Golden Hills & green pastures
After the glorious sunset it was dark, really dark & we were in very unfamiliar territory…the mountains. The twists and turns and ups and downs in the motor home had my stomach topsy turvey and my butt puckering up seat cushion the whole way! I didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that it was dark because I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know how far up we were & how far I could see down! The curvature of the roads was making one mile feel like ten. I began to get paranoid and thought that maybe the GPS was trying to play a trick on us or that I had the wrong address. As it turns out the GPS is not some sort of trickster & I did have the right address because we finally arrived at our camp ground outside of Yosemite at about 2 am. It was kind of neat arriving when it was dark & waking up to surprise scenery of mountains & trees.
Lucas panning for gold, he was unsuccesful...
The weather here is the best! There is not one day that it gets over 75 degrees & it is always sunny. Any time I can wear a sweater & sunglasses at the same time I am happy! We had a couple of storms but they only last about 20 minutes, just long enough to settle the dust and cool things off a little more. Since we were staying up in the mountains (6000 ft) we got to do some really great storm watching as the clouds formed and headed our way.
We drove to 20 miles to Yosemite National Park the next day as fast as we could, after all this was one of places that were looking forward to the most. It was of course better than any picture that we had seen or any story that we had heard. The boulders were the size of houses & the trees were as tall as buildings if not bigger. Yosemite is so neat, right in the middle of this there is a little town with a college, a supermarket & a residential area. It was a small community full of people that lived & breathed Yosemite (literally). They even had a post office there! I envied these people because they got to wake up every day in the middle of one of the most untouched areas in the world and they still had the convenience of a coffee shop.
Trying to take in all of the surroundings was almost overwhelming. There were several times we just had to sit down in silence and just listen to the noises and try to take it all in, this was unlike anything we had ever encountered. We walked down to the base of a waterfall that was thousands of feet above us and the water was just gushing with an unbelievable force, it is amazing that this force comes from snow that is melting on top of a mountain somewhere way above that point and that even at the bottom it still has massive strength.
We then drove up to Mariposa Grove, which is still in Yosemite to see the gigantic Sequoia & Redwood trees. Some of these trees were over 3000 years old, they were here before Christ! The pine cones that fell off the trees were bigger than Lucas! They stood hundreds of feet tall and they were wider than most cars, so when I stood next to them I very much felt like Alice in Wonderland especially with all the wildlife running around too.
Thats me in the corner!
We spent 4 days in Yosemite and we still didn’t see it all, but we did see bears! That was one of our goals, we had decided that we were not leaving until we saw a bear & we saw two our last day! Chad & I agree that this was our favorite place that we have seen so far!
Its a bear!!After the crazy ride up to Yosemite we decided that it would be a good idea to make sure Humpty Dumpty’s brakes were tip top so we dropped her off at the shop again & jumped in the Honda to go to San Francisco. This ended up being a blessing in disguise because there is absolutely no way we could have brought HD through San Francisco. Believe it or not it is worse that driving through downtown Dallas plus most of the parking is below ground and it is much more congested. Walking around Fisherman’s Warf and the rest of the bay area was pretty, but it was so crowded we couldn’t walk straight & poor Lucas almost got stepped on so many times that I had to carry him most of the time. Once we got to the pier area we got a fantastic view of see Alcatraz along with a gang of Sea Lions that were pretty amusing when they talked to each other.Once we got out of down town we got a chance to see the Haight/ Ashbury area that was popular in the “summer of love” since Jerry Garcia lived there. It still seems to be home to most of the world’s population of hippies too. We were inspired to hit the road again!
Arf, arf, arf...
Down Town san Francisco
We were on our way to one of the greatest places ever, wine country my friends! Sonoma was lush with flower gardens in full bloom & vineyards as far as the eye could see, well depending on how much wine you’ve had, ha-ha. We popped into the only winery that was open by the time we got into town, which was about 430 and got to taste some of the best wine that I have ever had. It was so good that Chad didn’t even mind it!
The next day we took a drive along Pacific Coast Highway 1 and once again I was very thankful that we were in the car and not the motor home. We made it to the beach, our furthest point west. I haven’t seen the Pacific since I was little & this was Chad’s first time to see it from the states side,so again we were trying to absorb it all. The way that the sun reflected on the beach was absolutely magical. It was amazing to us how the landscaping transformed around every turn. On one side of the highway was the beach and on the other there were dairy farms and redwood trees, we didn’t know what to expect in the miles to come. We sat on the patio at a lovely restaurant and enjoyed watching the sunset while we talked about where we had been the last couple days & about where we should go next, it was the perfect ending to a perfect day and a perfect chapter!
Stay tuned for Lake Tahoe and who knows after that!
Here is the link to many many more pictures, Chad and I were channeling Ansel Adams so there are quite a few to look through!
http://tamispictures28.shutterfly.com/
Beautiful!!!
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