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Published: October 14th 2008
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Next stop on the agenda was Yosemite. What we didn’t plan on was the hordes. We thought since it was after the school and uni holidays we wouldn’t have any problems with finding a camp site but we didn’t bank on it being a weekend…well every man and his dog was out and we ended up not being able to camp in the valley but ended out at Crane Flat which is about a 30 min drive from the valley. It wasn’t really that much of a problem as the drive and camp grounds were very picturesque. Only problem I had was ‘no hot showers’, actually no showers at all. The’ no electricity’ I could cope with as we were equipped with torches and we were able to get a good campfire going. Malcolm and I decided that we only needed the bare necessities for camping, not the usual trailer load that we take to Byron Bay but we hadn’t really banked on our aging bodies not liking being so close to the ground. We found that the advertised “21/2 inch” self inflating mats (which they should really label 1/2in) just didn’t cut it and we found that the so called
40F rated sleeping bags we had were fine only if you wore all your thermals to bed.
On the second day we decided to do the touristy thing and took a 2 hr open bus tour around the park which gave us a great overview. It would have been nice to spend more time and do some of the many walks but with so many things to see and so little time we thought we would leave it to the next trip (if there is a next trip)
The second night we decided that we would pay the $5 and take a shower at the public washrooms in the valley before going back to our campsite. After seeing the sunset at Glacial Point we arrived back at our campsite cold and weary and ready for a hot meal and a campfire only to find that someone had taken all our firewood…so not campfire and no hot meal…we ended up having a cold chicken sandwich and going straight to bed.
We are slowly getting used to using our GPS and being able to estimate the miles before a turn off and not making so many ‘detours’. At least
when you go the wrong way it re-calculates and re-directs you. So with our trusty ‘Tom’ taking pride of place on the dashboard we headed north.
From Yosemite it was a stopover for the night in a little town called Merced….really a nothing town but at least the motel had WiFi. Walked a couple of blocks to a local little café where the waiter was amazed... “what! you walked all that way?”
Next stop was San Jose where Malcolm was looking up chiropractic colleges. Lani was a little ‘pissy’ about going back to San Jose. After doing 2months at a summer camp in San Jose she thought she was done with the place. I think it’s probably part of her trip she would rather forget, but if you are going to make your trip tax deductible then you have to make like you’re doing work, hence the stop at chiropractic colleges.
Late afternoon finds us driving up the coast road where we get to see a spectacular sunset over the ocean…it was almost akin to driving the Great Ocean Road. Since we are on a budget we are looking for cheap motel accommodation of which none is to
found along the coast road ($200/night is not with in our budget). Obviously there was a reason for us not finding accommodation….if we didn’t double back we would have missed out on the awesome sunset over the water. We doubled back and headed inland where we found this quaint motel called Highland Hill Inn which is located along a very picturesque river of which we are totally unaware until the next morning. Upon arriving we found that there was a ‘no vacancy’ sign and are glad that we had rung ahead from the service station. Next morning we found that we are only 1 of 2 bookings at the hotel and the ‘No Vacancy’ is to deter drop-ins. It is off season and they are only open on weekends! Looking for somewhere to eat presented another problem as we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. We eventually found a little township called Garberville with a few places open for dinner and what a find it turned out to be, not only did we have dinner but they also had entertainment. Each night of the week they have different local entertainers and the night we were there it was
a band called ‘Out of the Blue’ a little 3 piece band consisting off a fiddler, guitarist and drums. We enjoyed ourselves so much we ended up buying their CD which has added to the repertoire of music for our listening/driving pleasure….that makes 2 CDs…can’t seem to get the MP3 player to play through the TOMTOM.
In the morning we found that the inn has canoes that you can use so we donned our paddling shirts and off we went for a paddle down the river. It was quite a novel experience, 2 of us paddling an unstable canoe to 20 paddling a dragon boat.
After a leisurely breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, OJ and coffee (a real breakfast according to Lani) we finally managed to leave about 10 o’clock.
On the way is a beautiful drive through the magnificent Avenue of the Giants… 9km of dappled sunlight…there is just something magical about driving through a stand of trees that are so ancient, so strong and so tall…it’s hard to explain, they just seem to exude a timeless energy…and you are just a miniscule visitor in their lives. By this stage we were getting a little tired, we
made it as far as Eureka and stayed at our first ‘Motel 6’…neither of which are anything to write home about. It wasn’t until the next day that we realized it was only another 40mins up the road to the Redwood National Park where we could have camped amongst the redwoods….oh well there’s more time to camp.
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Hi Les and Mal - all looks really fantastic... wish I was there! Did you get Jimmy and Annes address? Hope so - Send our love to all.