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Published: November 24th 2009
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Day: 78 miles: 6000
Mendocino was our last Pacific Ocean location. Ron got to fly his glider on Casper Beach and I collected gobs of beach glass and then we were off to Vacaville.
We had hoped to avoid crossing mountains by going farther south, but evidently there is no way to avoid mountain crossings. We were on highway 128 most of the way; a windy, twisty two lane road with plenty of hairpin turns that was hard on the driver and equally hard on the passenger. Folks who are nervous about driving by edges (Doreen!) would have a very rough time along some of this ride. The views can't be beat. We drove through Alexander and Napa Valley where vineyards went on for miles and miles and every few miles there was a winery and wine tasting available. Fortunately we didn't stop for samples or we'd still be there.
Our destination was Vacaville where we stopped to shop - Luck is with us this trip. I won a free turkey and a $5 gift card!! What to do with a 12 lb turkey and a freezer the size of a
.At Weber's
Jean got on her uniform for the picture - no gun! bread box in the camper? The solution was to take it to our good friends, the Webers, the next day. Jean and Chuck are still the same as many of you remember them - check out the picture. Yup, that is Jean in her Vacaville Police Volunteer uniform. Their 13 acre ranchette, just 5 miles out of town, is lovely and the critters are too cute. It was a great visit with long time friends.
From Vacaville we headed to Yosemite. Yosemite wasn't in our original plans because we thought the snowy weather would make travel there too hard. But the forecast was good and snow was only in the higher elevations, so we went for it. This is another one of those enormous parks with so much variation in topography. We stayed in the Wanoma campground along the south fork of the Mercer River. We were able to see many of the classic Yosemite sights with elevations from 4,000-6,000 feet. There was snow along the side of the road at 6,000', and Tioga Pass at 9,000' was already closed. From our campground it was only 35 miles to the Yosemite Valley, but the drive takes
Smooches
Molly the llama getting up close and pesonal with Ron over an hour because of the slow speed on all the hairpin turns and 9% road grades. In the late 1800's, when this area was just getting established as a national park, visitors would make the same 35 mile road trip by stagecoach. It would take them 8 hours and 4 different sets of horses .
Our biggest problem at Yosemite was the lack of heat in the camper at night. Since there were no electric hook-ups in any of the parks campgrounds, we couldn't run the furnace. By morning the camper windows had ice on the inside and even though we had 3 blankets and wore warm clothes to bed we were still freezing. So we decided to head to Death Valley and warm up for a while. We're about 200 miles away now and in a Flying-J truck stop in Barstow. This is part of the Mojave desert and as you might expect the landscape looks parched and dry except for those areas that are irrigated for agriculture. Again, along the way there were more miles and miles of vineyards - this time it looked like they were used for juice and raisins.
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Rich
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Very nice.
What beautiful scenery, thanks for sharing.