Off on Another Spring Break Journey...

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Geo: 38.9797, -77.5298

As I noted in the introduction, after watching the Ken Burns documentary last year, we got the itch to visit Yosemite National Park. For those who saw the show -- which was unnecessarily long -- they devoted multiple episodes to the fight to preserve and then defend the Yosemite area, and it really inspired us to check it out. As it turned out, this was one of our more challenging trips to plan, as we found less-than-ideal guide books for the parks, and there turned out to be so much to see and do in the area, that setting an itinerary took an inordinate amount of time. After a long period during which we had planned to rent an RV and camp during this trip, some pretty sage advice (which was proven out during the trip) had us abandon the big rig for regular hotels...and boy were we glad. We ended up with a planned itinerary including San Francisco, three national parks (Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia), and Napa Valley.

We had an early evening flight out of Dulles non-stop to Oakland, which worked out very nice, as we had all day Saturday to take our time getting ready, and by the time we got to the airport, the bulk of Spring Break travelers had already departed. The flight was non-eventful, and we were in our rental car and on our way to our hotel in downtown San Francisco by 10:15pm California time. We were all a little sleepy -- understandable, given the time change -- and before long, we were affronted with what would become a regular occurrence during this trip -- TRAFFIC. Believe it or not, we sat almost 45 minutes waiting to pay the toll to cross the Bay Bridge into San Francisco -- unreal. I cannot even IMAGINE what traffic would be like there on a workday. Our hotel was right down on Union Square, in a trendy area with several clubs, and as we snaked our way in, we saw very long lines of people MUCH younger than K and I waiting to get past the bouncers. Hotel was great, and we were all fast asleep by midnight.

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Photos

The Donatello Hotel
Our hotel for two nights

Comments

[Mike]

hey there... will have to come back and read the blog another time.. the pictures are great