Oregon or bust...

We were sad to leave Monterey but we've got somewhere to be.  We left Lindsey's and headed towards San Francisco.  Daniel decided to steer away from the northern coast of California because he heard the roads may be a little hard on a VW bus.  Charlie has gotten us this far, let's not push our luck!  So across the bridge and into Sausalito we went.   

After leaving San Fran we made our way back towards the coast, wanting to get as close to the oregon border as we could.  Most of the state park campsites were full,  but we were able to camp in a parking lot right on the beach across from a state park.  It was freezing cold but there were a couple of local guys in the water that were diving for abalone.  They took some time to talk to us about abalone (since neither one of us really knew anything about these creatures), and even let us take a peek at one.  They have to be at least 7 inches to harvest, which I read can take as long a 19 years.  And the meat cost more than $70 a pound. Needless to say they didn't offer to share....

We also had some free entertainment from a local guy feeding the seagulls.  Now I must tell you that before this evening of fun began, he showed us his medical marijuana license for his "aches and pains" and offered us some of his best remedy.   We declined and proceeded to watch him have a good time with a sandwich and a big freaking seagull.  Guess you had to be there... or be stoned!

our beach view

We made a short stop so Daniel could see if he could get Charlie through one of the redwoods.  It cost us $10 to find out we were a little to big on top.  Daniel did try to gather up  a tour group of senior citizens to load up into the bus to try and weigh it down, but no one was interested.  Maybe next time....

The weather was looking like rain, but I wanted to take a break to walk on the beach.  We stopped at beach with signs that read "Beware Sneaker Waves"  Not sure exactly what a sneaker wave is but it doesn't sound like something fun.  I was in awe of how dangerous this beach actually looked.  With the gray sky and the never ending pounding of the waves onto the beach.  It was beautiful.  Nothing like this in Florida.

Back in the bus!  A quick ride through the redwood forest and Oregon is in our sights!

Nothing like a view....

So we made our way out of Yosemite heading for the California coast as well as some warmer weather.  We stopped outside of a little town called Gilroy for some fresh picked roadside cherries.  If you've been to or through Gilroy then you know about the distinct smell that is Gilroy... garlic!  The entire town smells of garlic, seriously the entire town.  We saw many signs boasting of the best "garlic ice cream" but Daniel and I were too nervous to give it a try.  Back in the bus and on to Monterey.  The excitement was building as the mountains were behind us and the road started to flatten out.  Here's a pic of our first view of the Pacific...

Daniel was right when he said you haven't seen a coast until you see the pacific coast.  For me it was love at first sight.  We made it to my dear friend Lindsey's house and she took us for a drive down the coast towards Carmel and Big Sur.  We took the highway all the way to Big Sur and stopped at a great little burrito bar for a picnic.  

Me and Linz

After leaving with our belly's full of burritos, Lindsey took us down a narrow road to Pfeiffer Beach.  It was amazing.   The wind was blowing so hard that my fedora (as previously seen in the pic) had its last moment atop my head before taking a dip into the pacific.  If you're going to loose an accessory then I can think of no better way.  Here's some pics of Pfeiffer Beach.

We got up the next morning to terrific weather and a drive down the 17 mile loop which follows the coast down through Pebble Beach and Carmel By the Sea.  By far one of the more beautiful drives for me.  We enjoyed the drive as well as managing to get a little bit of shopping down in Carmel.  Well... the shopping was more for my benefit but don't worry about Daniel.  Before I was done he had managed to make friends with two gentlemen waiting outside a shop for their wives.  He meets no strangers.  We went back to Monterey and luckily were able to spend some time with Lindsey's beau, Dennis.  We decided to head down to the beach for some vino, surfing, and a bonfire.  Dennis has taken up surfing while out in Cali... can you blame him?  The wine was delightful, thanks to Lindsey, who by the way has a sweet part time job at a winery.  We spent the evening watching the surf as well as the surfers and of course... a beautiful sunset.

Pebble Beach golf course

The Lone Tree

coastal residents

enjoying our vino

so nice

Yosemite

After Zion we were faced with a couple hundred miles of the Nevada desert before reaching Yosemite, there is nothing that will make you question the mechanical dependability of the vehicle your driving than facing a sign in Nevada that says “Next Services 150 Miles”. We decided to take the “Extraterrestrial Highway” across the desert (being that it not only sounded cool but also made the most logistical sense), I recommended that we stop and make some aluminum foil hats to protect us from the aliens but Tina deemed foil hats both unnecessary and unfashionable, luckily we had no “encounters”. The E.T. Highway is just miles and miles of nothing but cows, sand, and a closed hotel called the Alie-INN, that’s pretty much it.

