WriteAway

Here we go! The daily (almost as written) diary of my trip. Some of my notes were “better than nothing” and have been filled out a bit with incidents inserted when I originally typed this up some time ago.

Enjoy!

DAY ONE, September 7, 2006: Covered about 100 miles today. Up at 4:30 a.m., finished some back-up on the PC, backed up the back-ups on DVD, started sealing boxes, trying to get organized! Movers showed up promptly at 08:30 and announced that they could NOT drive the truck to my house! Turns out the driver (Larry) has a rig that is 91’ from the front of the cab to the back of the trailer. The cab is like an apartment, I guess! Shower, bathroom, bed, back door! He promised to give me a look at it in Fresno.

Larry seemed to have an attitude at first, but turned out to be a very nice guy. He tagged everything and did his inventory while Rod, Rob, and a third packer carried out 2-3 boxes of books—without dollies—to the “shuttle” truck.

They had to bring in a smaller truck, load it, then transfer the contents to Larry’s rig. Costing me an extra $250 or so, but I was prepared for that.

I did get a little unhappy when Larry said they don’t pack electronics and that it wasn’t on the work order. It was, and I was getting charged for it!

I called my contact at the van line as soon as they left to get the shuttle truck. They must have called her too, because she was already on the phone with Matt, the salesman. I’d already sent Tim down to the storage place to spend $30 on everything we needed to pack what I expected the movers to pack!

When they left (in way too short a time!), I started to figure out how much I still had left to do. Tim helped a lot. Packed the car—to overflowing, I’m afraid! Way too much weight, and barely room for me!

Finally ready to leave around 4:00-ish in the afternoon.

Tearful goodbyes with Charlie and Miriam. Tim kept hugging me and telling me he loved me—mostly because I let him rent the house until his BWC settlement comes, sometime before the first of the year, at which time he’ll pay off the loan.

And I kept telling him how grateful I was to have him relieve me of the responsibilities of home ownership and let me actually “get outta’ Dodge” on schedule. Everybody says ‘karma’; who knows? But everything has just fallen into place. And I am definitely grateful.

All the truck drivers agreed that I should take Route 33 to 75N, where I could get a room, stop for the night, get a “good meal” at Bob Evans (which I’m doing right now).

I got a room at the TraveLodge. When I first asked, the lady at the desk said they didn’t have any vacancies because of ‘the thing going on at the fairgrounds’. I asked if there was anyplace else close by. She went and talked to the manager and Room 201 was available but only for 1 night.

Got an AARP discount. Room: $39.00. I don’t think I could have driven another 3 feet! Needed food, needed fluid replacement (I’m on my 4th glass of iced tea!), and SLEEP!

Tomorrow: Next town, (maybe Lima) find a UPS store or Staples and ship about half the stuff in my car—hopefully to Marlene’s store. Then… will stop at first Valvoline place I see to get the car checked & an oil change! Then, finally, some serious progress toward the West and my new apartment!

Dream—night one: sitting in skuzzy hotel room; movers have just left and I’m trying to figure out what to do with the remaining stuff. The indicator on the computer tells me the load in the car is into the yellow “caution” zone… all the way into it at really close to the 4.7 gigabyte limit on the DVD.

Plan/determined to stop at the UPS store in Celina, OH and ship a bunch of stuff to Marlene’s house. David assured me I could. Now, after writing down my dream, it’s 5:31 a.m. Still time for a little more beauty rest!

I know it seems like I’m all hung up on Yosemite, but it symbolizes for me all of what I love about California. On my first return visit to California, after an absence of 35-40 years, it was the first place I visited.

Having been out of touch since sometime in the 1960s, and having made the occasional attempt to find out where everyone was (and who was still among the living!), I joined Classmates and posted my contact information there. While there were a lot of people from Bullard H.S. listed, there were maybe 1 or 2 from my class.

