YOSEMITE
In the summer of 1998, the parents ended up taking separate
vacations for the first time. (The four older children regularly take vacations
with their respective other parents, of course.) Marie-Hélène
missed France very much, and spent almost six weeks over there, mostly at La
Grée in
Brittany. Ian, back in the US work ethic, could not take more than a
couple of weeks off. Plus, it took us a while to get over the costs of moving to the USA the previous summer, and a vacation for
Ian not too far from home
was the order of the day. This was in the middle of the two-year period
that the household spent split up, with Nick
and Tom in Paris and the rest of us in Santa
Cruz.
Yosemite almost made up for all the problems, but not quite. The
vacation felt a bit odd. We became more accustomed to separate vacations as time
went on: it is simply not possible to leave the average professional job in the
US for more than a couple of weeks, yet less than four weeks in France is not
really enough for Marie-Hélène
to recover her native land. So Ian would stay in the US except for two weeks and Marie-Hélène
would go to Paris or La Grée for at least four. Charlie,
and then both Alex and Charlie, accompany their
maman.
During this first vacation in Yosemite, dad took the photo on the left
after the three of us had walked down from the top of these
magnificent falls. (People
are just about visible to the right of the drop.) We had all swum in pools that
were so cold that it felt like your skin was freezing, which was just what the
doctor ordered after the dry heat and fatigue of the climb up. The boys kept
their father going on the way up, incidentally making him feel very old as the
scampered up and down and around him on the upward trail, encouraging him at one
minute, and teasing him the next.
During the same trip, we spent one morning on a rented raft drifting down the Merced
river in the Yosemite canyon. Check out the knees on the right here! In fact, this (nice) photo
below left came first, before they upended
their poor, long-suffering father in the other photo!
We almost had other Yosemite pictures to add here after the
Colorado Road Trip that Tom and Dad took in
July
2004, but unfortunately the photos were all double exposed. We drove across Toulomne Meadows and hiked for a day: the Sierra Nevada version of paradise.
Then, in 2005, some of us went back together. Gael, a friend of
Nick's from Paris, came over to visit. Papa, Daphné and
Nick decided to show him Yosemite.
One day, we split up. Never one to take it easy if that can be
avoided, Nick wanted to walk/climb with Gael all the way up Half Dome, to the
very top. Daphné and Papa were less aggressive about
their day, making it to the top of Vernal Falls: see the photo on the right.
Nick and Gael made it to the top of Half Dome and back in
something like 8 hours! When they found Daphné and Papa
on the Valley floor, they both had that half dead look. But they did what they
set out to do, despite being some distance from the peak of fitness.
Here are the three younger adventurers the next day, framed by
the Sierra Nevada.
Other vacations: Disney, New
York, Florida, St Malo,
La Grée, Christmas,
Vancouver, Marlow
