August 23
This day was spent entirely getting to, being in and getting away from Yosemite National Park. We again started our day early – ahead-of-the-sun early. I walked to the office to return the adapter for the electric outlet and unexpectedly met the real owner of the RV park – a woman who loves to meet the people she has hosted. Meeting an Israeli fascinated her very much. She'd been to Israel in the past with her husband and she had a good impression of the country and its people. She asked me a number of questions about our Jewish religious practices and I gave her answers in a way she could understand them. She was impressed that I had so much knowledge about the sources of our religious practices. Before we left we gave her a hamsa magnet as a memento of our visit. From this woman I learned some things, too. This RV park is only open from April to October; the rest of the year is too cold and snowy for hunters, fishers and tourist to come here and the mountain passes are impassable and it gets extremely cold here.
These pleasantries set us back a half hour, but "not a problem." We drove back to Lee Vining, CA and turned to climb up Tioga Pass Road. High up this road the snowfields were melting and we came to a waterfall. We parked here beside two other cars, walked to the best vantage point and took a few pictures. By the time we had returned to our van there were many more cars parked here, and more cars streaming up the road into the park – the harbingers of the crowds to come.
Maayan and I came through this same National Park in July 1997. We had followed the identical route Razelle and I were on today, but in the opposite direction. This gave me an interesting perspective I might not otherwise have had. There are a number of places to turn off along the road through the park in this direction, but the one I was most intent on reaching was the parking lot at Olmstead Point. As we drove along in our van I watched behind us and when the line of vehicles got too long I pulled out and let them pass, knowing that when I got to the places I really wanted to stop they would be taking up the parking spots I might have found first if I hadn't been so considerate. There were enough parking spots when we got to Olmstead Point, however, to accommodate us all. 
Razelle and I looked across the expanse at Olmstead Point and saw the distinctive shapes of the Half Dome and El Capitan. I took some photos from this special overlook of Yosemite Valley, which we would be entering later. I imagined John Muir resting up here in his day. I'd read his writings when I was a young man and I had been inspired by his life. I recognized the place names he wrote of as we traversed the park. I imagined that others among the visitors to the park today had been touched by John Muir's writings, too, but couldn't tell who they might be among the visitors I saw. Razelle hadn't read Muir's writings so her perspective of the park was not like mine.
Razelle and I found a place to park in the lot near the shuttle station in Yosemite Valley that was one stop away from the visitors' center. We rode the shuttle that short distance and then spent some quality time watching the film presentation. Afterwards, we each went through the interpretive displays at our own separate paces, then met up for lunch. I discovered that they sold kosher dill pickles, hummus and bisli (it was a Frito-Lays snack product that looked just like the snack every Israeli kid would have brought on an excursion to a park like this). We heard Hebrew spoken here by the rare occasional tourist and spoke briefly with some, but the novelty of finding other Israelis had worn off by now. Other than asking where in Israel they had come from, we couldn't come up with things to talk about with them.
As much as I had expected to compete with huge numbers of visitors, the numbers were not so very high that we couldn't cope with them. Our parked van was not overwhelmed in its lot by other vehicles. We were able to leave without traffic congestion problems. I must say that the advantage of so many people being in the park at once was that they themselves became fascinating subjects in their own right. People-watching was fun.
It was already late in the afternoon when we drove out of Yosemite Valley and onward to the Mariposa Grove of sequoia trees. Because of Razelle's disability and our National Parks Access Pass, we had the privilege of following the tram along its road through the grove. We didn't have to pay for this privilege, either. Whenever the tram came to a stop along the loop road in this grove we got to listen to snippets of the narration the paying customers heard. It was a good arrangement and Razelle and I got to see and appreciate sequoia trees here without having to add Sequoia National Park to our itinerary. True, there is no comparison, and when Maayan and I came to Yosemite from Sequoia in 1997 we didn't even bother stopping at this grove because the other park's sequoias are so superlatively more impressive. But for Razelle, this was a sufficiently rewarding experience and she was duly impressed by these giants here.
We left the park with the sun low and in our eyes. But, before we did, I bought some gas. The price of gas here in the National Park was the highest I've encountered to date – even higher than Hawaii's prices. The road west out of the park wound through mountainous terrain in the gathering darkness. I have had trouble driving the van in the dark because I just haven't been able see ahead that well. We stopped to eat and when we continued it was perfectly dark and far harder to see. I thought we might aim for Modesto as our destination for the night, but by the time we had reached Merced I could go no further. We pulled into a motel and ended our day here. The sounds of the highway and of a railroad penetrated our room, but our fatigue pushed these sounds to the margins and they even lulled us to sleep.
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| Posing together in Yosemite National Park with view of Half Dome and El Capitan |
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