I figured that they had all kept in touch and already had plenty of contact information… or they were not computer saavy enough to know something like that might exist. I’m not insulting anyone’s intelligence, believe me. I’ve just tried to train a lot of people my age and younger to use computers and the internet and some of the over 50 crowd either have no interest, or continue to believe that they can trash a $2,000 computer by just clicking in the wrong place. Having been out of contact for so long, I couldn’t guess who fell into which category.

I maintained my Classmates membership for a long time and finally, in late summer of 2004, received notification that someone had left a message for me. It was something like “Sunny! It that really you? We’ve been trying to find you for a long time!”. They wanted to let me know about the upcoming 45th reunion of the class of 1959, and to see if I could attend.

My first (and most sensible) response was “No.” I was broke (nothing unusual there) because I had just completed 5 quarters of classes at Capella University and received an undergrad certificate in Graphics and Multimedia. At $1,500 a quarter, plus all the required software and learning materials, I was already in deep doo-doo. And I only had a day or two of vacation left.

Fortunately/unfortunately (a little of both, I guess), I decided I would attend. I talked my boss into an extra day or two of ‘comp time’, and started planning my trip.

I had (still have) family in Fresno that I haven’t seen in many years. I used to have lots of friends there too. So I decided that, as soon as I landed in Fresno I would pick up my rental car, bypass all the family and friends, and drive straight into the mountains. I spent my first night back in California in a Comfort Inn in Oakhurst, a fairly short drive from the southern entrance to Yosemite.

I knew I’d be seriously jet-lagged after the trip (there are certainly no direct flights from Columbus OH to Fresno CA) : from the time I left my house (5:00 a.m. local time) to the time I arrived in Fresno (1:00 p.m. Fresno time/4:00 p.m. Ohio time) I would have been just trying to get from Point A to Point B for approximately 11 hours. Add to that the time to collect my luggage, pick up the car, and figure out how to find Highway 41 and get as far as Oakhurst… it would probably have been suicidal to go any further without a good meal and some sleep.

I was directed to a decent Mexican restaurant, where I got the very good meal. This was important! In addition to being hungry and tired, and despite the fact that Columbus has several Mexican restaurants now, I needed to have some real California Mexican food! On my first visit to the then newly opened Don Pablo’s restaurant in Columbus, I asked the host if the food was authentic Mexican. He said that it absolutely was… but modified somewhat for Midwestern tastes. Although some of the Columbus restaurants good restaurants, there were–at that time–none that were truly authentic. So that first meal was significant for me and I picked something that I had never seen on any menu in Ohio.

After a good night’s sleep and a freebie breakfast provided by the motel, I hit the road. Other than the addition of the Chukchansi Casino, nothing much had changed along ‘the 41′, so I started getting nostalgic almost immediately. When I got to the south entrace to the park, I purchased my Golden Age Passport: free admission to most national parks for as long as I live and can get there. And I headed into Yosemite.

Part of what I love is the wonderful forest in the Sierra Nevada. The sights and smells are not unique to Yosemite by any means and I had been enjoying them since I got above about 3,500 feet. Actually, I’d been enjoying the unique and stark beauty at the lower elevations too. Once I entered the park, however, I was really overwhelmed and the tears started welling up in my eyes.

As I drove through the forest toward Glacier Point Road… through the strobe-light effect of bright sunshine filtering through the dense forest… with the window open so I could enjoy the wonderful aroma… I offered up a ‘thank you’ : Thank you for allowing me to return to this place at least one more time. I didn’t understand how important it would be for me, but I certainly do now. And I don’t care if the class reunion is a complete bust or if the family reunion is less than satisfying. If nothing else turns out to be worth the price of the trip… this is all I really need.

My little Yosemite National Park book, published by the National Park and Conservation Association describes the forest this way:

“A mixed-conifer forest extends from the oak-woodland belt to roughtly 7,500 feet (2,286 m). The dominant species of Yosemite Valley are ramrod-straight ponderosa pines, which average 200 feet (60 m) in height and sport distinctive jigsaw-puzzle bark, and aromatic incense cedars, towering trees often mistaken for giant sequoias. Dogwoods thrive in the dense understory shade of California black oaks, producing a profusion of large, creamy white flowers in May and June. ” page 214

Whatever happened next, I was truly home and understood that. It would turn out to be the first life-changing experience of my trip.

