We had a great weekend. It was an adventure! Thursday night, we set off to San Jose. I drove most of the way there. We arrived in San Jose by midnight. Starving our butts off, we stopped at a gross Jack in the Crack (formally known as Jack in the Box) and stuffed our faces on our way to the AirBnB. The apartment we stayed at was super cute – we got the whole place to ourselves and it was only a block away from the school.
The next morning, I got up to go to the SJSU orientation of admitted students. It was a long process of sitting on our asses listening to quiet professors read powerpoint after powerpoint. I met some people, explored more of the campus, and learned a few things about being an English major. In the meantime, Maile went to Apple headquarters in Cupertino and grabbed three bags full of goodies from their exclusive gift shop and toured what could be her future job location. She had a blast!
That afternoon, we drove a few hours southeast to the south entrance of the Yosemite where we set up camp by 10pm and scrambled around the town for cooking utensils to make food we spent an hour gathering at a Walmart earlier that evening. After the harsh realization that we were incapable of cooking our burgers, we attempted some french fries after we noticed that flames were not supposed to come out of our coal fire as we cooked over it. We crafted an aluminum foil bowl with a flimsy lid and hoped for the best. About 30 minutes of starvation and heavy sighing, we dug in and honestly were not disappointed!
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I drove us to the Yosemite that morning as Maile battled with the radio, determined to find signal to a station that wasn’t talk radio or latino music. The Yosemite was really beautiful – of course. The sky-high rock formations crouching over you from all angles, the waterfalls crashing into shallow river beds, trees that showed off their beautiful emerald green and amber leaves. My favorite part of the trip was seeing snow at 9000+ feet above sea level. We pulled over in a rush when we spotted it and I ran out the car like a mad woman! I was so excited to see snow that day, I am always excited to see snow. More importantly, I was most excited about seeing snow in June! We ran around for a bit and I spotted some intense ants that were like quadruple the size of normal ants that you’d see anywhere else. I GoPro’d most of the car journey through the Yosemite, but it was nothing compared to what we saw up close and personal.
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When we got out, we drove further north to a town called Bridgeport. We decided to stay here in efforts to visit Bodie, a famous ghost town, the following day (Sunday). We had not booked a place to spend the night so we stopped at a cheap motel in hopes of vacancy. They fit us in so we got our keys and parked by the room. It was a really cute motel, but we were borderline starving so exploration would just have to wait. We made our way to a pub-like restaurant and sat to observe the people. After we ordered our tap water and what not, it came clear to us that there were literally no colored people in the whole crowded pub, and town, except for three Asian people, two of which were clearly tourists. It baffled us and made us laugh, but also made us feel a bit uncomfortable at the lack of diversity in this town. Anyway, we loved the motel in the end. That night, before it closed – we had a much needed soak in their hot tub for an hour and watched all the stars you couldn’t see back in LA. It was beautiful.
After our continental breakfast, which mind you – I was humorously chuffed about, we went on our merry way back south towards Bodie. It was so cold that day. Take torrential rainfall and add altitude, we were like tiny icebergs waddling around a beaten-up town. I took tons of pictures though and I was warm, but bless Maile, she wasn’t doing so well. We definitely didn’t prepare for this weather! In the mini-museum/gift shop, they had a binder of letters written to the park, that contained rocks and flowers people took from the park, explaining the odd events that happened since they took them and that it’s true what they say about the bad luck of stealing from the town! That bummed me out because I love taking little tokens from places to remember it by – but I’d be dammed if I took anything from Bodie!
When we thawed off in the car with our blankets and cranked up the heater, we slowly made our way home. Even bought cup o’ noodles at a gas station just for the fun of it!