I spent two summers working at Camp Curry and at Yosemite Lodge as a waiter. It gave me a chance to really be there every day - to hike up to Vernal Falls or Nevada Falls. It just took me really deep into it. Yosemite claimed me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A few years after that first visit, I applied for a job in Yosemite.
Before I lived in America, my husband and I did a Californian road trip. We took a month, starting off in L.A. I love the landscapes of California: one moment you're in the desert, the next you're up in the Napa Valley or by the water in Big Bear.
When I moved to the United States, I first went to California to be the chef at Campton Place. As much as I loved California, I really missed the seasons. So when I moved to New York, I had that again.
I went to Alaska as a young man just looking for adventure. And like so many of us in the '70s, we found it.
I was a hunter and fisherman, and many a time I have slipped out into the woods and prairies at 4 a.m. and brought home plenty of game, or have gone in a canoe to the cove and brought back a good supply of fresh fish.
I grew up mostly in Germany, but my favorite summer trip was driving from North Carolina to Texas in a camper with my parents and us six kids.
I'm a Texan. Some of me is still nestled up there in the Catskill Mountains: the summers I spent with my grandfather on the farm and the guys I played basketball with in high school. But then that was it.
This was one of the places people told me to go, it was one the big trips that you should see: Alaska.
A perfect day would be to get into the car, drive out to Yosemite and go camping.
Yosemite Valley is like a tourist zoo. It's shameful.