Faces of California (1st – 11th May 2015)
After enjoying the Pacific we headed east towards the famous national parks in California. We wanted to go to Sequoia NP and Yosemite NP.
On Friday, 1st May we went from Paso Robles, a wine area, to Tulares. We passed diverse landscape and reflected on the impact of the draught on the farms. You could see some farms active with huge water pumps watering their land, and others with signs that the farm shut down due to missing water.
Images from the drive from Pacific to Tulares:
Tulares was our base for visiting the Sequoia National Park
(with the biggest trees– in width -of the world) and the King Canyon National
Park http://www.nps.gov/seki/index.htm
. To make the ride easier we took off our Foxy (our camper) so Blacky could get
a break, at least which was what we thought.
On Saturday, 2nd May we started early in the
morning to drive up to the National Park. It was a beautiful drive along a nice
creek and we gained like 5000 feet (2500m) in elevation. We were lucky with the
weather and even though up there it was still chilly. We took a hike around a
meadow and all of the sudden we saw a brown bear in the open. He was walking
around eating grass. He didn’t get bothered by the visitors like us. We were
impressed by the size of these red woods and saw another bear behind a ranger
station. Later the day we drove north to the King Canyon National park which is
connected to the Sequoia NP. It was a nice drive but we decided to head back to
Tulares and not going into the canyon. The drive back to Tulares was really
challenging. 30 miles of switchback roads. At the end we were really tired and
still stunned by the impressions of the day.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park:
On Sunday, 3rd May we drove towards Yosemite
National Park.
On the way there we stopped at Lake Hensley http://www.spk.usace.army.mil/Locations/SacramentoDistrictParks/HensleyLake.aspx, a small lake in the backcountry to Yosemite. As many other lakes, this lake
was only at 10% of its capacity. We could walk down to the lake nearly to the
bottom. Some locals told us that there were rumors that the US buried its gold
reserves at the bottom of the lake. Truth is that there was continuous ranger
presence at the lake (campground is run by US Army Corps). We enjoyed a
beautiful afternoon and full moon there.
Lake Hensley:
On Monday, 4th May (Robert’s birthday) we
continued the drive up into the Yosemite National Park http://www.nps.gov/yose/ (you gain about 6000 feet in elevation) and
then down to the Yosemite Valley. This still took about 3 hours and was full of
scenic view points which of course we didn’t miss any. Just looking at the fuel consumption was like
looking at the speedometer in reverse :) I think we only got about 8 miles/gallon.
We stayed 3 nights in Yosemite Valley at the Lower Pines
campground https://www.campbase.com/lower-pines-campground-yosemite-np.
On Monday we celebrated Roberts birthday and the next 2 days we did nice hikes
up to the Nevada waterfall and bike/hike tours around the valley. We even saw a
bobcat strolling around people. The weather was awesome even at an elevation of
over 4000f (1200m) - but during the
nights it got down to freezing temperatures, luckily Foxy has a good heater. We
had applied for a permit to hike half dome
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkMzfJ1f_90
but we did not get it for Wednesday as we had applied to late (our planning
could improve sometimes…) We got it for Thursday, but the weather forecast was
80% change of rain and the fact that the hike takes around 12 hours didn’t help,
so we decided to skip it.
Sure enough, when we got up on Thursday morning we
had already some rain and temperatures around 35F (2C). Our plan was to take
the Tioga Pass to the east exit of the Park which takes you up to 12000f
(3900m), which just had opened 3 days earlier. Once we started to drive up
their it started to snow, we passed stuck cars, and at the junction we saw that
the Tioga pass was closed. For us with 4 wheel drive it might have been
possible to pass but we didn’t want to take a risk and went North West towards Lake
Tahoe. We took the back roads instead of going further west back towards
Sacramento, which gave us a beautiful but very slow drive through the
mountains.
Enjoying Yosemite National Park:
We stopped in Jackson, CA where we found a nice casino in an
Indian Reservation http://www.jacksoncasino.com/lodging/rv-park.
They had a recent built RV park which had a Hot tub which felt so good after 4
nights without a shower.
We had a relaxing evening there before we continued on
Friday 8th May on the mountain road (US 88) with more snow going up
to 8000 feet ( which of course Blacky confirmed with 8 miles/gallon ) and
stopped at a diverse camping site just 20 miles outside of Lake Tahoe. It was a
spot in a valley with beautiful Mountain View. There were about 5 RVs parked
there who came to enjoy the nature and the snow.
Mountain drive and Backcountry of Lake Tahoe:
On Sunday 10th May we got to South Lake Tahoe
(still California side). It is the biggest mountain lake in the US at an
elevation of 6000f (1800m). We had a nice walk on the beach with beautiful
views of the surrounding mountains. Lake Tahoe is half on Californian territory
and half Nevada. The mountains around there climb up to 13000f (4200m). We
stayed the night at a campground in South Lake Tahoe http://www.rvonthego.com/california/tahoe-valley-campground/ before we continued towards Reno, Nevada on
Monday, 11th May. It was necessary to win some money at the Casino
to put more Diesel into Blacky :).
Lake Tahoe:
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