Monday morning and we woke up at the Grand Canyon. It’s still amazing to believe when you woke up in the morning and realize where you are! The rest of Monday was uneventful so we won’t devote an entire blog spot for that. The highlights of Monday include driving 11+ hours in California, It being the hottest we have ever experienced, Increased gas prices, porta potties at a gas station/DQ restaurant since California is in a drought, and a road stop to check to see if we were bringing any fruits or vegetables into the state. Oh and a lot of NPR.
Finally we reached Seqouia National Park. We had reservations at Lodgepole campground and so glad that we did and had nothing to hassle with. However, the roads into Sequoia are the most twisted and narrow curved roads we have driven on yet. We basically ate dinner, put the tent up, didn’t bother to even put tent stakes in it, and went to bed. We were planing to explore Seqouia the next day.
The first thing we did Tuesday was drive through the Giant Forest. It was close to our campground and a pretty drive. We then parked and walked down to the General Sherman tree, the biggest Seqouia there is, and walked around the path a little bit. The tree was more massive than either of us imagined.
We also took the short drive through “Auto Log” where you can drive through a carved out portion of a fallen Sequoia tree.
The nice thing about a park like Sequoia National Park is that if you can’t spend all day there, there is still a good bit that you can do to get the enjoyment out of it. We have a few busy days this week with a lot of miles to cover so we couldn’t spend a lot of time, so no hiking today. Which is ok, we were still a little sore from the half marathon and all the walking in Vegas.
So we headed in the direction of Yosemite. On the way we stopped in Fresno, CA at a place called Don Pepe Taqueria. It got good reviews on Trip Advisor, which hasn’t really steamed us wrong yet, and was attached to what appeared to be a garage. The food was good and the beer was served with shrimp and hot sauce. #thatsafirst. They basically had tacos, burritos, quesadillas, and tortas. There was also a woman selling baby turtles there, because who doesn’t, and we came dangerously close to buying a baby turtle.
We drove a few more hours and reached Yosemite National Park. Originally we made a 2 night reservation at an RV park. But we really wanted to try to stay on the park grounds so we called that reservation. It was far from the parks entrance anyway. We have just really liked staying at the last few parks and were hoping we would have luck at Yosemite. We entered the park at the Wawona entrance and went straight to campsite reservation. To our disappointment all of the reservable campsites were full. There were 4, first come- first served, campsite that were self pay and were advised to go check out. The closest one being about 1.5 miles into the park. So our plan was to start driving and just check the sites one by one for availability.
You start to see the granite mountains as you enter the Yosemite Valley. However, you have to wait for “Tunnel View”. We were lucky to of entered the park from the side that we did, because you drive through the tunnel and the first thing you see is this awe-Striking view of the granite cliffs of Yoaemite Valley. We agree this view and just having the tunnel open up to it like it did, has been our favorite view point so far on this trip. It make sure speechless when we drove through that tunnel and saw it for the first time.
Yosemite is a huge park, but doesn’t really look that way on paper. We drove into the Yosemite Valley before driving out of it toward the potential camp sites. On the way there we got a great view of El Capitain, another huge and recognizable granite cliff in the park.
We had 4 camp sites total to check out. At first one, the sign said full so we kept moving along. So it was about 30 minutes to the next one. There was no sign there, so we drove around looking for a spot. We could not find an open campsite in the 70+ sites. So we headed to the next one. The entrance to the 3rd campsite, Yosemite Creek, was very close to the 2nd campground we checked out. However, you have to drive 5 or 6 miles down the bumpiest and worse maintained road we have ever been on. We had to drive extremely slow and were constantly changing direction to avoid hitting a huge pit hole. This was no “fun” off roading. This was “I think I slipped a disc in my back from all of the bumping around” off-roading. If there was a spot here we were going to stay at it and never leave (until the morning). So after about 45 minutes of this road we finally get to the camp ground and amazingly there were unoccupied camp sites. We took the first one we saw, which was near the bathroom (non-flushing toilet) and near the Yosemite Creek (the water source that you had to boil if you wanted to drink or cook with it). We ate a gourmet meal of noodles and instant potatoes. Then we played Banana-grams and Rummy. As soon as it got dark out we fell asleep. We were placing out of this campsite in the morning and driving to find the closest shower!!
Dietz Summer Road Trip 