Yosemite

Thursday was my visit to Yosemite. Right after I took off, I had to take a gas break. Next to the station was the Bravo Farms Cheese Factory. Yes, they actually made cheese there, plus it was a shop with all kinds of food related stuff. You know the cute little shops in cute little towns that specialize in food stuffs like salsas, hot sauces, dried fruits, and the like.


I found this fascinating line of items - Fartless Factory. Fartless corn bread, fartless popping corn, fartless chili bowl, a pair of fartless factory tightie whities. Very amusing stuff.

Here is a picture of real california cheese being made. I'm not sure what's going on here, but I've seen this process on the food channel a lot. It was cool to see it in person. I think there's curds in that vat. Those little arms were swooshing everything about. Mr cheese man had to mug it up for my camera.

Ah Yosemite.... It's grand. And vast. And enormous. There's not so much big trees here as big rocks. Huge rocks. El capitan - the big giant granite monolith. Lots of falls, but unfortunately they were dried up at this point of the year. Everything is just big. You feel so small being this little person in this giant park amongst huge bits of earth. It's very humbling. I just kept on stopping and taking pic after pic. I would have loved to have had time to climb something.

Luckily for visitors to Yosemite, there are much better choices for food here, than at Sequoia. This is also a big camping park, so there are many markets to stock up on staples. The main store is fairly big, bigger than the average trader joe's, and pretty much is a regular grocery store. There is also a food court! And several delis and grill joints. There is also a swanky hotel called the Ahwahnee and there's several fancy restaurants in there.

I spent the night in a little town called mariposa. I think it used to be a gold mining town. It has a cute little "downtown" strip area that about 1/4 of a block long. Not much to eat at all. I had the worst chinese food in my entire life that night. It should have been a bad sign when I asked the girl what the noodle soup was like and she said "bowl". Then I said what kind of broth is it and she said "noodle and some vegetable". Then I finally said what kind of broth, chicken or beef and she said "chicken". I went with something else completely and it was the worst chinese food ever and one of the worst things I've ever had to eat in my life. Thank goodness I ordered a thing of plain white rice and made sure she gave me a little thing of hot sauce. Were it not for that white rice I would have starved. Then the damn motel didn't tell me that breakfast ended at 9:30, so when I showed up at 9:45 all the food was gone. Damn you mariposa california! Never again...