The "E.T. Highway"...

Tina trying to catch a ride...

150 miles of nothing... probably the longest stretch yet.

Yosemite was pretty exciting and brought on a new high and a new slow for the trip, we hit just under 10,000 feet elevation crossing Tioga Pass, and getting there took several miles driving in second gear. I was complaining about having to downshift to third going up hills in the past, well that was before Tioga Pass, second gear and contemplating first on several occasions. I’m not sure what the incline percentage of Tioga is but coupled with 10,000 feet elevations it gave Charlie all he could handle, I got tired of pulling into turn outs every ¼ of a mile because they made us lose our momentum (which is crucial in a Bus), so by the time we reached the top Charlie was looking like the pace car at the Daytona 500, but we did make it! Eventually…
Yosemite was amazing, Tina thinks it’s the most beautiful place so far, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Entering Yosemite from the East Entrance

Freezing at almost 10,000 feet elevation

Almost to the top...

What a view

More Yosemite beauty

A waterfall in Yosemite Valley

Tina and Yosemite Valley

A bear that Tina was so happy to get a picture of...

We didn’t get to stay the night in Yosemite because they had over half the campgrounds closed due to a late snow, but on the way out we stopped and saw some of the Giant Sequoias. And theses are some amazing trees, they are immune to fire, bugs and disease, grow 30 feet in diameter and have been known to live over 3000 years. The only reason a sequoia dies is because the mountain wears out around its roots and the tree falls over, otherwise they would pretty much live forever. Here is a couple of our Favorites…

They get up to 30 feet in diameter

These things are huge

This is called the "Grizzly Giant"

In the fifties you could drive through this one

We had changed our plan of driving through Las Vegas in order to see Zion National Park on recommendation of some bikers we had meet at a McDonalds in New Mexico. Neither one of us really cared to see Vegas but I wouldn’t have minded trying my luck at the roulette table for a spell and I wanted to valet park Charlie at the MGM, but other than that Las Vegas has a time and place and this trip really wasn’t it. And we couldn’t be happier with our choice.

Zion Canyon

Zion is a canyon that is cut into the limestone mountains of southern Utah, it was first settled by the Mormons, it’s a beautiful place and all the mountains and peaks have Biblical names still to this day. Its hard to compare the Grand Canyon to Zion because its two totally different experiences. The Grand Canon is just awe inspiring and mind boggling, but you just kind of stand on the rim and look down, but in Zion they have one of the most amazing roads that I have ever driven on in my life, and that’s saying a lot. Its cut right through the bottom of the canyon, well in most places, but it does zig zag, have a two mile long tunnel and some of the most amazing cliffs I’ve seen. Tina and I both agree we like Zion more than the Grand Canyon based solely on the fact that you are in the Canyon looking up, which is a whole different feeling. Zion to me was like going back in time, well some places in Texas was like going back in time also but Zion was like going way back in time, like prehistoric times. Standing there looking down the valley with 3000 foot sheer cliffs on either side, a crystal clear river flowing nearby and lush green almost tropical type plants growing everywhere I couldn’t help but imagine a T-Rex or some other prehistoric creature roaming in Zion. Its really a very “Jurassic Park” looking type of place. At least that’s what I thought, but you decide for yourself.

Traveling cross country is kind of tough due to the fact that you never know where you will be staying the next night, well at least we can’t really make any set plans driving around in a 32 year old VW. I pretty much just drive until I get worn out, which could be 475 miles or as low as 200 dependly on the terrain, and then there is the “we could break down at any moment and be making a campsite on side of the road” thought that is always with me. So not being able to plan ahead causes us to just kind of wonder into campgrounds about 4 or 5 hoping they have a spot for us, which thus far we have been lucky. But in Zion the only spot available for us was in the group section, and in the group section you never know who or what you will be stuck spending the night next too. Well fortunately we got lucky this time and ended up parked next to a young couple from Switzerland that turned out to be quite enjoyable. They had been living in a tiny apartment in Manhatten for two years and for their last 4 months in North America they decided to buy an old car off of craigslist and drive it around the U.S. and Mexico, which they have been doing since March. And not just any car, they picked an ’88 plum colored Chevrolet Station Wagon that had a huge dent down the drivers side. Turns out they had been in two wrecks since leaving New York, the first one in Memphis which caused one of the doors to stop working, then another in Mexico that somehow fixed the broken door and now it works just fine. They had two weeks left in the states and were heading to Vegas, said they hadn’t been there since getting married at a drive-thru wedding chapel two years ago, so they were pretty excited. Heres a pic of that ’88 plum colored beauty, and this wasn’t the first one they had bought, a few years back they toured Australia in one that was older and in worst shape than this one! I think I’ll stick to my VW’s…

