The stunning surroundings of Yosemite are all part of the equally beautiful and expansive Sierra Nevada region of Northern California. We were lucky enough to take a trip along the Tioga Pass that cuts through the Sierra Nevada mountains. I say ‘lucky’ because the pass is usually closed to traffic soon after the first snow fall in October. The pass had already experienced some snow a few weeks previously so we were unsure whether we’d be able to go across it until the morning of leaving Yosemite.
Tioga Pass is just another of those spectacular routes that California seems to be full of. You go from the bottom of the valley in Yosemite, to driving along past the peaks of the dome-shaped mountains I mentioned in the previous blog post. Before long you’re weaving in between rivers, lakes and snow-capped mountains on the way to the desert state of Nevada.
One particular place of interest that we stopped at for lunch was Mono Lake. Mono Lake is not an ordinary lake. If it was an ordinary lake I wouldn’t bother to write about it. Mono Lake is a hypersaline lake which, to non lake aficionados means that it’s got a lot of salt in it. As a result there’s not a whole lot living in the lake as far as fish go. It does however have a fairly vibrant ecosystem in terms of bacteria, flies and the birds that eat the flies. The earth around the edge of the lake looks black compared to the sandy surroundings of the desert. It then becomes clear on approaching the lake that the black colouring is due to the millions upon millions of flies sitting at the water’s edge. Walking amongst them and you really are Lord of the Flies as they swarm around your feet, parting for you like Moses and the Red Sea.
The stillness of the lake was echoed in the surrounding area. The sound of the swarming flies being the only thing I heard at Mono Lake. Way out in the middle of nowhere it has to be the quietest place i’ve ever been. No traffic sounds, no distant planes overhead, no “Oh my gawd this lake is sooo quiet! Hey Jerry, isn’t this lake just the quietest?! This is soo much quieter than the lake back home isn’t it?!” from any American tourists parked up in their 40ft Winnebagos. Hold your breath and stand away from the flies and you’ll hear genuine silence.
Now we were camping that night in a place called Bishop on the other side of the Tioga Pass. A fairly unremarkable place considering it’s surroundings, but a necessary stop over on the way to that jewel in the desert that is Las Vegas. It did make for some good camping though.
I hadn’t been a huge camping fan up until this trip. But I would now go so far as to say that it was this back to basics element that made the Trek America tour all the more fun. You can’t really retire to your hotel room when you’re out in the wilderness and so are instead forced to interact with your co-travellers in the evenings, making for a far more interesting trip.
For starters the group is divided into several smaller groups of three. Every day each group has a different task. It might be cleaning the van, waking everyone else up, doing the cooking or washing up. I volunteered at the start of the trip to be in charge of loading and unloading the trailer, what with my past experience as a band roadie. Because of this I was exempt from all jobs, but got to enjoy watching everyone else fretting over what to cook, or struggling to wash up the cooking group’s plates and saucepans. But it’s group tasks like this that provoke interaction and the evening meal was always an enjoyable occasion.
The other conversation and entertainment provoking situation was naturally drinking. What with a fairly diverse international representation in the group I now have the rules of various drinking games from various parts of the world (mostly Denmark to be honest) written down in the back of my notepad ready for introduction in back in the UK.
Bishop saw Mex introduce us to a great American institution in College life however. The institution of Beer Pong. Perhaps you’ve played this before at university, but it’s an American invention and was new to me and the rest of the group. Essentially it’s the greatest game in the world, both for participation, and spectating, this is particularly the case when the game gets down to the final stages.
Basically what it involves, without going too much into the nuances of the rules, is trying to throw a ping-pong ball, into one of the opposing team’s cups, which contain beer. Get the ball in the cup and team has to drink the beer. They can’t just be any cups apparently, according to Mex. It’s not proper beer pong unless you’re using Solo brand plastic cups. Solo cups are the red ones you see all the time in the movies when the scene is set at an American house party.
My description of the game is pretty basic, and there are a few caveats to the rules where you can make the other team drink two, and in some cases three cups if you’re particularly skillful. Obviously the more you drink, the harder it becomes to hit cups and eliminate them from the game. It usually comes down to both teams having one cup left on the table trying to eliminate that final cup in order to win. Let me tell you that there’s nothing more tense than the final rounds of a beer pong game. Each throw results in cries of agony as throws narrowly miss the target and play crosses over to their opponents, giving them the chance to wrap up proceedings with a well placed throw.
I was teamed up with Mex in the first few games, naturally our opponents were the Danes, Gowtham and Jacob. Now i’m not really sure what happened to be honest. On paper a beer pong analyst would declare the Danes the winners in all games played. Possibly because they did indeed win all of the games played. But let me tell you that it was much closer than that and really Mex and myself were just incredibly unlucky, and had the wind against us. Several times we had them down to one cup, but they just came back from nowhere to fluke a win. They did this several times in succession.
Further games were played throughout the night with the teams being mixed around somewhat. Me and Mex eventually tasting victory against the Danish-Korean powerhouse that was Gowtham and Rum. There was also an appearance from the England team as me and Londoner, Laura, teamed up to take on Gowtham and Vince (I think? But by this time beer pong was beginning to take its toll). An unknown number of beer pong games later and I was all but wiped out. I think we’ll put it solely down to exhaustion because I felt strangely compelled to take an early bath and retire to my tent. The less said about all that, the better.
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