Man on a Mission

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So started a new day… The weather was wonderful, sky clear, temperature warm and only a few clouds in the sky… Perfect weather for driving down the coast and then heading for Yosemite National Park, just one or two things to check before we go…

Statistics

Starting Destination: Fort Bragg, California
Ending Destination: Midpines, California
Ending Destination GPS: N: 37° 32.581’ W: 119° 55.374’ Elev: 2645’
Miles Driven: 361.4
Best Coffee Hut of the Day: The Jitter Bean Coffee Co.
Number of pictures taken while not moving: 4

Getting Started

Yesterday when we had been driving the Mattole Road Carl had pulled into a “turnout” to let someone pass; only they didn’t pass… They wanted to tell us that one of the brake lights was not working - we had kind of expected something like this was going on as the indicator was “fast clicking,” something that had indicated in the past that the bulb needed to be replaced. It was late when we got to the hotel, so the first order of business for Carl was to check the light - he took the back light apart replaced the bulb and tested… only to find that the light worked fine, it just didn’t work when you applied the brake or wanted to indicate. The next theory was that it had something to do with the turn-signal, one of the front indicator lights was not working, but after taking off the light cover and adjusting the bulb it started working. We (I.e., Carl as Maria knows next to nothing about vehicles) are stumped; so we checked to see if there was a dealership in town - unfortunately, no. So we keep on going… The other item we wanted to check was about Yosemite - one of the things we wanted to do was hike Half Dome, but the web-site indicated that the “cables” were down… Not knowing what the “cables” were, Maria called her brother to get the scoop… He could tell us what the “cables” were, but not what was meant by “down.” So we figured that we just needed to get there to find out more!!

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Tree Tunnels

We were going to take the coast road… But after doing a lap of main street Fort Bragg we figured that there were just too many other people doing the same thing, and that the further south we went the harder it was going to be to cut over to Yosemite… So we changed our plan and took route 20 east… This was designated as a “scenic route” on the map, but it was very similar to some of the other scenic routes we had taken… I.e., all the scenery you could see had a brown trunk and leaves/needles in various shades of green. Maria has decided that for something to be scenery, you have to be able to see the horizon the majority of the time!! By the time we reached Willits we were both heartily sick of tree tunnels surrounding steep twisty roads; and were actually glad to see Route 101 with its dual carriageway and engineered corners!

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A Different Kind of Scenery

But, we weren’t on Route 101 for long… We turned off and continued to follow Route 20… Past Lake Mendocino and Clear Lake… The road along Clear Lake followed the lakeshore pretty closely as in some cases there wasn’t much lakeshore to start with… Almost every available piece of land seemed to be covered with some sort of lakeshore holiday home - some were ritzy and new, while others looked like they hadn’t changed since they were constructed in the 1950’s…
The scenery changed again as we continued along Route 20, it was arid and seemed much drier than some of the other places we had seen. Finally we were over the last set of ranges and into the Sacramento Valley.
By this point it was just a matter of getting there - so we took the quickest route; Interstate 5. We wondered about a few things along the way… Were they really tomatoes in all those trucks, what type of fruit grows on the trees or are they really nuts and is there a rule in California that trucks must travel in the left lane except when passing? But, really what we were most concerned about was getting through Sacramento and not getting stuck in rush hour or any other type of traffic! Thankfully we missed the traffic, slowed slightly once due to an accident on the other side of the road, and only had mishap where Maria misread the map and thought we had to continue on Interstate 5 when we really needed to be on Route 99… Thankfully we caught the mistake in time and could take an alternate route without backtracking or having to go over more mountains, although it must have been a dangerous route as daytime use of headlights was required and there was a sign saying 86 people had been killed while driving on that road…

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Oh No! Not more Mountains…

Our turn-off for Yosemite was route 140 in Merced, it was clearly marked, but we were kind of confused by the sign saying something like “Route 140 open 24 hours, Vehicle limit 28 feet.” At this point, all that concerned us was that the road was open; the truck is not 28 feet long! We followed the road up, up, up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road was windy in places, but thankfully there were no tree tunnels! Our destination was a camp-ground in Midpines, and we got there before 7pm - Mission Accomplished!

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Carl’s Travel Trivia

Yesterday’s Answer: No. The World’s Tallest Tree is 379.1 feet tall… See the following for more details: NewBigTree
Today’s Question: What year was the original road built into Yosemite?

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Comments

[Dad]

Yes those semis are full of tomatos. They are in fields as big as a square mile or bigger. They are machine picked and trucked to the cannery where they are made into catsup, tomato juice, whole canned tomatos. tomato sauce, tomato paste, and any thing else you make out of tomatos. They are not used for fresh tomatos. The type of tomato size is about the size of half way between a golf ball and a tennis ball. They ripen all at the same time so only one time picking vine and all and sorted on the machine by hand by field labors. The nuts are also in big orchards, some as big as 2 or 3 square miles. Once again they are machine picked. They have a canvas cone that fits around the base of the tree it is larger in diameter than the tree then the machine very violently shakes the tree for 2 or 3 seconds which causes the nuts to fall. To pick a large tree of nuts from the time the machine pulls up to the tree till the time it pulls away is about 10 to 15 seconds. They go by semi to the factory where they are cleaned shelled or otherwise prepared for public use. Trivia for Carl. Is the tomato a fruit or a veggie? How is fruit skinned? Check the next blogg for the answer.

[Marv Bush]

Original road built
It was around 1855. MB