Day 30 Headed for Barstow

We left Yosemite about 8:30 to drop off the rental car and head on to Barstow. It took about 2.5 hrs to get to the Merced Airport to return the car and did not arrive at the CG in Barstow until 6PM.
What a long, long day of driving and Barstow is in the middle of no where. Nothing today of interest to report. Tomorrow we head for the Grand Canyon CG.

Day 29 The Last of Our Time at Yosemite

These are more photos of the trees at the Marisposa Grove.  Spectacular!!!!

 

 Obviously there had been some type of fire in the area. These trees are from 500 to 700 years old, so it was fortunate that they were not destroyed by fire.

In the afternoon the Rangers were offering a talk on bears in Yosemite and I walked over to hear. Boy they talked for almost 2 hours, but a lot of good information and a little scary learning how smart and creative the bears were to find food or anything that smelled like food. Fortunately we did not have any bear encounters.

Each night at the end of the day we sat outside, built a fire in the fire ring until bed time. With no electricity or heat--what else is there to do?

Day 29 Another Day at Yosemite

In the mornings we try to visit different areas of the park. In the afternoon, we just relax in our campsite. The Merced River runs right behind our campsite as well as the amphitheater where the Rangers give talks.

We walked over to the river and on the way back there was someone that wanted to remind us that he had no had his "Go OUT" time in the playpen.

That Bentley face--I think he needs his own blog.

 

 

We drove over to Mariposa Grove on the south side of the park. The Sequoia trees were huge and beautiful to see.

 

 

More of Day 28 at Yosemite

As we walked over to the falls we saw a Mama deer with her twin fawns. they were so cute and were busily eating what looked like ferns in the field. They paid no attention to us or any one else as they moved closer and closer to us. They certainly weren't afraid of people.

 

This are the Falls---what, you can't find them? Neither could we. In the Fall, the Falls are no more. No melting snow--no Falls. So sad.

Day 28 More Yosemite

We spent today taking the shuttle around the Valley area to see what was there. It was a very easy on and easy off ride so that we could stop where ever we wanted and catch the next shuttle within minutes.

Mark Skomp was truly right when he said Yosemite was spectacular. It absolutely is.

 The tents below are the ones that are closed at Curry Village because of the Hantavirus. It is actually right around the corner from our CG in Lower Pines, but we are in a MH so there's no problem there.

 

 We saw lots of deer around--but no black bear.

 We went over to the Ahwahnee Hotel and when we were going in, we looked up and saw a few climbers scaling the rock. Very scary!!!!

This is the covered walkway into the Ahwahnee.

 The rooms are large and beautiful. Notice the size of the fireplace in the larger room below.

 

 

 

 

 

Day 27 Yosemite NP

Getting into Yosemite from Merced, Ca took quite a lot longer than we had anticipated. We went to
 Avis car rental at Merced airport to get a rental car. We wanted to be able to drive around Yosemite to see what we wanted since we would only have 2 days there. The drive was about 75 miles from the airport, but what a long and slow 75 miles. The road was in good condition, but it was narrow, hilly and winding with a good bit of traffic. Most of the traffic was coming out---most likely people going on on Sunday afternoon.

As you can see---one of us is not worried about the drive in to Yosemite.

It also took us a while to locate the CG as signage and the lack of direction was poor and we were lost driving all over. Two and a half hours later after leaving Merced we were in our site (#36) in Lower Pines CG. There are no hook ups in Yosemite so we were roughing it (at least for me anyway).

This place is so gorgeous. The trees, rocks, etc--you are truly in a valley with everthihg surrounding
you. Since there were no hook ups it was a quick set up. Let our the slide and we're good to go. We were amazed that we had phone and Internet access (due Io our Verizon hot spot). It isn't a good signal, but at least more than we anticipated.

We set up the kitties playpen, took out a couple of chairs and the action began. The squirrels and birds we everywhere. The kitties were so excited. They have been pretty bored in the other CGs due to lack of wildlife, but this one made up for it.

 

 

 

The view of Half Dome from our camp site is terrific. The sun was beginning to set and highlighted the top of it. Tomorrow we will  be taking the park shuttle to see the main areas in Yosemite Valley.

Our Internet connections are very bad, so I'm sure my posts will be behind.

 

Day 26 Our Last Day in Lake Tahoe

Our day was very quiet today. We headed across the street to the Zephyr Cove Marina for breakfast and a nice walk on the dock. The whole complex here is very nice.

Zephyr Cove is the marina for the Dixie Queen paddle wheeler tour of Lake Tahoe.

They also have a sailing cruise that leaves 3 times a day and you can rent boats here at the marina.

 

 

 

We returned to the CG for a little time with the kitties before taking a long drive around the area and a visit to shops near Harrahs Casino.

 

Tomorrow we head out for Yosemite NP for a few days. We will miss Lake Tahoe. It has been one of the nicest CGs and places we have been. We probably will not have phone reception or Internet access until we leave Yosemite, so I will have to do triple time trying to catch up with my blog next time.