We left Dockweiler RV Park, our California beach home for three weeks on Tuesday, April 5th, headed north. We were glad to leave LA traffic, but we had one last taste of it on the 405 headed north. As we drove through the 405 cut into the San Fernando Valley, we resisted the urge to descend into ‘valley girl speech’. We went past Ventura Blvd and through Reseda, Thousand Oaks and Calabasas (just read that Aaron Donald, LA Rams, has put his Calabasas home up for sale for $6 million). We struggled to buy gas in Camarillo, our first purchase of California gas for the motor home ($250 for 40+ gallons – $5.99/gallon). There were no truck stops on the 101 and the stations were tight fits. Both Google Maps and RV Trip Wizard routed us off the 101 onto California 154 over the San Carlos Pass. We won’t do that again – really steep grade on narrow road. We’ll stay on the 101 if we do this route again. We arrived at Pacific Dunes Ranch RV Resort (https://www.rvonthego.com/california/pacific-dunes-ranch-rv-resort/) about 2:30 PM. This is a fair park on the edge of the Pacific Dunes State Park. The view to the west looks like the Sahara Desert. We were tired and ready to relax when we discovered that the RV door wouldn’t close. We finally got it closed, but then it wouldn’t open and we had to slide out the emergency door by the driver’s seat. “It’s always something!!”
Well, Martha got her tenacious engineering focus engaged (sometimes seems like myopic engineering cussedness to Walt) and took the door handle apart. She was able to get the door open and then decided to wait until the morning to further study it.
Wednesday, April 6th,
Martha continued to work on the door handle, but could not further deconstruct it. We played with the mechanism and, feeling that it was properly working, we put the handle back together. Hopefully, we’ll be lucky. We’ve vowed to treat the door gently from now on.
We left Pacific Dunes Ranch and drove through Pismo Beach to the 101. In Pismo, we passed the Monarch Butterfly Preserve that we visited over Thanksgiving. There are no butterflies there now as they have already started their migration north. Pismo Beach is a nice little town with several RV parks. If we return to this area, we’ll look at staying at Pismo Coast Village (https://pismocoastvillage.com/ ).
We traveled the 101 north, through San Luis Obispo, over the Cuesta Pass, another long hard uphill, to Salinas. Here we finally found more reasonably priced gas ($5.49/gallon) at the Pilot. We traveled west through the coastal hills to Watsonville and then turned north on California Highway 1 to Santa Cruz. From the Cuesta Pass to Salinas we passed lots of fields of berries, vegetables and grapes. We came to believe that a farmer here would also need to be a plumber. Irrigation system pipes were stacked all over the place, being put into place or moved around.
At Santa Cruz, we turned north on CA 17 to Scotts Valley then backtracked south, through Felton on CA 9 to the Santa Cruz Redwoods RV Park (https://www.santacruzredwoodsrvresort.com/). Martha had seen a YouTube video from some RV’ers that she follows about this park last summer. Knowing that we wanted to go to California this year, she went ahead and booked two weeks at the first of March. Then we found out that Brenna was going to have a baby, so we changed the reservation to one week at the first of April. Then the baby was a week late, so we reduced the reservation to three days. We need to visit this park again to see more of the Monterrey Bay area.
Driving south on CA 9 you enter the redwood forest. The sight of these huge trees, standing so straight and tall is incredible. The RV park is right in the middle of the forest, bordered by the Henry Cowell Redwood State Park. The park is nice and shady and the temperatures were perfect in the mid-70’s.
We spent Thursday, April 7th, relaxing at the RV Park in the morning. In the afternoon, we drove south on CA 9 to Santa Cruz. We had been warned not to try to drive our motorhome on this road, and we could certainly understand why. It was 6 miles of winding narrow roads bordered by the large redwoods. In Santa Cruz, we drove past the Boardwalk, a huge amusement park right on the bay and then drove out Cliff Drive to the west. It was a really nice drive above the ocean. We parked and walked on the sidewalk admiring the scenery.
