Dream Trip

2nd August:

I hope to write something in here at some point soon... until then, I have pictures in the usual photobucket.

Sonora and Yosemite

20th August:

Better late than never, right?

Yosemite. Pronounced Yo Semite. It’s true. Actually, scrap that; I didn’t go to Yosemite first. I went to Sonora. I was umming and ahhing over going to Yosemite for some time. I knew it was stupid to be so close to one of the US’s greatest National Parks and yet stay holed up in chezbob watching the telly. When Louise said she was visiting me “whether I liked it or not”* I knew this was my chance to get out and do something. I promised her that we would spend a few days at Yosemite and then the weeks drew nearer to her arrival and I had done nothing about it. I was scared. Scared to drive the five hours. I have never driven much. Although you’d think I was a car fan looking at the Dream, I only think them pretty to look at and would far prefer someone else (preferably an F1 driver) to do the actual work.

So I found my solution which was to choose somewhere in-between the Bay Area and Yosemite to stay. The “somewhere” fell in my lap a couple of weeks before the trip as former-Dream-driver suggested going for a trip to Gold Country. I couldn’t make it then but I bookmarked the link and suggested it to Louise. She agreed to the plan. It cut short our amount of time in Yosemite but she accepted that I was the pathetic and whiny driver here and if I wanted to stop half way she couldn’t really stop me.

So we went to Gold Country. The website didn’t really explain what we were in for. All I knew was that I had to meet “Joshua” at a certain location near Jamestown. Bring a packed lunch and shoes that can get wet.

No one mentioned the mud.

Joshua brought Rufus along with him. I believe Rufus was a dog but he could just as well have been a teddy bear. Golden fur and a passive, friendly face. All Rufus did was lie in the shade, occasionally moving as the sun did. I feel the need to mention this as Rufus is to date the only dog that has not brought me out in a panic attack. I am terribly frightened of dogs, be they big or be they small. And yet the gorgeous gold of Rufus had no effect on me in the slightest.

Where was I? Oh, the mud. Yes. Joshua gave us buckets, spades, trowels and pans. And pointed to a hole in the ground, filled with water. “Empty that there ‘ole of water,”** he instructed us, “an’ then dig down t’ bedrock.”

Uhuh. And I paid to do his dirty work for him? What a sucker.

So Louise and I worked on making the hole drier and deeper. We sho

velled and scraped dirt into the buckets for hours. We both ended up knee deep in muddy water with dry soil in our hair, falling from the side of earth we were digging into.

Upon which the Dream was parked.

Digging a hole underneath a road caused me to pause for a little but ultimately we didn’t get very far. Four hours in the baking California heat, fighting the permeating water, didn’t actually result in a very large hole. But it did result in ten buckets of mud to put through the sluice.

This was where we got wet. And slightly cleaner though there comes a point where you have sat too long in a mud hole to ever get clean again (to which my jeans would testify had they the vocal cords to do so). We put the mud through the sluice, plunging our hands into the mud to remove large stones and clumps of clay before letting the stream water run through it. After our buckets, Joshua looked for nuggets. I watched his hands closely for any sign of sleight of hand for how could there be gold out of mud? I was resilient and remained undistracted by his talk of how the sun will one day go supernova and how pi was rational but I still did not see how the dirt suddenly turned into 7 gold nuggets plus some flakes.

Louise and I felt quite rich with this haul but thought we’d postpone retirement for a few more years.

So, we said our fond farewells to Joshua and Rufus and drove the few miles to Sonora. Caked in mud, we squelched into the reception area to the Days Inn. Joe (Joe Joe Nice but Slow) attempted to serve me. At first not seeing my reservation at all, he suddenly found two reservations apparently not considering that my surname was shared by another patron. Half an hour later, another staff member took a look at my case and gave me the room keys within two minutes. Meanwhile, Joe had to deal with someone asking for directions who then left the lobby shouting “you lot are *#!%ing incompetent”. True but did that help anyone?

Relieved to have our room, Louise and I hurried to get out of our clothes before the mud hardened and we would have to use a hammer and chisel to remove them. Louise had the shower first and when I managed to get into it I found a not-so-small pile of gravel on the bathroom floor. I added some gravel of my own to the pile.

The town of Sonora seemed to comprise of purely Mexican restaurants and only one was open. The next day I found out that typically everything was closed on Sundays and Mondays- the two days we were there for. Fortunately, the one place open that day served us with the best fajitas we had ever had for a quarter of the price of them back home. I tucked into the wine while Louise stuck to water perhaps with a frown for my decadence***. But then it was my time to frown when she ordered the deep fried icecream****.

(Yosemite coming soon?)

* She didn’t really say that but for the purpose of this story I will paint her as a go-getting bossy type for the hell of it.

** He was clearly American but I will write as if he was from Yorkshire or somewhere.

*** Not really.

**** Not really. In fact I believe I smiled and indicated to the waitress that two spoons were required for that.