It was still hot, 110F mid-afternoon. We decided to try an easy walk in the canyon, nothing too ambitious. Emerald Pools trail was just the ticket, and easy; we felt in need of a bit more walking so we headed for a bit of an uphill. That was OK so we pressed on and found ourselves pretty high up and looking at a lump of rock with a path, very steep and narrow with a chain to pull yourself up along. People were coming down saying things like "man that was scary" so we just had to have a crack at it. This is known as the Angels Landing Trail, or Trial depending on your viewpoint.

I am not at ease with heights, less so with paths three feet wide with a sheer drop of over 1000 feet either side and no soft landing. Bob said "don’t look left, don’t look right and whatever you do don’t look down". The chain was essential in parts. Fear of heights flies out the window in situations like this, it goes beyond heights. We made it to the top and shared the small pinnacle with a few other people and a family of chipmunks, Mom, Pop and three youngsters. Maybe it was the tiredness, or giddiness, but these chipmunks were scurrying around so much, jumping and rolling around each other that I expected them to form a line and break out into a Disneyesque "Putting On the Ritz" dance routine. Loosing height was harder than going up; you can’t avoid looking down.

Bryce canyon is an easy drive northeast, the higher level of the Grand Staircase with spectacular and weird rock pillars known as hoodoos. We opted for a trail through Fairyland canyon, an undulating path that twisted and turned through wacky shaped rocks. Finding a spot to eat lunch turned into a lottery where the prize was not getting bitten by scorpions or rattlers. Shade was at a premium; the little there was meant we shared it with who knows how many insects and reptiles after the same thing. Like us, rattle snakes cannot survive in full sun all day, their blood literally boils. This is also mountain lion country.

We drove the long way around this western edge of the Colorado plateau further north through Escalante canyons, Capital Reef national park and through spectacular red sandstone formations, often with panoramic views. We needed to head west towards Yosemite national park in California; we chose to drive through the Great Basin, a vast, flat, featureless high altitude desert with the occasional salt lake. Bonneville Flats lies to the north of the Great Basin along with Salt Lake city.

At the western edge of this basin we drove an undulating highway through the Snake Range and onto the Loneliest Road, a pretty accurate description of dust dry nothingness. We avoided the Extraterrestrial highway, a stretch of road with an amazingly high count of UFO sightings. We did not want to be beamed up at this stage of the game. Instead we drove the Big Smoky valley to Tonopah, a real dusty mining town in the middle of nowhere. This hot, dry, sparsely populated and sparsely vegetated country seems to go on forever. Even when you get into California, it continues westwards, basically all the way to the Pacific ocean. It was beginning to dawn on us just how much of the western USA is hot, dry high country.

There are two geological and geographic aberrations in eastern high country California, and both surprisingly close together – Yosemite National park and Death Valley. To access the latter you have to loose a lot of height to arrive at below sea level and know how to cope with even more heat. We spoke to a biker some time later and he had ridden into Death Valley and he said it was 125F. At the time we made the executive decision to give it a miss. We can also vividly remember Harry and Diedre Pyle’s description of the heat when they drove their TC through California.

Yosemite National park is roughly circular in shape and consists of a granite rock mass eroded by glaciers and rivers to form wide valleys with vertical granite cliff faces. It’s a mecca for rock climbers, walkers, winter sports fan and anyone vaguely interested in the great outdoors. It is a very popular tourist destination and an easy drive for coastal Californians, so it gets busy. Some critics describe it as commercialised, which we do not think it is. It’s like every other American national park for facilities, the difference is that a lot of people use those facilities, so is that a bad thing? It is astonishingly beautiful. Anyone who drives past this needs their head examining. We entered Yosemite via June Lake and Tioga Pass, a wonderful MG driving road.

The only problem we found was the expensive accommodation in the park, which we can’t run to, or the camp sites which do not have showers. We opted for a two night camp in the park at Crane Flat, a campsite set in tall pines for shade, each spot with its own bear box. This is not something you store teddy bears in; it’s a bear-proof metal food storage box with a locking system guaranteed to outsmart any grizzly. The trash dumpsters were also bear-proof. There are black and brown bears in the park, we know because we saw one and have photographic evidence. It was a juvenile so still a bit daft and getting worryingly habituated to humans, which means it would quickly loose any fear of humans. There is a stuffed bear in one of the provisions shops in Yosemite village and judging by the size of it, why would it have any fear of humans in the first place?

Getting to sleep isn’t that much of a problem when you know bears are on the prowl, there were plenty of other humans for them to eat besides us. Bears need around 20,000 calories a day and they are omnivorous – they eat berries, shoots, roots, acorns, deer, small mammals and human junk food, which gives them the biggest calorie intake for the effort involved. They can smell food from two miles away, so they know there is food there in the bear boxes. Do they have monthly campfire brainstorming sessions where they think outside the box as to how to get inside the box?

