Just a quick note

Hello everybody, I know a few people have been following this blog, just wanted to let you know I made a lot of progress on it while most of you were probably asleep last night. As of a few hours ago, I only had our first 2 days covered, but now I have posts on days 3 4 and 5, so you can read those, and read them in order, I know it displayed everything in reverse chronological order, but you can navigate through the posts on the menu on the right side of the screen.

Also, if didn't already know, you can click the pictures on the blog and it will enlarge them to their original size, so you can see things more easily.

Thanks for reading!

Day Five, Part Two

So we started driving down Route 395 towards Yosemite. Route 395 was interesting, as much of it was like a freeway, then randomly we’d have a stoplight. We’d go from a speed limit of 65 down to 25 in a span of like 30 seconds. We passed through Nevada’s state capital of Carson City and a few more towns than I thought we’d go through, before reaching the California border!

Figures that the only border check between any states was going into California. I couldn’t imagine why we had to go through this check. Did they think we were smuggling drugs and would bring dogs to sniff the car? Could we have been bringing in illegal immigrants? Did we have any livestock? (yes we’ve driven by signs saying we can’t bring livestock into certain places) While we of course weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary, we stopped at the border patrol, I rolled down my window, and the guy asked me, “where are you coming from?” I said “we were just in Reno.” He asked “do you have any produce?” Produce….that’s a new one, I was asked if I was bringing any produce into California. Thank God I wasn’t because who knows what would have happened to me if it was!

So we drove through the boonies of central eastern California (yeah not too many people go on vacation there I imagine), and passed through a lot of small towns. One thing of note – all the gas in this area was ridiculously expensive. Yes gas is on the high side right now, but I have never seen gas cost this much in my life. The stations in this area were charging nearly $5 a gallon. I wish I had a pic of one to show you, but you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.

Eventually we reached the eastern entrance to Yosemite National Park. Looking at the California map, I thought it would probably be about 30 miles, and maybe take an hour to get through the park, and since the Miner’s Inn seemed to be in a nearby town, I figured we’d be there by dusk. The GPS said it would take us three hours and 103 miles to get through the park and to the hotel, but I figured it was probably wrong, as its over-estimated the lengths of some of our previous drives on this trip.

Yosemite was one of the most amazing yet terrifying places I have ever been to. Words can’t describe, and pictures can’t do justice to how truly spectacular this place is. I have a little bit of a fear of heights, so driving on the sides of cliffs and through windy, narrow roads in a car I wasn’t quite used to was a somewhat unsettling experience. We made many stops in the park, and it ended up being about 57 miles through, and we spent probably 2 to 3 hours in the park itself. Here are some of the pics – be forewarned, there are a lot of them…

We ended up being in the park for sunset, which was awesome. However it quickly became very dark, and we still had supposedly over an hour long ride ahead of us to the hotel, but again, I thought it couldn’t have been that long. Near the exit, there seemed to be some sort of test for the emergency systems in the event of a fire, and we saw this amazing fire on the side of the road. Unfortunately we were unable to stop, and we couldn’t get a good angle for a picture, so we’ll have to preserve the memory in our minds.

 

We finally reached the end of the park, after many miles of driving in darkness, possibly on the side of cliffs. In some ways the darkness might have helped out me fear of heights, because I wasn’t able to see what was off the road. Then again, I was also afraid of what I couldn’t see as well. Guess I gotta get over that fear and get on with my life haha. After getting out of the park, the GPS said we had about 30 miles to go. I was hoping it was a highway of some sort in between the park and the hotel, but of course it was a long, windy road without any streetlights, so we accepted the inevitable, that it was going to be a long ride. At one point in this ride, we came across a one-lane bridge with a red light in front of it, and a sign that said “expect to wait 15 minutes” I nearly ripped all the hair out of my head. Fortunately it was only about 5 minutes later that the light turned green and we were able to continue on our trek through the dark mountains.

We eventually came to the town of Mariposa, and after overshooting the hotel, we parked and checked in. The Miner’s Inn was certainly an interesting place. The main lobby had a gift shop, wine store, and all sorts of stuff there. They had a restaurant and a lounge too. Since it was nearly 9 pm when we finally reached the place, we skipped all the exploring and just went to the room, which was probably the nicest we’ve stayed in so far. It was there I learned of the pathetic demise of the 2011 Boston Red Sox, and watched the Rays celebrate their Wild Card berth. Truly a disgusting collapse. Anyway, I didn’t have very good internet, so I wasn’t able to update this blog, and basically just went to bed.

Day Five, Part One

So we got up around 7 am Pacific time, which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, as we had just crossed over into the Pacific time zone, and got ready to head over to the continental breakfast. To save a little money, we stayed in a one bed room, and I slept on an air mattress. It takes a few minutes to fill the thing up, but what’s really cool is that if you’re sitting on it and open its…um…opening I guess you call it, and it deflates in literally about 5 seconds. This particular Super 8 had more options for breakfast which was nice. Krysta had gone down to eat while I started to pack up the car in preparation for our long journey through Nevada, into California. After I packed the car a bit, I went over, grabbed a few Belgian waffles and put them in the toaster. But one of them missed, and I got crumbs all over the place. Little did I know Krysta was sitting on the other side of the room, laughing at my clumsiness.

Anyway, it was actually pretty cold out early in the Nevada desert morning, so we hopped in the little Mazda and headed westward on Route 80. Like Utah, there wasn’t a whole lot on the road in Nevada, passed through a few little towns of nothing much. However, there was this big black truck that was going wicked fast on the highway, and was actually kind of scaring me a little, especially because whenever we seemed to get away from it, it would end up near us again. I started to think it was coming to get us.... Here are some pics of that ride….

At around 12:30 we reached the magical city of Reno. We were low on gas, so we drove around a little to find a station. The first station we went to was full, and didn’t look like it was going to let up soon. It doesn’t help that the gas tank is on the right side of the car, and I’ve never driven a car with the tank on that side. While I’m on the car for a minute, overall I’ve been pretty happy, but there are a few minor gripes (don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, rather just pointing out some things). I almost always drive a Camry back home, I’ve been driving it for years and I love it. This Mazda 3 is alright, but I still am not used to the fact that the brake is very responsive, which in some ways is good, but has resulted in me slamming the brakes on unintentionally a few times, leading to my and Krysta’s loss of breath for a few seconds. Also, it takes a little bit to get the thing moving, which can sometimes result in driving too fast after I want to, leading me to have to slam on the brake, and causing me and Krysta to again get the wind knocked out of us.

Anyway, the second gas station only accepted cash, which I didn’t want to use, and certain debit cards. Of course I didn’t realize this until after I pulled in and tried to use a credit card, so alas we left and finally found an empty gas station that accepted credit cards. From there we drove to Applebees and had a nice lunch. Pretty much right when we finished our food, we got a new waiter, which is something that I’m not sure has happened to me before. The new guy was nice and all, but I think he was trying to make up for the fact that he hadn’t been our waiter for the whole time, because he kept asking us if we needed anything, despite telling him many times that we were all set. Appreciate the enthusiasm though. One thing I have to wonder is what they do with tips in this kind of situation.

I saw a Best Buy on the way into Reno, and since I’m a techno-geek, I needed to go in to one. Of course as I often do, I went in, looked around a little bit, got nothing, and left. We then tried to figure out how we were going to get to Yosemite National Park, as the GPS said it was gonna take about 4 hours to get there, which I believed was unacceptable. So fortunately there was a Barnes & Noble in the same plaza, and we went in and used the free wi-fi to find the best way to go, and we also booked a room at the “Miner’s Inn” in Mariposa, a “nearby” town…..more on that to come