Yes, I've been living in Fresno for 41 months*, since January of 2006 and have been to Yosemite once. It's absurd, like going to Six Flags and sitting in the parking lot, dating Marissa Miller and never going to the swimming pool, hanging out with Donald Trump and not firing anyone. You get the idea. Yosemite is one of the most amazing natural wonders in the United States, heck, let's say on earth, and I'm too busy to drive two hours to see it. Which is a lie. I'm not too busy. Just yesterday, I laid on a couch for six straight hours, moving only to repeatedly build the perfect tortilla chip, a Tostitos Scoop filled with equal parts bean dip, chunky salsa, homemade guacamole and a splash of hot sauce on top. I've found it's the perfect way to make each chip 180 calories. Point being, I'm constantly wasting time. I've driven to Sacramento to gawk at lost whales and to Los Angeles to play poker and to San Diego to watch other people run a marathon. And yet I can't drive 60 miles north to see once-in-a-Midwesterner's-lifetime. It's a shame.

*Because I love the computer calculator function, that's 1,247 days, 29,928 hours, 1,795,680 minutes and 107,740,800 seconds.

It's not some sort of museum where you can go a couple times and see everything. You could visit Yosemite every day for a year and not see it all. You could live in Yosemite and be amazed every single day. Now you might be saying, well, Yosemite gets a little crowded. There's lot of foreigners talking in weird languages and European women wearing these t-shirt dresses that show off their model-thin legs and it makes me feel bad that I haven't eaten broccoli or been to the gym since 1993. Luckily, there are about 8.2 million places to go besides Yosemite. Not cheap immitation, knock-off scenery, I'm talking about top-notch natural beauty -- Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, mountain tops, canyons, national forests, waterfalls, bears, sequoias and redwoods that make you stand there with your mouth hanging open.

Recently, I became inspired to finally experience the California outdoors and a couple weeks ago made the first of what will be many trips to various locations. You will most likely read them all here. I started with the "Hotel Creek Trail" in Kings Canyon National Park, which was not so much the intended destination as where I ended up when I started running out of daylight. It's impossible to get anywhere when the view along the way looks like this:

Here is the column I wrote last week about that trip, with the warning that I'm about to ruin the ending if you haven't already read it. I'll try to stall for a couple paragraphs while you click over there and catch up.

Earlier I mentioned hot sauce, and I think I can go ahead and admit publically that I'm becoming obsessed with hot sauce. It goes on everything. The other day I put hot sauce on macaroni and cheese, which sounds odd, but it worked. You'd think it would be one of those condiments that overpowers the food, the way horseradish sauce does at times, but it doesn't. It just makes everything better, and really, isn't that the point of it all?

OK, back to the Kings Canyon trip. All you do is head east on Hwy. 180 and before long, you are winding through forests and then a canyon and eventually you get to Hotel Creek Trail. Again, there's nothing special about this trail, as far as I know, it's just what I found on a map. At the end of the column, I admit that about 40 steps into what was supposed to be a multiple-mile hike, I saw a snake and got back in the car and drove home. It wasn't just a snake, it was a rattlesnake, and what appeared to be a young rattlesnake, and everybody knows the young ones are possessed by demons that make their poison up to 67% more lethal. At least that what they say, and when it comes to snakes, I believe any and all myths or rumors.

Because I knew you wouldn't believe me, I have included pictures. Everybody has a heard people tell stories about massive rattlesnakes that could take down a full-grown bison or Charles Barkley in one strike, and then it turns out what the person actually saw was a baby garter snake or an old piece of rubber. This was not the case ...

I know. Freaked me out. It took all nine of my tough-guy molecules to go get the camera and come back to this spot. And when I first got back, the snake was gone. Good lord, I was spinning and scanning and ready to Usain Bolt out of there at the slightest hiss. I had the look of a man caught in an old west ambush, bad guys shooting from the canyon rocks above. Luckily, though, the snake came out again from the same bush and I was able to take a few quick shots before peeing my pants. Mostly, I needed rattlesnake proof, and frankly I was only guessing it was a rattlesnake until I later zoomed in and saw this.

I'm sure an average outdoorsman or housewife with a wooden hoe could look at the color and patterns and know immediately it was a rattlesnake, but this is not my area of expertise.* I honestly wasn't sure until I got back to the car and zoomed in on the tail, and there it was, haunting silence and then slow music, the way it happens on "Law & Order" when there's a crazy plot twist and then they cut to commercial. Gasp! The suspect is the victim's twin! Gasp! A rattlesnake!

*In case you were curious, my area of expertise is to never, ever, ever comment when a woman is obviously pregnant. I have written about this many, many times, but there is never a reason to say anything to a pregant woman concerning her pregnancy. She knows she's pregant. You know she's pregant. She's happy, but going through a lot. Her feet hurt and her back aches. She had a good baby shower, everybody made it. She's gotten some really cute hand-me-down onesies from her sister. That's it. There's no new conversation to have. She's never going to say, "I'm pregnant with my neighbor's baby. Can you believe it? Don't tell Rick!"

And when you do say something -- "When are you due?" seems to be the favorite -- or even worse, when you do something godforsakenly stupid, like reach out and pat another person's stomach, we all know what comes next. The woman is not pregnant at all, just a female who carries weight in her belly and you just ruined her life. Or she puts a curse on you and you get brain cancer and die by Saturday. I've seen it happen. A woman could be in the hospital, feet in the stirrups, a doctor staring mother nature in the face and still the only thing I would say to her is, "Did you see Federer finally won the French?" I realize this is a pretty specialized area of expertise, but it's all I have.

Sorry, back to the woods. The signs at the beginning of the trail warn you about a lot of different things. Lightning. Mountain lions. Falling icicles. Aliens. Man-eating catfish. Termites. Gingivitis. But nothing about rattlesnakes, probably because no one would ever go down the trails and they would grow over.

I realize I could have waited out the snake and probably done the hike anyway. A couple European guys walked right by the thing, calm as defense attorneys, as I was pulling out of the parking lot still shaking. Frankly, I was pleased with my day already, hike or no. The journey to Kings Canyon, and the park itself, is so underappreciated. One of the biggest trees in the world is near the main road, along with a historic cabin and a fallen tree you can walk through without ducking. Or at least I could.

Every turnout is a new and fantastic view. This time of year, the Kings River is roaring. If you couldn't tell, I give this day-trip the highest recommendation. Even the dangerous animals are somewhat avoidable and ready to accomodate your photographic needs. I assume the entire Hotel Creek Trail is also great, but I can only speak to the first 40 steps. You'll have to take it from there.