We traveled south on CA 1 to Moss Landing, CA, on Friday, April 8th, to the Elkhorn Slough Safari (https://elkhornslough.com/). Brenna and Greg had given us gift certificates for this tour. We rode on a pontoon boat with Captain Joe and Naturalist Mollie into the slough (pronounced sloo and defined as a channel in a wetland. Typically, it is either stagnant or slow flowing on a seasonal basis.). Elkhorn Slough winds inland seven miles and provides vital feeding and resting grounds for a diverse population of wildlife. We saw over 100 harbor seals and sea otters (some with new born pups), four docks overloaded with sea lions and over 20 different species of aquatic birds. After the tour, we ate lunch at Phil’s Fish Market (https://philsfishmarket.com/). Martha had Halibut Marsala and Walt had their famous Cioppino, a stew of clams, mussels, white fish, Dungeness crab, prawns, calamari and scallops in tomato based sauce. We dined under a dining tarp on the beach. Very good food and atmosphere.
We left the redwoods on Saturday, April 9th, to travel east to the Sierra Nevada mountains and Yosemite National Park. We drove back to Salinas, then on smaller highways east through Los Banos to Fresno. This is the San Joaquin Valley, the “salad bowl” of America. Lots of fruit, vegetables and nut farms. Also, lots of controversy over the use of water. We saw lots of signs criticizing the governor and demanding that more of the water from the mountains be used for agriculture and not for maintaining the health of river valleys and coastal estuaries. Hopefully, more precipitation will occur in the future and the demands for water will be better met.
From Fresno, we drove north on CA 41 into the foothills to Coarsegold, CA, and the Yosemite RV Resort. This is a nice park with spacious sites on the western side of a hill at an elevation of 2100 feet. It will be our home for the next 8 days.
We drove to Yosemite National Park on Sunday, April 10th. From the RV Park, it is about 25 miles to the south gate of the park near the town of Fish Camp. Yosemite National Park was created in 1890, at the same time as Sequoia National Park and General Grant National Park (now King’s Canyon National Park). These were the 2nd, 3rd and 4th national parks created after Yellowstone (1872). The three parks were created to protect the Giant Sequoia trees that grow in all three. From their creation until the formation of the National Park Service in 1916, these parks were administered and protected by the US Army, most famously the Buffalo Soldiers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Soldier#Park_rangers), colored cavalry of the 10th Calvary Regiment that served in the parks. A lasting legacy of the soldiers as park rangers is the Ranger hat (popularly known as the Smokey Bear hat).
Martha had downloaded an audio tour app (https://gypsyguide.com/tour/yosemite-national-park/), which we initiated at the town of Fish Camp on our way to the entrance station. The apps follows your GPS progress on a map and when your location coincides with an arrow on the map, the audio begins. It was very nice narration of the history, geology and features of the park. Entering the park, we passed the parking lot for the Mariposa grove of sequoia trees. We are very early in the tourist season, so the shuttle that runs the two miles to the grove was not yet running. On the 30+ mile drive to the Yosemite Valley, we passed the Wewona settlement of historic buildings and visitor center (not open yet) and the road to Glacier Point (not open yet). Glacier point provides the best view into the Yosemite Valley and is the location of a famous photo of Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir on their tour of the park. Glacier Point was also the location for the famous Yosemite Fire Fall. Started in 1872, by the owner of a tourist lodge at Glacier Point, a great fire was built on the point and then gradually pushed off the edge. The result was a light show of the fire falling several thousand feet. The best valley viewing point was Camp Curry near the campground. At precisely 9:00 PM, the following dialogue, between loud-voiced employees, would occur:
Camp Curry: Hello, Glacier Point.
Glacier Point: Hello, Camp Curry.
Camp Curry: Is the fire ready?
Glacier Point: The fire is ready.
Camp Curry: Let the fire fall.
Glacier Point: The fire falls.
As the park service became more ecologically astute, the firefall was discontinued in January 1968. Walt was fortunate to see this phenomena in August 1966, when he visited with his family. There is a current Yosemite Firefall, in the middle of February each year, when the setting sun shines on Horsetail Falls, cascading off El Capitan, and turns the water a fiery orange/red color.
