Yosemite

Yosemite National Park: You know, don't you, doing "nothing" is impossible for a certain member of this traveling party??? At least we did sleep until 8 a.m. and sat outside with our coffee before deciding "nothing" meant a thorough cleaning of Goldie (30 minutes) and 18 holes of golf! Snickers actually cooperated and only barked for a few minutes when we left him in his crate. I took DT to the Awahnee Cow Pasture (oops, I mean, Country Club) and he played 18 holes, while I took my as-yet unhealed hand to the supermarket and re-supplied our fridge. Back to Snickers and a bit of needlepoint before Snickers and I drove back to Awahnee to fetch our duffer. It was just a lovely day - we needed the air conditioner.

Snickers, enjoying the California sun

We were enjoying a pre-dinner glass of wine in the sun about 6:30 p.m. when a rental C-Class came into the park and began to back into the site next to us. I went inside and begin to prepare our dinner, when DT called me outside and said, "Terry, the people next to us have never set up a motor home and they are German." Ta-Da! Finally, my foreign language studies called upon! Turns out our new neighbors were from Berlin, had rented this small motor home in Oakland and had headed up to Yosemite! At least they were adventurous! Jorge, Angela, Florien (16) and Marcus (12). I could not believe the rental company would send out an expensive piece of equipment like a motor home in this condition! Several of the campers came over to help, as they did not really have a suitable sewer connection or water hose! Scandalous! And no instructions! (We have seen scores and scores of Europeans in these rental units - you would think the companies would provide instructions in several languages????) Of course, this is a member-only park and they were totally 'crashing' - but the park was not even half-full, so I didn't even try to figure-out how to explain THAT in German!
 
Anyway - with their little camper leveled and plugged in to all life support systems... would you like a glass of wine? Ah, the magic word - and they joined us at our picnic table (Snickers no longer decorating the table) and, several glasses of wine later - between his English and my German - we were old friends. The kids had a two-week break from school, so the family decided to see California. Since they live in a huge city, they wanted to only visit the "wild" parts of California. DT and Jorge pored over maps. Jorge edits news film for CNN International in Berlin. Anyway, after all this... DT and I had dinner at 9:30 - but we didn't care, as we had made another acquaintance on the road.