated with one of the hotels but it too is characterless, full of networking business people. And I reckon the Guinness is watered down! Staying here is in contrast to where I was in LA, where a short walk had me in the thick of working-class suburban life. I will be avoiding staying in this part of San Francisco next time.

I’m moving to a hostel in Merced tomorrow. Merced is a 4-hour bus ride from San Francisco. I’m not sure what Internet access I will have there so blogging may be unreliable.

I’m staying at the City Garden Hotel near the airport. Unless you booked 12 months ago it is very difficult to get into a hostel at this time of the year. August is peak tourism season as the school summer holidays come to a close.

It is a $2 bus ride into town and $4 to come back (not sure why). The weather here is cool (bloody freezing by my standards!) and there seems to be a permanent cover of low misty clouds over part of the city, including the great Golden Gate Bridge. Her towers have been hidden in fog the whole time I have been here. This is their summer of course and daylight stretches from early (haven’t witnessed sunrise) to 8pm. And it’s windy!

I hired a pushbike today and rode across the Golden Gate Bridge. if you come here, I recommend you do this. It is a popular thing to do and the narrow path on the bridge is full of bikes and walkers. The wind is persistent and cold. On the way to the bridge you pass by some small beaches (nobody swimming) and some historical sites. San Francisco has an interesting past for which I will have to do some more research, but she has been an important port and centre of defense over her lifetime. Fort Point was built in 1853 just after California became the 31st state of the Union. Beautifully built, it was seen as a prime example of the US Army’s most sophisticated coastal fortifications. A layer of cannons were positioned as close to water level as possible so the cannon balls would ricochet across the waters surface. Anyway it is beautifully restored and maintained and the Golden Gate Bridge is built over the top if it.

The bridge is beautiful and impressive. As far as bridges go, it’s not that big but it is a unique structure and some clever building techniques were required in her construction. I need to learn more.

Everywhere I go I see gum trees and other eucalypts, and paperbarks. I thought they were endemic to Australia, or have I got that wrong too (Helen Keller did not discover a vaccine for polio as previously stated). Or am I seeing things. I will chew on a few leaves tomorrow for confirmation.