Day 20: Sierras and the Basques
We drive through a couple surprising and tidy Basque towns and stop for dinner. Gardnerville and Minden in Nevada by Tahoe. We eat family style at the Overland Hotel, with all the wine you like and thick lamb steaks that were better than beef. They’re sheepherders and you don’t hear much English around but it’s not Spanish either. We watched a fest featuring woodchopping by a big hunky family in tight white outfits wearing berets. While standing atop a big log that was atop two other logs, they swung up to their tippy toes then chopped down between their feet with a huge exhales at every blow. I wanted to compete until I saw how their wonderful style. They win. Way too risky for me! It was an exhibition anyway. The teen girl was ahead of her older brother for quite awhile, but alas. Their axes were shorter and broader, heavier than ours.
We make it to a campground near Yosemite and visit that place for the first time the next day, driving in from the back, as people suggest. Crowded mountain valleys don’t really do anything for M. The kids could care less. I watched some climbers do nothing for a half hour through my binocs then we were on our way. I later learn that all you have to do is hike off the road a ways and you’re in solitude. The kids and I had a nice quiet swim, though. But M has a fever for getting to LA. The clock, the clock! It’s true, we’re behind. We skip our plans to drive Hwy 1 along the coast for a couple days. We take the Big Valley straightshot instead. It’s gorgeous. We like the farms and orchards of this world’s richest valley. It’s M’s birthday and I give her a cute silver thing I’d had hidden. She likes it. I save the various knives for our 10th anniversary coming upin Hollywood! I think 10th is silver but she needed a better lift right then than knives would’ve given and we don’t follow that stuff anyway.
