The High Point

truman - October 14, 2020

I mean "high point" literally: Tioga Pass

I know it's now Wednesday, which means that Carrie and I have been married for just over twenty four hours, and that's presumably the more important thing that I could post about, but I'm not going to break up the order of my posts. I'm a principled documentarian.

Leaving Broken Arrow

I cannot stress how cute this camper is. Also although it's almost literally in the middle of nowhere, it was the best-furnished (sans wifi) spot so far on our trip: a real freezer (where we can refreeze our icepacks), and a real stove upon which we can make breakfast!

ask for glamorous hat pictures and ye shall receive

I forgot to mention that Carrie's first act upon driving in to Dolan Springs was to promptly hit a road runner. To be fair, it did dart from the side of the road directly at our car. Apparently it did a comical looney tunes spin and ran back into the brush, so it's probably alright. I didn't see it because I was focused on the car ahead that had slowed down suddenly -- at which we were still barreling toward. Fortunately everyone -- except perhaps the bird -- remains fine.

rest in peace, little buddy (because you're still alive and comfortably napping somewhere out in the brush)

Driving to Yosemite

This has been my favorite drive of the trip. The land in Nevada stretches away to mountains as you drive along the California border. It's gigantic and beautiful. Also we've learned that Carrie may have slight agoraphobia -- she seems to get a bit antsy as we travel in wide, wide, wide open spaces with only sometimes another car in sight. We'll see what this means for Death Valley in a few days!

the road through Tioga Pass (northwest corner)

We also stopped off at the Hoover Dam, but the dam itself is closed. We did get to drive up to this overlook of Lake Mead, which is created by the dam. Also even the gas stations as we start ascending are beautiful.

we couldn't see the dam, but the view was nice

Tioga Pass

The drive up to Tioga Pass is incredible. We drove through scrub, forests and near water through the elevation changes. There's one section of road on highway 120 that warns "Dips: Next 5 Miles" which turns the car into a not-so-short rollercoaster. Also we saw three wild horses ambling around the side of the road. No pictures can do this area justice, but here they are nonetheless.

carrie's eyes are closed due to the overwhelming grandeur

I promise I trimmed this beard a bit before our actual ceremony

Carrie contemplates a mountain, "quite big!"

The Rugged Prius

Carrie has coined the phrase Rugged Prius, and it's only a quarter jokingly. It's carried us the whole two thousand miles out to California and we've only had to cut the two plastic pieces from the bottom. We've sent a few of these to our friends Ben and Allison, who have their own rugged midnight-purple Subaru with which we've been camping out in the midwestern wilderness.

It did, however, bottom out on an extremely bumpy "dirt" (really, it was a ton of bumpy rocks) road near the top of Tioga Pass just after this picture was taken, so I suppose there are some things it cannot do.

Last Things

Here's Tioga Pass, at 9400 feet. You can see some of the wildfire haze off in the distance. It's much much more beautiful than our pictures can convey. We were racing the sun to the pass itself, and got through just around sunset.

Afterward, we still had about two hours of driving through Yosemite to our cabin in Wawona. It was dark and the road was extremely curvy, which is fun for thirty minutes and then less fun for another hour and a half. We made it, tired and happy.

The Fancy Burrito

truman - October 15, 2020

Yosemite

So it's almost, in this journal-zone, time to get married. But on Monday, October 12th, we had some errands to run: getting our marriage license, and picking up dinner.

We'd called a bunch of the counties surrounding Yosemite in late August to see if any were granting marriage licenses -- none were, at the time: they were closed on that Monday, or hadn't started scheduling for October, or were only seeing county residents. San Francisco was doing virtual licenses, but you had to be in the state for the video call. So short of hanging up a poster of the golden gate behind us ("oh yeah we sure love living in California where we definitely are right now!"), it didn't seem likely that we'd be legally married.

I called a few of those folks back in the week leading up to our departure -- and Madera county would grant ours! We were pretty excited, both because it seemed more official, and especially because it would save us two trips to the courthouse in Chicago sometime later. It looks like Carrie's big wedding pitch -- cheaper healthcare, cheaper taxes -- was going to pay off.

We drove out of Yosemite on Monday morning and into Madera, CA. I spent at least a few words talking up Tioga Pass in the prior post, but I'll do so again. The western entrance to Yosemite is fine, but it's nothing compared to the views coming in from the east.

One Star Reviews

There's a pretty hilarious series of "one-star national parks reviews" from folks who couldn't quite see the grandeur of some of America's most beautiful places. I think Yosemite is a solid five-star from both Carrie and I, but our one-star review would be: "Roads are way too winding. Lots of dust on the trails. Trees all look the same."

