California Ho! Day Six - High Sierras Part Two

Day two was a layover day. Some of us saddled up and rode to Hopkins Lake.

In, as you can see, beautiful weather, but our guide was sniffing the air and looking at the sky and pulled us all back to camp...ten minutes before...

...a raging hailstorm. If you're noticing a pattern here, you are not wrong. We huddled in our tents until it was over. Some fishing was done by those who didn't ride up to the lake. Apparently, if you fly fish, this is a dream destination.

Oh, and I discovered the way to a certain mule's heart: Cantaloupe rind.

California Ho! Day Five - High Sierras Part One

And now to the meat of our trip.

Meet this little guy.

Because the absolute best way to get up a roadless mountain pass? Half-ass it. My new friend for the next few days is known as Punch (also Punchito and Tiny Dancer. He lives up to both halves of Tiny Dancer).

The trip was called the Triple Pass Ride, and they didn't believe in warm-up days. Straight up Mono Pass (simultaneous with a number of Miwuk and other natives doing their annual walk on what was one of the their major trade routes. The pack station was providing stock support for them).

And straight down Mono Pass into...

...you guessed it...

...a raging hailstorm. Punch put his ears in the specific mule position for "I Hate This Weather" and got me down safely. These were trails I wouldn't have thought a horse (and yes, some of us had horses) could manage, but everyone was okay. If wet. It had stopped by the time we made it to camp, or we rode out of it.

Sierras. Hail. It's a thing.

California Ho! Day Four - Across the Sierras

Turns out the fire wasn't our problem.

Our plan, to take a leisurely drive along the Tioga Road and through Tioga Pass.

On the way, we stopped at Tuolumne Meadows.

Everyone thinks the valley is the heart of Yosemite. Actually, the true heart of Yosemite is a spot in Tuolomne Meadows, now the Parsons Memorial Lodge...that's where the decision to fight for a park here was made. Oh, and where the Sierra Club was founded.

Then we drove over the pass...

...which is as far as we made it. A massive hailstorm triggered rock slides that closed the road for hours. (I'm still seeing contradictory information on when it reopened).

We had to drive all the way back through the park and take the next road up. This got us to the lodge we were staying at at 1am...with no on-site staff. We had to sleep in the car.

Oh and "You did Sonora Pass for the first time at NIGHT?" Imagine this in the voice of that guy from Rollerblade Seven (I think) talking about going places without your skates.

Eh.

We made it. And we had good travel luck for the entire rest of the trip, but then, we were owed.

California Ho! Day 3 - To Yosemite

And then we headed east, somewhat concerned about the Ferguson fire. We'd carefully chosen a hotel twenty minutes from the park entrance in Mariposa.

From the park entrance closed because of the fire. Arriving too early to check in, we drove to Yosemite Valley anyway. It just took us two hours. It could have been worse...the park was still open.

You can really see the smoke. We briefly wandered around the valley, then headed back to our hotel. Where they tried to send us to an expensive steakhouse for dinner.

We demurred and instead found ourselves some decent California Mexican (Cal-Mex?). Still a bit worried about the fire...

California Ho! Day Two - Big Basin State Park

So, after a night in San Francisco, we drove down the peninsular to California's oldest state park. Originally called Redwoods State Park, it's been renamed to Big Basin State Park (because lots of places have, well...redwoods).

The coastal redwoods aren't quite as big as the true giant sequoia, but they're still quite something...and large enough to kind of throw off your tree perspective. Normal trees start looking, well, spindly. After some pleasant hiking, we wound up in Los Gatos, near San Jose.

Why yes, Silicon Valley. Dinner: Somewhat pricy, but excellent, Italian.

California Ho! Day One - San Francisco

I'm being a travel blogger. Ish. Mostly just thoughts on the trip.

We had an early-ish flight to San Francisco and ended up getting there about 2pm. Our plan for the afternoon? Classic tourist fare - walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and back (biking is the obvious alternative).

Figured the freighter...and the ubiquitous fog...would give some idea of the scale. There are bigger bridges, but there's something about the art deco style of the Garden Gate.

Or maybe it's just that this is, after all, StarFleet headquarters. San Francisco itself is a city I could live in - if it wasn't so hideously expensive. Everything you could dream of in a major city, and a short bus ride and you're in Marin County where there's basically nothing.

But hideously expensive. Finding a hotel room for less than $300/night was challenging. We grabbed some food in Chinatown, eating at a randomly-chosen restaurant. Which is pretty much good enough in San Francisco's Chinatown.

Updates!

Some links to check out now I'm back:

I did a short author interview talking about "Dropping Rocks," my story in the next Mad Scientist Journal anthology Battling In All Her Finery - http://madscientistjournal.org/2018/07/an-interview-with-jennifer-r-povey/

While I was away, Rite Publishing released my first (and hopefully not last) supplement for them, co-written with Andrew Mullen - check out Demiplanes: Valhalla (only loosely Norse) here. It's a setting book that you could use for an entire short campaign or just add on to whatever you're already doing.