"The beauty and charm of the wilderness are his for the asking, for the edges of the wilderness lie close beside the beaten roads of present travel." -- Teddy Roosevelt
We despised every minute of packing up the car to return to Vegas. We were returning to extreme heat and unending sunshine...the black hole of foliage. Adam (usually a lead-foot) seemed to drive more slowly each mile as if trying to delay our return. It was in the midst of this slow, painful drive that we decided to make one last stop. We turned off the road and headed into Yosemite.
The park was breathtaking. My only wish is that I could've seen it before the paved roads and throngs of tourists - to see it the way that Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir saw it - wild and beautiful. When the sounds of the deer stamping and snorting, the whisper of the wind, and the songs of the meadowlarks were the only noises that echoed through the valleys. "It was like lying in a great, solemn cathedral, far vaster and beautiful than any built by the hand of man." -- Teddy Roosevelt
"I grow very fond of this place, and it certainly has a desolate, grim beauty of its own, that has a curious fascination for me." -- Teddy Roosevelt
"Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful than the view at nightfall across the prairies to these huge hill masses, when the lengthening shadows had at last merged into one and the faint after-glow of the red sunset filled the west." -- Teddy Roosevelt
Adam and I learned a valuable lesson on that short journey through the settled wilderness...
