Gandl
Laura & Greg Ruhl Joined: September 9th 2008
Logged in: December 14th 2008
Logged in: December 14th 2008
Travel Blog Posts
We drove from Northern CA to our house today and had pretty smooth sailing. However, we realized that OSU was playing USC that night in football. Fortunately there is not a lot of traffic from Eugene to Covallis for OSU football games! The traffic in the southbound lane looked pretty bad and we are glad that we're heading north. We got home and unloaded the car. Tomorrow is wash day and then we'll put all the gear away. The trip was a lot of fun but I am glad to be back home in a warm bed. Our favorite things during the trip were climbing the Athabasca glacier and the star gazing in Yosemite. We've got hundreds of additional pictures that we'll be happy to show... just let us know!... read more
Alcatraz from near our hotel
AlcatrazI was so excited to head over to the island this morning! We took the ferry out there - the ride was quite smooth - not like the ferry ride I took to Ellis Island in NY. The fog was really rolling in over the Golden Gate bridge so we could only see the very top of the bridge (during clear moments). The island was fascinating, I had no idea that there was an Indian occupation during the late 1960s for over 19 months. You could still see the graffiti (now historic graffiti) that said "Indians welcome". The wind was strong (the flag over the fort was standing straight out) & the sun was very bright out near the water. Most of the buildings were not open to the public so we just read the descriptions ... read more
wind farm
We woke up early in the morning, packed up the campsite and headed out. After leaving Yosemite we headed down a very steep grade for about 30 minutes which brought us into the San Fernando valley. We stopped off at a Rite Aid because we had been unable to find a road map of California (and we would need one for around San Francisco). Greg picked up a Thomas guide and a small laminated map that had a good closeup of downtown San Fran. We also used the computer to book one of the 'cheap' hotels in town (over $200 a night). As we drove past Livermore we spotted a HUGE wind farm which looked like a wind research facility (only 1/10 of the windmills were spinning). We got into town with zero traffic (shocking) and ... read more
Upper Yosemite valley
Laura is back on the journal today. We woke up and the water faucet for the campsite was frozen solid. Cold, cold, cold! I am in 4 layers up top and 2 layers on the bottom + a wool hat and gloves. People are huddled over their fires and mugs of coffee this morning. We're huddling over our oatmeal. During breakfast we saw 5 mule deer wander along the river by our campsite. They didn't hear us and we were able to watch them awhile. We also saw a Stellar's Jay - a puffy black and blue bird - whose feathers were shiny and very pretty when it opened its wings.Drive to Yosemite ValleyThe drive from the meadows to the valley is a little over an hour long and takes us through a lot of the ... read more
Lembert Dome - campsite
Laura didn't journal an entry for today so you know what that means... Greg took her on another death march. We left Carson City in the morning and enjoyed the drive down to Yosemite. The East entrance to the park is at 10,000 feet elevation which is also the highest pass in the Sierra mountains (that has a road). We booked our campsite the night before and reserved it for 3 days. Tuolome has the best campsites (according to the guide book) but it turned out that the showers were closed for repairs. Also, all the sites in the valley were booked (once again we hit the popular park during a weekend). Anyway, the site we got is quite pretty and near the Tuolome river. The dirt in the area is very clingy... anything that touches ... read more
Laura went off to do some Laundry and Greg added some more journal entries. Today was a rest day and we took it easy. For dinner we went to a great steak place called Glen Eagles. We rolled in dirty and dressed like slobs and got put into the back room with some other 'interesting' guests (people wearing their finest tractor pull T-shirts, etc.). However, the food was much better than Sizzler! Tomorrow we're driving down to Yosemite (~2 hour drive at most).... read more
We left this morning & packed up our perfect campsite (sans showers) *sniff*. We're heading toward Carson City, NV for the night. We are again on NV50 - the loneliest road in America. They aren't kidding... every 1-2 hours we passed through a small town of 100 people. This is an issue if you have to pee because there are no 2ft high bushes around either. Luckily, thousands of years ago, some ingenious Native American carved some symbols on a rock. This was found by a settler in the 1800s and now it's a BLM landmark with... potties! These petroglyphs are a protected site but the highlight was the bathrooms in the parking lot. We have found ourselves in a 35mph construction zone in the desert where no actual construction is going on. So far, it's ... read more
Great Basin Camp
CampsiteLast night we looked around at the sites that had water and toilets and everything was pretty much full. There is an upper and lower loop campground but in between there is a somewhat hidden middle campsite (only visible from one direction on a far access road). We grabbed that site and it was great. We had our own water pump and the bathrooms were a short walk through the woods. A brook went within 15 feet of our tent so the white noise was nice at night. The campsites were primitive (no showers, pit toilets) but this is about the same level of accommodations that are found in the nearby town. There is 1 phone at the park office and another 6 miles away in Border, NV (which is on the border between Utah and ... read more
Teton Pass
Today we drove from Jackson, WY over into Idaho and then south on I-15 through Salt Lake City, UT and across the dessert into Nevada. Right over the border is Great Basin National Park. The last 2.5-3 hours were spent on the "Loneliest Road in America". We got the last campsite in the park (only 45 sites or so total) and crashed into bed (on our new air mattresses). ... read more
Jackson, WY
Laura is back to writing the blog posts today (Greg is just typing them up). Jackson, WYToday we took a morning to relax. The hotel booked a scenic float through the park for us later in the evening (when the wildlife is out). Our first stop was Teton Mountaineering to resolve the air mattress problem. Greg was very impressed by all the gear that they carried... no low quality items. They had Arc Terex, the 'real' North Face, Patagonia, and other top mountaineering gear. Greg talked with the salesperson for awhile about the mattresses while I shopped in the 50% off bin. It was the end of the summer season so they were closing out many of their items. I got a couple of head bands, shirts, and a Patagonia rain shell that Greg says is ... read more
