Day 4: Yosemite!!!

So I'm not a world traveler, but I've seen enough "natural wonders" to know that my tested affinity for and personal history with the Grand Canyon will always ensure its place at the top of my list of Truly Awesome & Significant Places on Earth. But I wasn't at (or in) the GC yesterday. Yesterday I experienced Yosemite for the first time!

There are no better words to describe this incredible place than those of John Muir himself---the man who first made it knowable to the common man and woman. I'm thinking it's plenty-- that it will do justice to our wonderful day there yesterday with our personal tourguides Mary Lou and Bill--to simply share a few of Muir's comments about the place in this entry. (For the record, I've lifted these quotes from "The Meditations of John Muir" compiled by Chris Highland.) Say what you will about his tree-sitting eccentricities, the guy was a powerful writer and a political wizard, too. He was T. Roosevelt's personal tourguide on more than one trip into what is now the Nat'l Park. We have Mr. Muir's tireless focus on protecting that amazing place to thank for yesterday. Besides, he had to-die-for Paul Newman sky-blue eyes..

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>> "Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get to the heart of the wilderness.
       All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.. . " from a letter to his wife Louisa,
       July 1888.

>> "Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal
      and give strength to the body and soul alike." from The Yosemite, 1912

>> "Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our
      hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for
      themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish."  from Muir in The Sierra Club
      Bulletin, January 1896

and my favorite. . .

>> "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."  from
     My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911

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We're in Bishop CA tonight. Charlie had a good run on the lawn at the middle school--Home of the Broncos. We're not sure where we're heading tomorrow. . . either thru Death Valley into Northern AZ or south to the Joshua Tree Monument  and then east clean to Phoenix. Both routes are on the Road to Texas.
Good night from the 3 of us.