Mendocino California  July 10-14, 2014

We left Monterey headed north for Mendocino.  We had a little excitement when trying to pull off the site.  When Dale pulled off the trailer brakes locked right up and the wheels wouldn’t turn.  Tried again, same thing.  He got out and looked at the wheels, axles, etc and didn’t see anything wrong.  Then he checked the emergency cable on the hitch.  Somehow when turning to pull out of the site the cable got caught on something and pulled out, immediately locking up the wheels.  When it was rehooked up everything went fine.  At least we know the emergency cable works and will do its job if really needed.

We drove north through Oakland instead of San Fransisco.  We drove over the Oakland Bay Bridge,  a toll bridge.  They charged us $20 toll to go just a couple miles over the bridge.  Prices are high in California. 

We drove north on US 101, then had to cut over to the coast to Mendocino on Hwy 20.  It was a very steep and twisty road, and it took about an hour to go the 30 miles or so.  The bad news is we have to go out the same way.

We pulled into the campground,  Caspar Beach RV Park.  It was the most crowded campground with the closest distance between sites that we have ever been in.  Our site was between a big 5^th wheel (that we later found out had knowingly set up about 1 ½ ft into our site so they would have more room) and an old rental trailer with a bass boat and an old dented Lincoln Navigator SUV.  Dale came around the drive as wide as possible and attempted to pull in but couldn’t make the angle without hitting the corner of the rental trailer.  He then backed up and came around again and eventually backed in, but a couple of campers had to move their trucks.  It was an extremely crowded campground, and also turned out to be noisy and busy, people and vehicles coming and going all the time.  The next day Dale went up on the roof to see if pulling wide around the drive near our site through low hanging trees damaged anything on the roof.  Sure enough,  the trees had caught on the TV antenna Wingman and tore the whole antenna loose.  Over the next couple days that we were there he took pictures, called a couple Camping World stores for repair estimates, talked to the campground maintenance man and manager (who agreed it was their fault for not trimming the trees back) and by the time we left Monday morning we had a check for the amount of the repair estimate from the Camping World near Portland OR, the closest one on our route.

Part of Damaged antennae

       

The  northern California coast proved to be very cloudy, cool, and misty at least part if not all of most days we were here.  On Friday July 11 we went into Mendocino,  a little town that was used as Cabot Cove in the filming of the old TV show “Murder She Wrote”.  We walked through the Farmers Market, and around town to the little shops.  Katy found a toy store and bought a couple games to use in her classroom next fall.  We also got coffee at a little shop, The Goodlife Café and Bakery. 

Cute cottage in Mendocino

The Mendocino Coast



They put sweaters on a lot of the trees in Mendocino
 

Because the weather is so cool and cloudy we decided to cancel our reservations at Trinidad, out next scheduled stop up the coast and go to Arcata CA instead, a little farther inland.  Made reservations at the Mad River Rapids RV Park.  It has great ratings and hopefully will be much nicer that Caspar Beach. 

Saturday we went into Fort Bragg.  We had homemade ice cream at Cowlick’s.  It was very good.  Also did a little sightseeing and found a bike trail that goes along the ocean shore for about 5 miles.  Sunday we rented a bike for Katy at a motel along the shore and rode along the coast.  It was a beautiful ride, even had some sun along the way. 

Katy & I along bike trail

Beautiful coast view from bike trail

More Pacific Coast from bike trail

   

We then went down to Glass Beach.  It is a large area of beach that is made up almost 100% of sea glass,  broken bits of glass that over the years have been polished smooth, with no sharp edges.  We had to climb down a little ways to the beach, but it was worth it.  We spent about a half hour collecting glass of all colors,  mostly green though.  After all the exercise today we ate dinner at a BBQ place called Q’s.  Very good pulled pork and beef brisket.  We even got some to go so we won’t have to cook tomorrow night.

Our last morning in Mendocino.   We drove out the twisty turny road to Willets and headed north on 101 toward Arcata.  We saw some smoke in the mountains and then saw a helicopter come down with a big bucket and scoop up river water and head towards the smoke.  Looking forward to next stop in Arcata and hopefully more sun.

Monterey CA June 10-14, 2014

Monterey California   July 6 – 9, 2014

We headed down from Yosemite Lakes CG via the Priest Grade on 120.  It wasn’t as bad as we had anticipated and we had left early enough that there wasn’t so much traffic coming up as we feared.  The traffic going northbound was bad, maybe people returning home after the July 4^th weekend but southbound toward Monterey was OK.  We arrived at Monterey Dunes RV Park and pulled into our site, #52.  It is a nice park, and sites are somewhat  separated  by trees and bushes.  We walked across the street and about 1/3 mile down to the beach.  The Pacific Ocean and beaches are different than the Atlantic in our experience.  There are no shells or rocks washing up like we found on the East Coast. 

