Death valley and Yosemite, LA5/6

If you ever dream of going to a fairy tale land or want to feel how is it like to be in a fairytale, Yosemite is the place.

Yosemite. pronoused locally as 'yo-se-mee-Tee', not 'yos-mide'.

we are so close to the nature.

sometimes we were too close...were nature came to us. the first night we were freezing in the tent, i heard footsteps of an animal, i made some 'shoo shoo' sound and it frightned that animal to turn it's head and gallop away. the moment i shoo shoo, i heard something hard knocking onto Hope Too's aluminium pannier, following that Hope Too's alarm wakes everybody in the campsite, then followed by the galloping for that animal.

on the second night, that was the halloween night, while we were cooking in the dark, the people in the whole campsite started to activate the car horn, knocking loudly on their untensiles, shouting 'stay away, get out of here!'. then we realised that they had spotted a bear coming to them.

it happen 3 times that night. we were both in a dark corner, lighting our area only with our head torch light. sam kept looking for my back and i keep looking at sam's back, fearing that the bear would smell our curry chicken and approach from our rear.

after cooking we took out all the can food, spices, cooking pots, toothpaste, shampoos and all the things that might have smell from our pannier and stored it into a bear proof metal case provided by the campground. it wouldnt be nice if a kid would wear a bear costume for this halloween here as i saw a man rush out of his truck with a rifle when the whole campground spotted the bear for the 3rd time.

yosemite:the half dome stone.

yosemite.

death valley.

Death valley, the lowest spot in north america.

we reached Yosemite on the Halloween eve. we did not have any resevation on the campground. when we reached the campground, the office had a signboard (FULL). We went inside and still see a few unoccupied site. so we rest a while, cook our dinner, slowly set up the tent, the sky got dark, we wash up and still, no one came to this site. we slept till the next morning....

someone came in the night and they had booked this site a week before. Thats Tara and Bruce. I was really afraid that they would react like some other campers we met when I tell them if I can share this site with them but they were really generous to let us 'hitch hike' on their site without paying any $.

Bruce runs a bicycle tour company, touring one of the best cycling route in Califonia.

http://www.cyclesportvelotours.com/

The greens here suddenly turned into charcoal, due to the forest fire.

oh, this was part of the death valley, supposed to be in the previous post.

Then we met a Korean girl by the name of Monique Seung. She was a full time student in photography. when she saw us, she talked to Sam about what their trip was about and wanted us to be her photography 'model' for a few minutes. we followed her car and stopped by a scenic place for her shotting.

errr, it had been a month that we last met her and we are still waiting for her promise: to sent us the photo.

Leaving Death Valley to Yosemite.

wonderful memories in Yosemite.