Last Bits

I'm writing this post because this journal serves the retrospective purpose of reminding us what our trip was like. I want to write the following post, and it's getting late -- 11:45pm in Lone Pine on Wednesday, October 14th -- so here's the rest in bullet form:

- A kind government worker granted Carrie and I our marriage license (we'd just have to track down a witness day-of)
- We ate at Sal's Mexican Restaurant in Madera (I got a fancy burrito, every single item on Carrie's plate was covered in cheese)
- We visited Raley's grocery store in Oakhurst, CA, and bought chevre, crackers, grapes, and prosciutto for post-ceremony breakfast, as well as some chicken for wedding dinner.

That's it

We didn't really take any pictures today because we were mostly just running around getting ready for our big day on Tuesday. Hopefully I'll go write that post now!

The Big Day

truman - October 15, 2020

Early Morning

We were scheduled to meet Amber, our photographer/guide with Adventure Instead at 5:20am so that we could hike up to Inspiration Point for a sunrise ceremony. That meant getting up around 3:30 to leave by 4:30 since we had a bit of a drive. Carrie headed to bed around eight, and I was up until ten or so. It wasn't too hard to wake up; we were excited.

We met Amber in a deserted parking lot at Tunnel View; named either for the dramatic "tunnel" view of the valley -- sheer cliffs rising to either side -- or because it's right next to a long tunnel straight through one of the mountains. I'm not sure which. We'd packed our fancy clothes, plus a breakfast picnic and a few other odds-and-ends into my new backpacking backpack.

Amber, who was awesome throughout the whole day, took a couple of long-exposure shots of us under the stars before we set out. The hike up was fun -- very dark -- and a little strenuous; it's 1.2 miles with right at 1000 feet of elevation gain. Headlamps were helpful, although we still ended up veering off the trail a few times, which prompted Amber to call out "uh it's actually this way!" to set us on the right path.

Amber took photos both with her professional equipment -- which we'll get to see sometime (hopefully!) soon after they're edited -- and with an iphone. Everything in this post (except the dinner/cake shots of us at the end of the day) was taken by her on the phone and sent over to Carrie so that we'd have some pictures to look at, and share, immediately.

I'll say out front that I've shrunk these photos a ton so that this journal page loads quickly. We'll have the original high-res photos (along with the originals of all of the rest of the pictures we've taken) in a gallery somewhere after we get back.

Ceremony

The view from Inspiration Point is incredible. We got there maybe twenty minutes before sunrise so we had enough time to change -- Carrie into her dress, myself into my suit. I forgot my tie, but I don't think it mattered too much.

We wrote shared vows, and each had a little something else to say in addition. We read a beautiful letter from Tess (Carrie's mom), as well as a card and wonderful ceremony offering from Elisa (Truman's mom). Pictures of those will be included later on. Thank you, too, to everyone that left kind thoughts here on our website. It's meant a ton to read them, and we've loved seeing the responses to our rambling posts.

We had to pause a few times to jump around and warm up -- the breeze up there was brisk. We did also record the whole ceremony on video. Here are the things we promised to each other. We'd love for you to please help hold us to them:

We tend to carry love only as a
notion that brushes against our lives.
I have felt it for you countless times over
the past ten years: over coffee, in warm blankets,
under tall trees, and with our small orange gremlin cat.
I have felt it for myself, and I have felt it for
many that I wish could be with us today.

But love is too important to be left nebulous.
And so I ask for help from Bell Hooks to frame
love as something that I can better know and promise.
Love is an act of will. It is both an intention
and an action. It is the will to extend one's self
for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's
spiritual growth. I promise both intention and action,
to myself and to you.

I promise to take care of myself so that I may help
to take care of you. I promise to be present and invite
you in to my dreams, and fears, and needs. I promise to
accept your invitation, too. I promise
to do when you cannot, and to ask you to do when I cannot.
I promise to try to be better tomorrow than I was today,
and to help you to do so, too.

I know love and I vow love, but love remains a
deep and powerful mystery. And so I ask for help
from ee cummings to describe what I have come to know:

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Afterward we exchanged rings, had a nice picnic break (thanks Caroline for the loan of the blanket, it was perfect!) and then hiked back down to our car. Carrie bundled up her wedding dress and tucked it into her backpack straps. It still kicked up a lot of dust.

both Amber and I thought these looked like bell bottoms

tunnel view (but it's probably named for the literal tunnel, right?)

hey look at those two sharp dressed folks

Tuolumne Grove

We still had about a half of the day left with Amber, so after hiking down we headed to the Tuolumne and Merced groves. A lot of folks seemed tickled that we'd gotten married in Yosemite -- we got a ton of "congratulations!" and a few folks asked to take pictures for their own personal trip documentation. My favorite comment followed another couple telling us "Good luck on your marriage!" -- this long-haired guy said under his breath "you don't need luck" before getting into a camper that had "362 days since Florida!" written on the back.

