First Glimpse of Toulomne Meadow...

... after a very long day on the road. Mr S got stung by a yellowjacket when we stopped for lunch at the county park on the way to Yosemite. His finger swelled up and he got a big welt on his leg, which made both of us a little uneasy. “We’ll stop at urgent care in the next town, “ seemed a logical thought. Turns out we are terribly spoiled. The only care is at the local hospital ER, and it’s a tiny hospital. And insanely busy on a Tuesday afternoon. You could have made a terrible TV series about all the lives that intersected in that room, and everyone’s problems were worse than a bee sting. And since the room had six chairs, it wasn’t long before you knew everyone’s business. Who was losing a baby, who had another nightmare and fell out of bed and broke open her head, who had a urinary infection and was cussing out her son who’d brought her to the closest place but not the most efficient. Then the police officer came in and said she had someone to drop off who had mental health issues and a dog and could they get the wheelchair please. The wheelchair. There is only one. It didn’t take us too long to figure out that we weren’t at the top of anybody’s list, but we did sit there for two hours trying to figure out if we should go on to the fairly remote area on our plan. Was Mr S getting worse? Could he breathe? How long does it take to kill you? Ever been stung by a bee? Isn’t that a line from a Humphrey Bogart movie? We could stay in a hotel. We could go home. There were a couple of other baroque scenarios. What it came down to was that neither of us could stand it any more and he decided he was okay and we up and left. Just take another Benadryl, said the receptionist.
We did get to camp, hours late, but thankfully didn’t have to drive these mountain roads in the dark.

Oh, and the point about health care in this country? Goddamn it. We didn’t even see the people who were actually being treated in those two tiny rooms behind the locked door, the ones who were really serious, or maybe just got there early. We were all sitting there because there was no place else to go. And Mr S and I, we were the lucky ones with insurance, the ones to whom it never occurred that care was so far out of reach. “You’re not from here,” said the woman holding the right side of her jaw. “It’s a small place.”

The extra is the obligatory peacock shot at a convenient rest stop, Casa de Fruta, which is advertised for miles with giant highway billboards. We call it Casa de Bathroom. Peacocks run free. There is a little train for kids, a campground, a couple restaurants, a market, a wine bar, old farm equipment. You get the idea.