When you get close to the valley, you go through a 4000 foot tunnel and before you spreads a grand vista of the valley. This is the same view as the famous Ansel Adams photo.
In the Valley, we drove the road loop starting at Bridal Veil Falls. Despite construction, we were able to take the dogs and walkup to near the bottom of the falls. There was a lot of water falling and a great mist from the impact of the water on the rock. We ate lunch at Swinging Bridge, then visited Yosemite Village, the visitor center and the village store. We did not get up valley far enough to get the best views of Half Dome, but did have great views of Yosemite Falls. We continued the loop drive, past Camp 4, where big rock climbers stay while climbing on El Capitan and other summits.
El Capitan soars 3000 feet from the valley floor and has over 100 named climbing routes up its face. If a climber pioneers a new route up the face, he/she gets to name the route. This leads to wide variation in route names from the understandable “The Nose” and “Muir Wall” to the more descriptive “Aquarian Wall” and “Shortest Straw” to the very far fetched “Wyoming Sheep Ranch”, “Flight of the Albatross”, “Wet Demin Daydream” and “Jesus Built My Hotrod”.
Yosemite is a huge park, but most visitors only come to the valley, which was formed by the Merced River and glacial activity. To access the rest of the park, one must drive north then east on the Tioga Road to the higher elevations. Unfortunately, this road is only open in the summer, so we missed that opportunity also.
As it rained all day, we spent Monday, April 11th, relaxing and doing laundry.
We drove to Oakhurst, CA, ten miles up CA 41 north on Tuesday, April 12th. We went grocery shopping and Martha had an appointment at an Urgent care for an infection that she is battling. They gave her a prescription for relief, which we hope will take hold soon.
We spent Wednesday, April 13th, driving toKing’s Canyon & Sequoia National Park. We drove south to Fresno and then east on CA 180. This road took us up, up, up into foothills and the mountains, from 250 feet above sea level to more than 7000 feet at the King’s Canyon Visitor Center. There were some remaining snowbanks and the temperature dropped from the 60’s in Fresno to 36 degrees.
King’s Canyon National Park was created in 1890 as General Grant National Park to protect the Grant Grove of Sequoia trees. This was a very small park that mostly runs north south on the western edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In the 1950’s the geologic area of King’s Canyon, a smaller version of the Yosemite Valley, 30 miles to the east of the General Grant park, was added to the park and it was renamed King’s Canyon. Unfortunately, the King’s Canyon Scenic Byway, to King’s Canyon, was not open until May. We walked through the Grant Grove and saw the General Grant tree, the 3rd largest tree the world by volume. In the late 1800’s, people tried to fell the Sequoia’s for lumber, like their close relatives the Coastal Redwoods. However, the Sequoia’s were more fragile and when felled the lumber would break apart in many pieces, making it unusable for lumber.
We left King’s Canyon on the Generals Highway, south to Sequoia National Park. The main attraction at Sequoia is the Giant Forest, containing half of the ten largest trees, including the General Sherman, the largest tree in the world by volume. The ecological conditions at 6900 feet in this park are prime for rapid growth of the Sequoia. We left the mountains and returned to our motorhome through Visalia and Fresno, a total trip mileage of 250 miles.
We relaxed on Thursday, April 14th, to recover from the previous day’s trip and spent Friday, April 15th, and Saturday, April 16th, catching up on chores and writing blog entries. It rained all day Saturday, so we did laundry again. The down days were nice. On Saturday, we received a call from Lemolo Lake KOA in Oregon, near Crater Lake National Park. They just received over three feet of snow and did not believe that the park would be open for our planned arrival on April 27th. We had also been thinking that we wanted to have an additional stay in California, near Eureka or Klamath, so we hit the phones. We ended up reducing our stay in the California “Lost Coast”, at Garberville, CA, KOA, by 2 days and booking a campground near Klamath, CA, and Redwoods National Park for four days. We also had to alter the next three stays in Grants Pass, OR, Lemolo Lake KOA and Seal’s Rock Cove RV Park. These new plans should allow us to see more of the redwoods and delay our arrival at Crater Lake until the snow is gone.