On Monday July 7 we went into Monterey to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  It is a big place and has exhibits on various tropical fish, jelly fish, cuttlefish, squid, sea otters and others.  The colors were amazing.  We also went to a short talk about Great White sharks as well as one another about creatures under the sea. 

Jelly Fish

Jelly Fish

Ocean Sunfish (looks like only half but that's all there is)

Hammerhead Shark

Various tropical fish

Various tropical fish

Katy in a clamshell

Cuttlefish

   

Sea Otter

We took the free trolley to Fisherman’s Wharf and around downtown Monterey.  We stopped at the Café LaStrada for coffee and snacks.  Very relaxing.

Tuesday we headed down Highway 1 toward Big Sur and San Simeon. Since we were going south we were on the outside lane where we could see out to the ocean.  It was a twisty turny road, with some grades, but it was a beautiful drive. 

 Just north of San Simeon was a vista point (scenic turnout) called Elephant  Seal Beach.  There were LOTS of elephant seals laying on the beach, “barking”, fighting, and swimming .  The males grow to 16 ft long and 5,000 pounds. They were very interesting to watch.

 San Simeon was another beautiful area with a very scenic bay.  We could see the Hearst Castle up on the hill but we didn’t tour it.  The bay had a long pier going out into the ocean so we walked out on it.  There were several bottlenose dolphins swimming in the bay.  We watched for quite a while. 

   

Wednesday we called Princess Monterey Whale Watching and made reservations for the afternoon cruise.  Since we got to Fisherman’s Wharf a little early we went to Café LaStrada for coffee and sat on the plaza awhile.  We sat on the top deck of the boat, The Greatland, where we could see all around.  After a 45 minute or so ride out into the ocean we saw a whale blow out his blowhole and then surface and show his tail fluke as he re-entered the water.  The blow hole spray was the clue that a whale was about to surface.  We saw 2 whales in the area and watched them for about 45 minutes.  The whales we saw were humpback whales. One even breached, coming totally out of the water.  It was a really cool experience to be able to see the whales.



Monterey Bay Waterfront

HumpbackWhale

                     

Yosemite National Park June 12-19, 2014

We left Sequoia NP and drove down the mountain through Fresno.  Stopped at a Raley’s grocery store  (similar to a Family Fare) and restocked on a few things.  Went on to El Portal via Hwy 140.  Part of the road was restricted to vehicles no longer than 45 ft.  We were just over that with the bike rack on the back but we went through.  There was a narrow one lane bridge with a traffic light on either end to regulate cars going over.  Fairly sharp turns to get on and off bridge, but we didn’t have any real problems.  Got to Indian Flat CG in El Portal and set up.  We were able to go in as a pull through since no one was behind us at the time.  There was a tree branch that was touching the kitchen slide and we asked the manager if we could trim it back a little. She called the maintenance man and he came and broke off the whole branch – it fell, barely missing the roof and side of the trailer.  That was a close call. 

 

Friday we drove into the Yosemite Valley.  Just inside the gate there was a rock tunnel that we had to go through that said 13’6” clearance.  No problem with truck only, but a little disconcerting to know that we would have to pull the trailer through when we left the Valley. 

             

There also was an overhanging rock near the edge of the road we used daily to exit the park.  It was plenty tall, just interesting to go under.

Once in the Valley we took the free shuttle around to get an overview of the Valley,  about an hour ride.  We saw Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, etc.  After lunch we walked back to Yosemite Falls Overlook.  We met people from Jamestown who knew people we knew,  small world.  That evening we went to a Theater program at the Park – The Tramp and the Rough Rider.  It was about John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt’s meeting re: making the Yosemite Valley a National Park.  2014 is the 150^th anniversary of the land grant to set aside the land as a park. 



Yosemite Falls (Upper & Lower)



Upper Yosemite Falls

 On Saturday we stopped at Bridal Veil Falls first thing when we got into the Park.  It is a very high falls, but will probably dry up in the next 2-3 weeks because of the drought and lack of snowfall this year. 

Bridal Veil Falls

We hiked up to Mirror Lake later that morning and had our lunch there.  Again due to the drought there wasn’t much of a lake. 

Sunday – Wed. we took our bikes on the truck into the Park. It was much easier to get around by bike than having to wait for the shuttle to get anywhere.  There are bike paths that go to most areas of the Park, although there are a few small sections that you have to ride on the edge of the road. 

