California Dreaming Part One

In the course of my absolutely fantastic journey through the southwestern states of the USA last September I also spent a week in California. This post is about the towns of Bishop, Monterey and Carmel, as well as the Yosemite NP, the next post will be about Los Angeles. San Francisco has its own post, so I won't write about it again :)

After Las Vegas we originally wanted to go straight to San Francisco, but that would have been a long and hard drive, so we decided to spend the night in a small town in the east of California called Bishop. It was a nice town, not quite picturesque, but pretty. In the evening we had dinner in a Steak House that the receptionist of our motel had recommended to us and there I experienced the happiest moment of my life. They offer a dessert called the "Brownie Monster" (picture below), and that thing keeps what it promises. The Brownie Monster turned out to be a huge bowl filled with brownies that had an estimated gallon of chocolate syrup and whipped cream on top of it. I managed to eat about three quarters of it, then I was hopelessly sick but I can't remember being any happier in all my life.

The next morning we left for the Yosemite National Park and on our way there we "accidentally" discovered a gem of the Eastern Californian Mountains: the Mammoth Lakes. Around a dozen small and crystal-clear lakes are embedded between green hills and we watched people in little boats or kayaks while we were strolling along the shores. Unfortunately we couldn't spend too much time there, but the next time I'm in that area I'll definitely go there again.

The Yosemite NP is a beautiful place too, but when we got there the Yosemite Falls had already dried up because there had been little snow in the past winter. We tried to see the Nevada Falls instead, but the road leading to them was closed and we decided against walking there, because we still had to drive on to San Francisco. So we just enjoyed the gorgeous panorama of the mountains and that of a few more lakes before we pressed on.

After our three days in San Francisco and the not-so-nice weather there, we finally went south again. We followed the Highway No 1 to Monterey where we spent the night. Monterey is the home of the world's biggest aquarium, but we rather took the 17-Mile-Drive to visit the neighboring town of Carmel. Actually, we had planned to spend a day on the beach, but the bad weather had followed us from San Francisco, and so we visited an old Spanish monastery instead. I was quite impressed that the four-century-old building was still in such a good state.