RV Vacation of 2016: last leg, Headed home

So as we were heading out California, towards Vegas, I noticed that we are headed east on a 3 lane highway and it seems we have the whole thing to ourselves.  But the perplexing thing is that the other side of the highway is also 3 lanes, but it looks like a parking lot! And as we drove and drove, for hours, it still looked like a parking lot!  Why is east bound empty, and west bound crammed completely full of cars barely moving???  Finally, I think I figured it out... It was Sunday afternoon.  The end of the weekend.  All these cars were coming home from Vegas!! It was dumbfounding to me the volume of cars.  I obviously have no real concept of how many people there really are in CA, because if that many people left Kansas for a weekend, you would just have shut Kansas down, because there wouldn't be anybody left to run it...

Anyway, we blew through Vegas as fast as we could, camped at lake Mead, drove to the Hoover dam to see it, and they wouldn't let us through the inspection/checkpoint to go across it because I had a firearm in the vehicle.  I was so bummed and disappointed!  This has been a life long dream and goal of mine; I've always been fascinated by the Hoover dam and wanted to see it. In retrospect, I should have ejected the magazine, and chucked my handgun out the window and into the ditch.  It would be a lot cheaper than buying two tickets back to Vegas just to see the Hoover Dam! Which is what will eventually happen.

But we soldiered on; we went Northeast on Highway 15 up through Utuh.  I was pretty impressed with Utah; 15 goes for a significant way up in between what appears to be two mountain ranges.  We were driving in a large valley, green grass, cattle grazing, hay country.  It was quite rainy, and once we got up to interstate 70, our elevation was around 7-8000 feet. The rain clouds seemed impossibly close.  But the real shocker for the whole trip was that part of Utah!  Sooo beautiful!  I guess it may have been just the unexpectedness of it, but I was so taken with all the buttes and mesas.  The freshness of the rain I suppose, really brought out all the coloration, but I loved seeing the heavy, dark clouds just barely scoot across the tops of the mesas, sometimes scraping off a little puff of clouds from the underside of it.  Then it just gets stuck there alongside the mesa, like a pouty little fat kid who can't quite make it over the fence like his friends just did...

As I was driving this great big RV through these canyons and valleys in between the mesas and buttes, I felt totally dwarfed by them.  I would come around a corner and see this massive, miles long butte that would split the highway and I had a sense of being a little tiny rowboat at sea, just about to be plowed over by this massy Battleship that was three-quarters of a mile high and miles long.  The whole time I was driving this, I kept thinking: "I never knew this was here; why didn't anyone tell me??!!" So now I am telling you: Utah Rocks!

This is at a scenic look out along the highway 70

So we went to our last National Park of our trip in Utah: Arches National Park.  It was well worth seeing!  Very impressive.  We drove most of it, but stopped at one place and did some hiking and climbing.

This is called "the three gossips"

 

Cathedral Rock

Then? We jumped back in the RV and drove all the way home!  We stopped twice in Colorado for gas, and once in Kansas, but we made it home by 1:00 AM.  I drove 16 hours that day. The best part of going away is coming home!!!

RV Vacation of 2016: Fourth leg, Coastal CA

Then when we came out of YNP, we shot over west to San Francisco.  Of course we had to go over the Golden Gate Bridge...

And then we went to the Golden Gate Park, where they had a pretty good museum, but an even better free place to view the city.  It was a pretty good illustration to show the kids population density;  San Fran has about 1.5 the population of our Wichita, but in about 25% of the space.  There is only 2 ways to get that kind of  density, and that is to either stack them on top of each other or shoe-horn in together like sardines; and San Fran does it both:

We just parked our big ol' boat (illegally, I might add) at the park and rode the bus/trolley system around; that whole overhead electrical thing is a real trip, and I don't know if it is just gimmicky or what, but it messed up several times and the driver has to get out and throw the Flopper thingy back onto the wires several times.  The local people were very helpful about getting around (if not always correct.)  We rode down to the Ferry Station where they had a lot of local restaurants and food suppliers where we all got samples of fun foods.  We even tried mushroom popsicles; they were yummy! 

Freshly baked Kalimantan Olive Bread. 

Isaiah's first taste of Oysters! He prefers beef...

Riding inside the funny trollies.  They were actually pretty cool; they were made out of real metal and seemed quite solid.

The famous Pier 39 in San Francisco.

Trying the Mushroom Popsicle. 

From San Fran we just worked our way down the coast; we took State Highway One, or the Coastal Route, or Pacific Coast Highway, or just PCH.  It just follows the coast pretty much all the way to LA.  It isn't the fastest way, but that's ok, we are on vacation; we're looking for experiences! And was it ever!  I've never seen the "Big Sur" before, and it is impressive!!  Beautiful vista after beautiful vista with cliffs, beach after beach, cliffs, lighthouses, etc, etc, ad nauseum! I don't have many pictures of this as I was driving, and we didn't really stop much.

