Day 46, Sunday, July 31

This was the first day I’ve had to REALLY pack everything up to get underway on this trip. When I say REALLY, I mean that the trailer was basically empty this morning. I had to disassemble the mountain bike, break camp, unpack the bear box, and get it all fitted back in the trailer by 10am. It’s very much like putting together a 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle where the pieces never seem to fit together the same way twice.
I knew I was going to be on the road for a while today (headed to Lake Tahoe) and thus wanted to get a shower. Since Camp 4 doesn’t have showers, I broke camp and packed everything hastily and headed over to Yosemite Lodge, about two miles away, for a “freshen-up” before hitting the road. Where I’m going with this is that I got quite a start when I got over to the Lodge parking lot. I realized that the lock which secures the tongue off the trailer to the motorcycle hitch wasn’t there. Why the trailer didn’t come off the bike between Camp 4 and the Lodge, I can’t fathom. There are some pretty hefty bumps and dips in between which by all rights should have thrown the trailer off the hitch. I’m coming to understand that the persistent theme of this trip is “when things could or should go wrong they’ll probably go right”. It’s absolutely amazing!
I didn’t actually notice that the hitch lock was missing until after I’d taken a shower, and repacked the trailer in a less hasty manner (I decided that I’d not put the jigsaw puzzle together in the best manner…the equivalent of like peeling the stickers off a Rubix cube rather than actually solving it). By the time I realized my problem, it was already closing in on noon and I wasn’t sure if the lock was somewhere inside the trailer, if it was still over at Camp 4, or if I’d lost it somewhere on the 2 mile ride over. So I unpacked and repacked the trailer for the second time this morning …no lock. Down to two options: Lost or at Camp 4. Per my luck on this trip, it was still sitting right there on the table where I’d put it down. Once I got back to the Lodge to pick up the trailer and finally hit the road, it was already closing in on 1pm! MUCH later than I’d expected to leave but still OK since Lake Tahoe is only a few hours away.
Time for another of this trip’s amazing turns of fate. (Maybe it wasn’t so much a turn as a continuance since fate has been particularly kind to me thus far?) I decided to fill up at the Crane Flats gas station in the park more on a whim than out of need. While I was there a guy pulled up to the pump next to me in his truck and, as usual for this trip, wanted to talk to me about my rig and where I was headed. When I told him I was headed to Lake Tahoe and was planning to camp there, he said “Well, unless you’re dead set on paying $30 per night to camp at the lake, you’re welcome to stay at my place in Carson City just 30 miles away.” That’s how I met Cliff Smith. Turns out he’s also got a BMW motorcycle and back in summer of 1972 did a trip similar to mine, albeit slightly less extensive, during one of his college summer breaks. We traded phone numbers and headed our separate ways.
I headed out of the park through Tuolumne Meadows since I’d not seen that part of the park yet. The meadows themselves are incredibly beautiful and unusual for being at 9000 feet elevation, but what impressed me more were the forms of the mountains and the tenacious nature of the age old trees growing on them. Over and over I’d see huge trees growing out of tiny cracks isolated in huge fields of rock. Cracks that you’d look at and immediately dismiss as being completely inhospitable even for weeds. Yet some of these trees were easily 3 feet in diameter at the base and weather beaten in a way that made them look as old as the rocks themselves.
I pulled into Carson City this evening and had dinner with Cliff. It was the first hamburger I’ve eaten since I got on the road. DAMN, cow tastes good!