We rode up to the Mist Falls Trailhead and then hiked up to Vernal Falls.  The section to the footbridge and  the lower falls was mostly a paved trail. We went on from there to the upper falls, where the last section involved some walking/climbing over rocks. The total hike was 3.4 miles round trip with a 1,000 ft. elevation gain.  Dale went to the very top section, I didn’t make it the last little way.  Heights aren’t really my thing.  But he got some great pictures of the Falls.




Vernal Falls

 We also took the shuttle to El Capitan, a sheer granite cliff in the Park that is popular with climbers.  A Ranger had a telescope sited in on a climber and we could watch his progress. The climb to the top takes 3-4 days.  Climbers rope themselves into the side of the mountain, or attach little bivvy sacks that they sleep in, all the while hanging on the mountain overnight.  They have to pack in and pack out everything, including waste.  Not for me!





El Capitan

 

 

When we got back to the Campground that night there was a huge red trailer parked there that looked like a train car.  They were serving dinner from the side of it to their passengers,  Germans on a holiday tour across the US.  We talked to the driver and he told us it has sleeping berths like a train.  They were on a 30 day trip from New York to San Fransisco visiting lots of National Parks in the West.  It was an amazing site – like nothing we had ever seen before.

                       

 

The Red Touring RV

 On Monday we drove to a part of the Park called Wawona.  We had a nice breakfast at the Lodge there.   It reminded us of Mackinac Island.  We took at shuttle from there to Mariposa Grove, an area of Sequoia trees in Yosemite.  They were big, but not near as impressive as the ones we had seen in Sequoia Natl Park.  We then drove over to Glacier Point.  It is an amazing view from there,  3200 ft high.  You can see the whole Valley – Yosemite, Vernal, and Nevada Falls,  Half Dome,  and lots of other areas we had seen at ground level. 

Half Dome

                   

View from Glacier Point

Rock at Glacier Point over the Valley

 Tuesday we biked through the Park again.  We saw a Park Service helicopter lower a couple rangers and a stretcher down on Sentinel Point and leave.  That is a section where people can do a hike called Four Mile Trail that goes from the Valley up to Glacier Point.  Later that day we saw the helicopter landing in a meadow.  We rode over and they were unloading a hiker from the helicopter into an ambulance.  He was sitting up and drinking water and seemed OK.  He had his lower leg and foot in a cast.

Park Service Helicopter

We took a Valley Floor Tour.  It is a flat bed truck with seats on it, open air, with a Ranger that tells about the Park and what you are seeing.  We stopped at a couple places to take pictures and walk around a little.  It was an enjoyable ride, but since we took it so late in our trip we had already been to and seen most of the places we toured.

We drove out of the Park a little way on Hwy 120 to see what the tunnels were like for when we leave the Valley to go up to the north side of the Park to the Tuolomne Meadows area.  There are 3 tunnels that we have to go through.  On the entrance side of the first two the height at the curb is listed as 13’6” on a sign before you enter.  The sign at the 3^rd entrance lists 10’4” at the curb as the height.  Our trailer is 12’6”.  When we came back through the one tunnel showed 13’6” and the other 2 showed 10’4” as the heights.  Apparently the side that has a little walkway is a little higher since the curve of the top of the tunnel is farther out from the side.  Our dilemma was whether or not to attempt to drive through the tunnels (the most direct route) or to go way around back through the length restricted section and other mountain roads). 

Wednesday in the Park Dale talked to a driver of a Pepsi delivery truck.  He routinely goes through the tunnels on his route and his truck is 13’ high.  He said if we stayed to the center we should be fine.  The decision was made to go on Hwy 120 through the tunnels.

               

The trip through the tunnels was fine.  We left early hoping that there wouldn’t be many oncoming cars.  There wasn’t much oncoming traffic, only one RV with big mirrors like ours and we squeaked by each other. 

We arrived at Yosemite Lakes Campground and found a site and set up.   Then we went into the town of Groveland about 18 miles away to get groceries and use internet at the library.  That’s when the situation with Dale’s Dad’s health began.  We ended up flying home on the red eye out of Sacramento Friday night and made it back in time to be there when his dad passed away Saturday afternoon.  We plan to pick up the trip at some point in the future. Katy had planned to meet us in San Fransisco and be with us for a couple weeks, but we had to skip the second part of Yosemite and San Fransisco.  We all flew back into Sacramento on July 4.

 We returned to Yosemite Lakes and moved trailer to a regular campsite for the night.  We then went up to Olmstead Point and Tuolomne Meadows.  It was a totally different area from the Valley.  Grand vistas.



Olmstead Point views

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuolomne Meadows

Tuolomne Meadows

Tuolomne Meadows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow we leave for the coast and the Monterey area. It will be very different to be in a city rather than in the National Parks like we have been in the last few weeks.