I recently took a day-trip to hike the Upper Yosemite Falls and emptied my gas tank on a strip of road that some of you know as Highway 120. For those that are unfamiliar, 120 is a highway that the majority of Norcal residents drive on to get to the famous Yosemite National Park.
The Highway, A Place
In Norcal, it’s no surprise that Heytea is packed with groups of Asian people chatting around waiting 20 minutes for their mid-matcha on a Saturday night. On Highway 120, it’s not a surprise that Dboni’s Pizzerria—that’s selling amazing pickle pizza—is packed with families on outings, zoomers hogging arcade cabinets, and kids playing air hockey on a Saturday night. If you’re a little brown, Asian, or both, you’ll get a nuanced stare.
There’s no Denny’s on the corner, but there’s a Hawaiian inspired diner named Hula’s—nearly one hundred miles away from the Pacific Ocean—that surfs their home-style chili in a milkshake cup. The diner is a place where good-ol Dale (he looked like one) takes a look at your store’s AC for free just because you mentioned it and where someone’s mom calls you honey sincerely.
There’s no high-end restaurants, but there’s Priest Station Cafe which is on the side of the highway, 2450ft in elevation that serve American burgers with French flair, Priest au Poivre, and luxury views of the rolling valley with cars steering through winding roads as its main entertainment.
It’s a place where the posh job isn’t engineering, but its working at one of the National Parks. Where AI isn’t a palooza, but a weird thingy-ma-bob and foreign object that’s being used for wildfire intelligence, “So it’s just smart about wildfires? How does that even work?” Same.
It’s where the zoomers are incentivised to work not just for money, but to serve their community earnestly through locally owned and inherited businesses. It’s a place where the tip isn’t an overdone aggression, but a sign of respect and support for your neighbor. Where a mile of road has all the amenities that a town needs; a bar, gas station, school, diner, and a grocery store. It’s a bubble, but the money actually goes into The People’s hands.
It’s a highway where cash only flows in, where nearly a quarter of the working population commutes out-of-county, driving up to 7 hours everyday to make a living. As the sunsets, hundreds of cars queue up on a single piece of road eastwards, surrounded by nothing but plains with some trees, crawling at 40 miles per hour, detached from life in exchange for financial stability and hopeful mobility.
It reminds me of an America that Wanda visioned, somewhat.
Susquatch Spotted at Yosemite
Covering hundreds of miles with hours of time before I could actually hike, I queued up my favorite band Susquatch. Their jazzy math rock sound—with progressive, victorious, and reflective tones ever present in their whole discography—fueled my journey with excitement and exhausted any regrets of past memories, wasted time, and burnt money. It has the power to turn a mid-west emo white boy, Japanese—wondering about their whole life all again on their last days of the year driving down the streets towards Yosemite.
On the way up to the Upper Falls, looking at the expansive views, I spoke to the world shouting, “What the fuck,” every so often. I never got a response back other than the comforting and polite white noise coming from the waterfall flowing down from a mile away.
At the top, I met up with some familiar characters that I passed by before. The trail obliviously split into two and us three were confused where the end of our trail was. I teamed up with Serena and Jocelyn and we wrapped back to the overlook. What the fuck!
I offered to take pictures for them at the edge of the cliff, but they were so kind to take pictures of me first. Serena remembered and re-offered me their beef jerky that I refused 2 miles ago, when I was out of breath wisping, “Maybe later.” Struggling past them while they were recuperating. They were from Los Angeles visiting their family in Jamestown, “Where is that?” I asked. I thought it was sweet how we had no commonality between us, but we still sat in relation, eating the shared snacks and gazing at the same gorgeous view.
Descending, about 60 Hello Bro’s later and some quick lore drops, I met two grandmas from New Jersey! I love New Jersey! My quads were blasted, I was heavily panting, slipping on the rounded rocks, and they were casually going down the trail having a wine mom conversation.
“How are you?” one of them asked, waiting for me to pass.
“Tired. How about you guys?” I was squeezing by.
They were watching me go down the steps. “Oh we’re great, this is the usual for us!”
I was flabbergasted. “Are you guys local here?”
“No, we’re from New Jersey!”
Oh my god. “I love New Jersey! Have you hiked Mount Tammany before?”
“Yes, of course!” I was now a staircase beneath them.
That super short conversation made my day. Finally some familiarity!
I really hated walking down so much that I wish I could’ve jumped off and deployed a default Fortnite glider. It’s such a drag retracing your steps for 3 hours, but it coincidentally mesmerized me.
The sky was a clear gradient blue transitioning into white, perfectly blending in with the peak of the snowy mountains in the distance. A great chunk of the valley was engulfed in a bold shadow, cast by an enclosing mountain that the sun stood on top of—shining upon its neighbors and revealing the smoothness of their freshly painted sand colored stones as some protruding rocks hid their own in the dark.
Funnily enough, this epic view that was somewhere in the middle of the trail was better than the one at the top. I’m not sure how I missed it going up, but maybe I just needed to stop, look back, and see it all from a different perspective.
