Thursday 26th March

Set the alarm for 6:30 this morning to make sure we make a really good day of it. Back to the Butterfly for a huge omelette and potatoes breakfast, which set us up for the day very heartily. Good to be up and on the go so early in the day. So off we went into Yosemite. On the way in, we passed through canyons that had wildflowers growing up each side, apparently we have hit a very narrow window at this time of year for seeing them. Saw some spectacular sights in the park, mountains such as El Capitan, waterfalls, forests, rivers, the park really has it all. It also had the most tourists of anywhere that we have seen. It was pretty busy, although there must be ten times as many in the summer months. While the park is clearly spectacular, there is certainly something missing with the experience…everyone is moving around the same paths taking taking the same photographs, there is something very sanitized about the experience. It must have been so incredible for the people who first discovered it, something that could never be recreated with the tourist-friendly setup it now has. On the other hand, it does make it very easy for us to be able to drive around it and see all these sights. We are hoping with where we head next, that we will get some slightly rawer experiences. We have decided to follow Gary’s advice and head further inland from here, he has told us about some routes to take that sound less trodden but no less spectacular.
After driving up to Badger Pass, a nice drive but not much to see at the top apart from people skiing, we left Yosemite on the 120 heading west. We then drove northwest on the 49, through old mining towns, to a place called Sutter Creek on the 88, which is the road we would be taking over the mountains. There did not seem to be any motels about, but we were recommended heading to an out of town casino, where apparently you can get rooms for $35 per night. It was quite a surreal experience, the place was called the Jackson Rancheria and it was an absolutely huge complex. These places are very popular in states where gambling is illegal, they are situated on Indian reservations where it is legal so a lot of people come here. We were told that the room was actually $90, but $75 if you get a card to use the casino, which is free (it actually comes with $5 of credit). We had already said yes to the room, when I told the lady in passing that someone in Sutter Creek had said that rooms here were $35, and then she told us we could have the room for that price! We then saw that there was a restaurant deal for an $8 8oz steak, so naturally we went for that. The room was the nicest we have had so far as well as the cheapest, and the steak was a total bargain, although we felt out of place in the smart restaurant. We weren’t bothered, we just longed for the genuine vibe of the Mission’s Kitchen! We felt obliged to spend our $5 each of credit in the casino, lost it to the slot machines in no time. The casino was quite a depressing place really, full of people just pumping their money away into these machines like robots, with a relentless cacophonic backdrop of slot machine jingles. We didn’t stick around for too long and got a reasonably early night.