We decided to do a good walk while we were here; Yosemite Falls Trail looked good – a 1700 feet ascent on a steep, dusty, rocky track in full sun during the morning. It was a slog. We spent the morning criss-crossing a couple of army guys, one of whom was really struggling. He said to us "feel great about yourselves, I’m 21 and in the army and you’re beating me". His buddy confided that he had been on the beer the night before and he wasn’t feeling too great that morning. By the afternoon he had fully recovered and both were in "hupp two three four" mode.

People were huffing and puffing to the top, including us, but boy what a view. You pop out right over the Falls, and you can carry on traversing a steep granite ledge to get to the very, very top where the water flows into a series of pools before falling 1700 feet to the valley floor. You can see Half Dome quite clearly along with other granite peaks. Downhill was testing on unstable granite rocks and dust. We learned later that day that a couple of climbers had broken the record for climbing the shear face of El Capitan. Yosemite is that sort of place.

It was a quick dash across California towards Paso Robles and the Pacific coast, but we were a bit bored by the fast, smooth, sedate sort of highway and freeway driving of the USA. In search of a bit of excitement, we took off cross country on a few minor roads and found rolling farmland and a twisting, narrow up and down country road that got the steering wheel working and our brains working again. It would be a great MG rally route.

We popped out on the coast at Moro Bay and headed north for Hearst Castle to pick up some decorating ideas. We joined the 4^th July holiday makers on a tour of the Italianate castle and surrounding guest cottages built by the rich and famous to entertain other rich and famous. The coast was a lot cooler with a significant sea fret obscuring much of the wide sweep of beach and clapboard beach properties. Inland at Hearst castle it was hotter, but the distant air was murky from forest fires we knew were burning. We found the Pacific Coast highway blocked to traffic as soon as we turned north out of Hearst Castle. The fires at Big Sur were out of control and had jumped roads; huge tracts of land were already destroyed and multiple fires were now burning.

We found ourselves backtracking to where we had started the day and headed north via King City towards the Monterey Peninsular. California is just as dry and dusty as much of the other states we have traversed, and as dry as much of Mexico. The adage "just apply water" is particularly relevant here and proof positive that it works. Where water has been added becomes one vast market garden. California produces incalculable amounts of fruit and vegetables; we have never seen so many lettuce growing anywhere ever. This is not agriculture, it is high tech industry.

We arrived early for the GOF in Monterey so we could park the TC where entrants would register, as requested. We had also prepared a large map showing our route on the trip so far and draped it across the bonnet. I don’t think it matters if you are attending a tiddlywinks convention, if you collect early box Brownie cameras or have a passion for MGs, if you get a group of like minded people together in one place for several days, you have a great time, guaranteed. Cars seem to attract the amusing, the wacky, the eccentric, the interesting, the extraordinary sort of person who is definitely not run-of-the-mill. MGs were built for the common man, they were meant to be affordable, attainable, driveable, and they still hold that non-elitist status in the classic car scene.

While on our trip, the TC sparked different reactions in various countries. The Chileans and Argentinians just wanted to photograph it, the Brazilians wanted to overtake it, Uruguayans were indifferent to it, Peruvians wanted to pull bits off it, the Ecuadorians wanted to kick it, Central Americans wanted to know what it was worth. North Americans wanted to know whether it was a Morgan, or a replica. We had five days where no-one asked the Morgan/replica question, which was bliss. We had also been starved of MG company for too long, with the exception of Jose in Ecuador, and Doug Pelton and Mike Campbell in the USA, so we had the chance to wallow in all things MG. We met up with old friends and made so many new friends, which is what MG meets are about.

Most MG gatherings the world over revolve around activities of some kind, usually with a social run with some sort of quiz/conundrum to solve. We have developed our own theory of surviving a quiz/social run. Rule One - if a question seems too easy, it’s because it is. Rule Two – you need to get inside the head of the person setting the questions. This is possible only by the next but last question. Rule Three – by the end of a run you WILL want to murder the person who set the questions so keep firearms and sharp or blunt instruments out of reach. Rule Four – just enjoy the scenery. Rule Five – never volunteer to organise a run/quiz.

The Funkhana was just that, a lot of fun that involved doing unspeakable things to vegetables and proving that your arthritis was worse than you thought. The concours was a chance to see a whole load of T Types in all their glory. Doug Pelton’s brand new restoration rightly won the TC element of the concours.

The presentation dinner left us holding quite a few trophies. Needless to say we won the long distance award. Something happened that completely blew us both away – as we walked up to collect our trophy, we got a standing ovation from the other entrants. We were both choking back tears and just couldn’t believe the appreciation that people were showing us for having come to the GOF and for the journey we had successfully undertaken. We have attended many international MG events over the decades, but this one was special. I think it was only at this point that we understood the magnitude of what we and the TC had done – gone on a journey that most MG owners dream of doing. It was also at this point that we publicly spoke of where we were headed next, to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. This had always been our ultimate goal and it was timely to air our ambition here in Monterey.

We left the GOF with one direction in mind – North to Alaska.

Back to Chapter 16 - The Heat of Arizona Forward to Chapter 18 - North to Alaska