Road Trip: Day Fifteen

Day 15: Curry Village, Yosemite to Davis, CA.

We wake at 7am, having slept for twelve hours straight, and head up to Glacier point. The air is crisp and sweet at this height and the view is breathtaking. We’ve seen many of America’s natural wonders on this trip, from the Mammoth Caves to the Grand Canyon. We’ve seen small patches of intense prettiness and, more often, large swathes of imposing magnificence, but Yosemite has both.

We’re impatient to get to Davis, and we’ve already planned to pay Yosemite plenty more visits so we get back in the car without any qualms. Twenty miles outside Yosemite the landscape changes again and we’re rolling through a sea of grasslands burnt gold by the sun. From this we hit route 99 which leads to Sacramento. Almost there. We switch to I-80 and almost before we realise it we’re at the exits to Davis. As we dip under the railway bridge that marks the beginning of downtown it feels as if we’ve paddled out of a great river into a tranquil backwater. There’s no darting between rumbling trucks, no hurry to accelerate up to the speed limit. Students bike past no-handed, a workman fishes in the back of his truck for a wrench, a mother takes her children clothes shopping, a proprietor of a gift shop chats with passersby in her doorway. Our journey is finished.