California Road Trip 2016, Part 7

Yosemite

We wrapped up our short visit to Sequoia National Park and moved on to our final location on our road trip early Thanksgiving day.  We headed out of the high country of Sequoia and then north to Yosemite.  Before we even got to the entrance we were seeing signs that it might be a bit busy so we quickly took advantage of vacancies at Wawona and set up camp.  We arrived early enough to make the run to the valley and take an initial look around.  Our good weather continued even though it was on the chilly side.

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California Road Trip 2016, Part 6

Sequoia National Park

Although there was certainly more we could have checked out on our trip down the coast we finished our southbound run at a pace that would allow us to make our way back northbound with a couple stops in national parks on our way home.  After a quick stop in Cambria we made our dash towards the Sierra and the foothills of Sequoia National Park.  We made it in enough time to secure a campsite at Potwisha.  Even though it was the middle of Thanksgiving week it was pretty busy and camp filled up later that night.  We had enough time to get to the top of Morro Rock just in time for sunset.

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Sierra Twilight
Sierra Twilight

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California Road Trip 2016, Part 5

South to Monterrey

After our hasty retreat from Bodega Bay in the driving wind and rain we headed south aiming to get past San Francisco on the way to Big Sur.  Our first stop was the Tomales Bay Oyster Company for a dozen tasty oysters. From there we made a stop to look around Point Reyes Station and pick up a few odds and ends.  We had intended to stop and check out Muir Beach and possibly Muir Woods but the driving wind and rain changed that plan, it wasn’t too appealing to be going for a walk in the pouring rain, so we continued on and made the crossing over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Apparently there is a charge for southbound traffic but to date we’ve been unsuccessful in settling up.  The signs say to proceed as the toll is ‘automated’ which is another way of saying it doesn’t work.  We both made repeated attempts to pay with our phones, I had one success in setting up payment but apparently guessed the wrong time we crossed the bridge so I didn’t get charged.  I tried to set up another wider time frame to no avail, every time I entered my information and submitted it the webpage would blank out my entries and I’d be back to square one.  We finally gave up and we’ll see if they mail me something.  They will probably spend half the fee collecting it from me.  Progress.

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