Next post: The next chapter of my ongoing love affair with Yosemite: Working in the High Country at Glen Aulen camp.

This is the saga about my return to Fresno, California and what inspired me to head West, after so long. Your comments are welcome… just keep ‘em clean and friendly. This is, after all intended for family first, then friends–both old and new. And this is a moderated site: inappropriate comments will not be published, so save yourself some trouble!

What’s it about? You’re obviously not yet a friend and you’re not a family member, or you wouldn’t have to ask.

Sue, thoughtfully, gave me a blank Journal as part of my going away gift. Inside, she inscribed, “To Sunny, on the occasion of her pilgrimage home.” So maybe it’s about my pilgrimage home, or maybe it’s just about my desire to prove that you can go home again, but probably it’s about the fact that I still love California and was reminded fairly recently of how much I missed it. It is about a cross-country trip, what inspired me to make the trip, the roadblocks that I chose to ignore, what happened along the way, and what has happened since I hit the road.

Background

I was born in Hollywood, California… if such a place really exists! Officially, it was Los Angeles, but the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital (now Cedars-Sinai) was in Hollywood. And that’s about my only claim to fame! Though I spent a large part of my very earliest years in Fresno with my grandpa and grandma, then spent summers and holidays with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, we lived in Burbank until I was 13 or 14 years old.

My mother was transferred from the Burbank office of the State of California Department of Employment to the Fresno office. I finished junior high school here in Fresno (Yosemite Junior High), and attended and graduated from Bullard High School.

Some time after getting my first car (a 1956 Pontiac Fire Chief with apricot and white exterior and matching leather upholstery), mom managed to get me a job working weekends in Yosemite Valley. That was fun that most kids, then or now, won’t have the privilege of experiencing. But I will be forever grateful for my experience. My family had been in love with Yosemite since long before I came along, and that passion was certainly instilled in me.

Just getting there was an adventure. I don’t remember too much about the trips in good weather. But I do remember many trips in our lovely Central Valley pea soup fog! I usually left Fresno about 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. On foggy days, until I got up into the hills a bit, I drove at about 20 mph, driver side window open, with my head hanging out so I could see the white line and avoid going over a cliff along the way (although there aren’t any cliffs between Fresno and the foothills… more like the occasional ditch). Part of the goal was, of course, to get there early enough to get my free breakfast at the lodge and be able to report to work on time. The other part: to get to the gates before the rangers got there so I wouldn’t have to pay to get into the park to go to work. They probably wouldn’t have charged me anyhow, but it felt good to think I might be getting away with something.

I can’t really tell you if those breakfasts were really as spectacular as they seemed to me, or if decent restaurant bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns, etc. simply tasted better because I was in Yosemite on a crisp, cool mountain morning, in a place I loved so much, and was getting paid for being there. Doesn’t matter! It provided me with tasty memories for the next … well… many years!

The work was somewhat less inspiring, but not so bad, all things considered. I cleaned hotel rooms in the lodge! Saturday nights, we partied with the S.O.B.s (the Standard Oil Boys; there was at least one gas station in Yosemite Valley in those days) down on the river. Getting to the beach wasn’t a problem, even though the dirt road was narrow and lined with, well, a whole forest full of trees. But for some reason, by the time I left the party to go back to the dorm after the party, those trees became downright vicious! They actually tried to attack my car and it took some pretty fancy 17 year old driving to make it through without damaging the Chief or myself.

Okay, I was a pretty inexperienced drinker and a really cheap drunk. A couple of beers at around 3,200 feet was all it took! But I made it through and had a great deal of fun in the process! Added to the family fun on our frequent trips to play in the park, Yosemite was a firmly engrained part of my culture. And it was, many, many years later, one of the primary things that called me home to California.

Coming next… My first return visit to Yosemite in, October 2004.