 It was a little difficult finding a place to camp, at least finding a place that wasn't 200.00 bucks a night.  "are you serious??? for a place to park??!!" But we found a few places that were affordable, at least comparatively. We had been spoiled by several places that accepted our Half-off membership of Passport America; we stayed several places that were 15-20 bucks a night.  Anyway, this next place was the first place the kids got to get into the ocean; they loved it!, especially Emma, but it didn't love her, she developed a skin rash from it.

One of the places we stayed was close to the beach at was SeaCliff State Beach, which is near Santa Cruz.  In the picture below, you see a sunken concrete ship.  Yes, a concrete ship. It was actually built (according to locals) about a 100 years ago for service in WWI, but it and its twin was completed just as the war was over, so an entertainment company bought it and parked it here and hosted dinners and dances on it for several years prior to going out of business and just pulling the plugs and letting it sink.

Big brother telling little brother all about it.

From there we landed at the Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, CA.  As you can see in the background of the picture below, it is a real wharf, with real fishermen; albeit most of the boats below are most likely more for pleasure than for working, I suspect.  But along the Wharf, you can get some really good seafood.  We recommend the chowder at "Old Fisherman's Grotto;" it has been a standby restaurant for generations at the wharf. They have an outside "to go" restaurant right next to their very swanky "sit down" restaurant that is really nice.  I know this because I used the bathroom and saw all the pictures of the owner/manager with famous celebs and big shot politicians, etc.  Anyway, it was good.  There were lots of other outdoor restaurant along this wharf, so we just wandered and grazed as had become our wont, just buying a few things to eat and experience and sharing it around; crab cakes, oysters, fish and chips, other chowders. You get the idea...  It was fun. 

There were a lot of things to do and see (and eat) at the wharf, including a museum, but we didn't stick around too long. Our usual M.O. is breeze in, eat, and breeze back out; keep moving.

I actually had to pull over and take this shot; when I saw the cattle grazing within 25 feet of the ocean cliff, I thought, "what a life, what a view, munching grass within the sound of the ocean pounding the rocks of the Big Sur..."

As we were driving, we saw signs stating that you could see the Elephant Seals if you were in the right season.  Well, apparently, we were there in the right season; there were literally 10's of thousands of them flopped out, sunning themselves.  It was so cool getting to see these huge beasts.

Then we stayed near Prismo Beach, in Santa Barbara.  Its good to see there are idiots everywhere: Apparently money can buy you a brand new Dodge dually; money can buy you a really nice toy-hauler/RV, and money can buy you whatever toy that goes in the back of the toy-hauler, but money, unfortunately, can't buy you brains... Dude drove that rig out in the soft sand and BURIED it... 

Herself...

Prismo Beach was very nice; the kids loved the ocean even though the water was still QUITE chilly.  I did not love the ocean... I'm a sissy, I guess.

As we turned our great big bus toward home, we had only one regret; that we hadn't really had the opportunity to stop at one of the many farms, vineyards, or citrus groves and kind of "nose-around" a little, because I'm so interested in the way they farm here in Cali.  I saw this vineyard on google maps, and pulled in; it was right on our way.  As I walked around and looked over their operation, it occurred to me that they not living in this privileged agrarian paradise; they live in a horrible desert, and are just making the best of it.  They have the crappiest soil imaginable, just rocks and clay, and almost zero natural rain water; they have to irrigate everything, all the time.  The only natural resource is sunshine. Now as far as natural resources go, that is a good one, especially if it never freezes.

Grapes

Grape press

More Grapes

Still more Grapes

This concludes the california portion of our trip; we were headed east, back home, with just a few more stops on the way.

RV Vacation of 2016: Third leg, Eastern CA

So in addressing California, I really struggled with my approach to it.  I have such mixed feelings; I want to like it, there is just so much to not like about it.  The  politics, the arrogant attitude of the inhabitants, all the people, etc.  But in the end, I feel that I came away with a better view of California and Californians in general, and while I wouldn't want to live there, I guess I kind of get it now.  A little.  A very little, but a little.  It is magnificent in so many ways, and so stark in so many others.  Anyway, we went from the Grand Canyon to Sequoia National Park.  Talk about an eye-opener!  Everybody needs to see one of these up close.

General Sherman is said to be the largest (by mass) living thing in creation.  While it is the largest, it is not the tallest, nor the oldest.  It was still alive while Christ walked the earth, though.  Pretty impressive, I'd say!

From there we went to Yosemite National Park. YNP was great, it was awesome, but it was kind of spoiled by all the people there; it was really crowded, at least by my thinking, even though I realized that was nothing compared to their REALLY busy season.  But it was very impressive!

This was just through the big tunnel; the iconic view: the large formation to the left is El Capitan, the "broken beak" looking one behind the round one in the middle is Half Dome, and the falls are called Yosemite Falls. 

Upper Yosemite Falls.

Lower Yosemite Falls

The kids loved rock-climbing.  Here, I show them how an experienced "Rock-Sitter" makes it happen... 

That pretty much wraps up our Eastern California portion of our trip.