Road Trip 08

Road Trip '08 took me from Long Beach, up the California Coast to San Francisco, then over to Yosemite National Park and back to Long Beach - it was great.

I started last Friday - rented a prius and headed up the coast to the SF bay area. The drive took me 11 hours - but it was GREAT - some of the best scenery I've ever seen. When I got to Santa Barbara it was already about 2:00 and I was HUNGRY! So I stopped and bought a couple shrimp tacos at some taqueria off an exit, then got back in my car and looked for a good spot to pull off and eat. Here's what I found...

I kept going up the coast - pulling over often to take pictures - at one viewpoint I encountered some very aggressive prairie dog type critters...they sort of surrounded the car - I didn't much like that.

The next big stop was to see all the elephant seals sunning on the beach.

The most beautiful part of the trip was right after the Big Sur area when I went over the bridge that I've seen in lots of pictures, but its pretty amazing in person. And the view at the end was pretty amazing too.

Soon enough I was in Monterey and headed back inland toward San Jose and Oakland to meet up with friends - I'm not normally one for an 11 hour car trip by myself, but it felt much more like 5 hours and you've gotta love the 450 miles per tank you get in a Prius. :)

The next morning I picked up my friend Teresa (who i worked with in Syracuse 10 years ago) at the San Francisco airport. From there we headed to my friend Catherine's loft in the SOMA neighborhood of SF near the financial district and Union Square. Catherine was out of town and generously let us stay there in exchange for feeding her cats. Seemed fair to us! I didn't have my camera in SF - left it at Chris and Cyndy's in Oakland but oh well. Teresa had never been to SF so we did all the touristy stuff - starting with a ride to fisherman's wharf on the cable car - walked all around the wharf, saw the sea lions, alcatraz, the golden gate bridge and had ice cream at ghiradelhi (sp) square. We headed off toward a cable car stop with less of a line, but ended up in North Beach (SF's little italy) and decided to just keep walking. We stopped into a famous bar to have the "house cappuccino" recommended by doreen - this is a hot beverage that was created during prohibition to look and taste like coffee, when in fact the closest thing to coffee is the Khalua liquor. It was worth the stop even though it was an unseasonable 90 degrees in SF that day. After that we had dinner at the stinking rose (garlic) and then headed back to the loft for the night. Sunday morning we got up and it was back to normal SF temperatures in the low 60's windy and overcast. We headed to a breakfast spot I knew about in Nob Hill, then to meet Chris and Cyndy (and my camera) in Golden Gate Park. We walked around much of the park, and were freezing! So we ended up at Cha Cha Cha for tapas and sangria! YUM. Some shopping in Haite Ashbury then back to the loft for take out chinese and prep for our drive in to Yosemite.

Monday morning we narrowly avoided a SF parking ticket and packed up for Yosemite. The drive in was uneventful and we arrived at Curry Village in Yosemite Valley around 4:00. (We had to stop at In-N-Out on the way in since Teresa needed to experience all of CA). We checked in to Curry Village and got settled in our tent cabin, and started going over our hiking plans for the next day.

The book we had made every hike seem way above our endurance level, but we decided we'd just go for it and do the mist trail the next day - at least if it was going to be 90 degree's the mist would keep us cool.

We set off tuesday morning for the mist trail, but to say that neither of us could read a map that day was an understatement. We ended up walking to the other side of the valley - and decided the visitor's center was a good place to start. Ranger Band-Aid (he was wearing a bandaid on his forehead for unknown reasons) told us to start with lower Yosemite Falls, and then do the mist trail to vernal falls in the afternoon - add Nevada falls if we were feeling good, or cut over to the John Muir trail and come back down if we weren't.

So we headed over to Yosemite Falls - you can see them from almost everywhere in the valley - but they're even better close up. We scrambled around on the rocks for a bit then took the shuttle back to curry to have lunch then head for the mist trail.

The mist trail with our cut back on the John Muir trail was about 5 miles round trip (we figure) but the first 2/3 of that seem to be all uphill (ok it only makes sense for 1/2 to be uphill but it felt like more). Most of the way up the trail we weren't sure why it was called the mist trail - but then you get to the granite steps (about 600 of them we heard) and you start to feel the cool mist that is sometimes more like a cold shower. It made it pretty fun (though scary on the slippery steps). We got to the top of Vernal Falls and felt pretty good about ourselves and rested there for a while.

We then headed off to the John Muir trail that had great views of both Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls (which is about half way up the trail to half dome...maybe if I lose my mind I'll go back to Yosemite and do the 17 mile round trip to half dome - don't hold your breath). 2.5 miles downhill isn't that much fun, but we felt like we'd accomplished something and rewarded ourselves back at camp with cocktails and pizza - and ibuprofen. :)

The next day we decided to take it easy and we rented bikes to ride around the valley - we also hiked to mirror lake - which is neither a mirror or much of a lake (we walked across it without getting our knees wet) but it does provide great views of half dome other peaks. We also walked through the Awahnee hotel (where the non-campers stay) and decided that someday we'd come back and spend a night there. Or at least have a meal.



Thursday we decided to do four mile trail to get to glacier point - then our reality kicked in and we decided to drive up instead. :) So we drove part way up - then hiked to sentinel dome - which is where ansel adams took his famed picture of the valley and that twisted tree. The tree isn't quite the same but the view is still spectacular (though shrouded with smoke from area wild fires). We headed back down the trail and then drove up to glacier point. From this vantage point you can see the whole valley (you could see it better if it weren't for the smoke - which was making me a little bitter). We got back to camp in time to spend our last afternoon relaxing in a raft on the river...this was another good way to see the valley.


Friday morning we got up and headed for the mariposa grove of giant sequoias at the south end of Yosemite. These are some pretty cool trees - especially the tunnel tree, but ya seen one giant tree you've seen them all (just kidding). About 5 hours later, though a lot of smoke from the fires we were back in long beach. 1200 miles round trip and a lot of cool new experiences made for a great road trip! Hopefully I can get back to Yosemite when the smoke isn't so thick!