Tuolumne Grove was about forty minutes from Tunnel View, which as a nice driving break. Also Yosemite is gigantic.

We hiked down to the grove -- about a mile or so and another five or six hundred feet of elevation change -- and then toured some of the famous trees. This is called a tunnel tree, perhaps you can guess why:

it's because it's within sight of a tunnel that cuts through a mountain

Tuolumne Grove was pretty busy, but it afforded us the opportunity to wrangle a stranger into signing our marriage license as a witness. Thanks John!

Merced Grove

Merced Grove is very close to Tuolumne Grove, but it's way way quieter. We saw a couple of folks at the trailhead, who warned us that the path was pretty dusty (Carrie's dress was -- as Amber put it -- already a "Yosemite Ombre" by this time). The grove itself comes after another mile and a half, and another six hundred feet of elevation change. It was on the way back that my legs really started to feel sore.

you can't tell but I am looking quite spacey at this point

We were alone for the whole hike, except for a family that we saw on the way back up. It was quiet, majestic, and humbling. There was also a neat cabin down near the grove.

The End

We returned from the Merced Grove hike around 2:30 or 3:00 and our time with Amber was up. She -- and all of the Adventure Instead folks that we interacted with -- was awesome.

Afterward we returned to our cabin in Wawona. We grilled some chicken and summer squash, and roasted potatoes for dinner. The cabin had a fire table, which is like a table that is 40% less convenient to use (although it does look cool).

And then we finally ate cake. I was excited for this part.

my expression tells the real tale: favorite part of the day

Carrie convinced me to soak in the hot tub briefly (I felt that we were preparing ourselves as lobsters for the surrounding bears), and then we called it a day.

Thank you again

For all of the love and support you've shown us, and for following along here. We're not done yet -- we've got Lone Pine (where they shot the movie Tremors!), Death Valley, and the Grand Canyon yet to visit, and we're not due back in Chicago until the weekend of October 24th. So you'll have several more delayed posts coming your way after this one.

We miss you all.

Love,

Truman & Carrie

Last Yosemite Day

truman - October 17, 2020

A Change of Plans

Rather than head down to Sequoia, which is still sort of on fire / extremely smoke-filled, Carrie and I decided to head to Lone Pine, CA, which is sort of in-between Yosemite and Death Valley. This meant we had a good chunk of the day to check out Yosemite because our drive was only about five hours -- and it also meant we'd get to travel back through Tioga Pass. I won't call Yosemite's western entrance a total garbage pile (though Carrie may, because it's incredibly winding), but the pass is still the most wonderful part of our trip.

Taft Point & Fissures

Mostly on our way out of the park was Taft Point (& Fissures), which is a big old rock ledge with huge, huge fissures running through it, after about a mile and a half through some real nice trees.

Taft Point itself opens to a large rock-and-scrub plateau after emerging from the trees. Deep fissures scar the sides of the plateau. They're so big.

you could fit like a hundred Carries into that fissure

The point itself is a sheer, straight drop-off of like 3000 feet. No pictures do justice to how nervous this whole situation made me. I'm not a big fan of heights.

just straight down if you look over this cliff

Other folks don't seem to have this problem. There were a group of folks hanging out on a ledge, cheering each other on as they slack-lined across part of the point.

And on our way back, Carrie noticed this incredibly green moss.

Glacier Point

You can get to Glacier Point from the Yosemite Valley Floor via the iconic "Four Mile Trail," which is actually 4.8 miles and is 3,200 feet of elevation gain. Or you can drive along five minutes further from Taft Point, which is what Carrie and I did. Our guidebook says that you might feel like you "cheated" if you drive rather than climb. I did not feel this way.

Glacier Point has incredible views of most of the park.

There's also some wildlife and a gift shop up there.

Truman captures Carrie capturing a gold-mantled ground squirrel

Out of the Park

We took a few minutes on our way out to stop at some of the other sweet spots, including the meadow in front of El Capitan, which is a crazy big mountain that very brave folks climb up. Including Alex Honnold, who did it without ropes (you should watch Free Solo if you haven't already.)

El Capitan may look only three or four times taller than I am, but I assure you it's much bigger. We noticed that the smoke seemed a little worse today, too. We were very lucky to have great weather and pretty good air quality on our wedding day.

Here are a few last pictures of us leaving Yosemite (and the Inyo National Forest). Notice how long Carrie's arms have grown. I think it's probably the elevation.