Here is a pic of that plum colored beauty

The Grand Canyon

After leaving Flagstaff it's about an 80 mile drive up to the Grand Canyon, and let me tell you the anticipation was building the whole ride up. Everyone has seen countless photos and documentaries showing how big and wonderful the Grand Canyon is, and we heard from everyone we talked to that you can't understand how big this thing is until you've seen it. Well let me tell that they are right, photos, videos, I-max, none of these do this great canyon justice, and Tina doesn't think the Grand Canyon is even a good enough name for it, of course she couldn't come up with anything better even though she tried for two days. It actually makes you dizzy trying to take it all in, just standing there looking at something a mile deep and 3 miles wide is hard to grasp, and in most places you can't even see the river at the bottom. I'm not going to try and explain it anymore because its just a waste of time, I'll just post a few pictures and tell you that you need to go see it, its worth it.

Our first peek at the canyon

Proof that we made it

A really good picture that Tina took

We did manage to find a campsite in the park without a reservation, which is a miracle in itself, we just decided to ride through a campground that had "Full" signs posted everywhere and sure enough there was still a vacant site. Even though the sites in the park have no electricity or water hookups I convinced Tina that waking up 100 yards from the south rim of the Grand Canyon would be well worth the trade, so that's where we stayed for the next two nights. The way Grand Canyon National Park is set up it doesn't really take more than a day or so to see the whole park, unless you want to hike down into the canyon, but we weren't really set up for that so we opted not to hike it this trip. So we just toured pretty much every view point that is available on the south rim, well Tina toured the south rim from about twenty feet from the edge being she has a problem with heights.

an honorable mention

If you look close you can see two rafts

Another thing we noticed at the Grand Canyon were all the foreign tourists, they are everywhere! Not sure if this is normal or just maybe they are taking advantage of the low value of the dollar at this time, but either way I would estimate 70% or so were speaking some other language. And it seemed to lean heavy towards the Asians for some reason, so much so that I coined a new word, "Vacasians", you heard it first here!

The Colorado River just up from the Grand Canyon

A cool picture of Charlie

We have decided to pass up Las Vegas so that we can go visit Zion National Park instead, its a few hours north of the Grand Canyon and just inside of Utah, we heard its absolutely beautiful and can't be missed.

Arizona... part one

Reaching Arizona immediately put us in tourist mode, we were not 30 miles in before we made our first stop at the Petrified Forest National Park, turned out we were more into the "painted desert" part of the park than the whole petrified forest section. The petrified forest was pretty amazing but the painted desert and blue mesas were beautiful! Enjoy these pics...

The Painted Desert

Tina at the Painted Desert

The Blue Mesas

The Tepees

After leaving the forest our next stop was Winslow, Arizona so I could get my picture taken "Standing on the corner". Just in case someone still lives in a cave that is a line in the song "take it easy" by the Eagles, actually it was their first hit in 1970, and it has been Winslows claim to fame ever since. They have dedicated a corner to the Eagles and they call "Standing on a Corner Park", imagine that. Its consist of a statue of a "70's guy", two gift shops and outdoor speaker that perpetually play songs by the Eagles, sounds cheesy but we couldn't pass it up. Even Tina who made fun of me about the idea at first ended up wanting her picture taken on the "corner" after she saw how cool I looked.

"Standing on a Corner"

Tina "Standing on a Corner"

We made a little stop in Flagstaff to stock up on some food before heading up to the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff and northern Arizona wasn't what either of us were expecting, for some reason I always pictured Arizona as a desert, but thats not the case for the northern part of the state. Flagstaff was an awesome town engulfed by a forest of ponderosa pines, very mountainous and plenty of trees always makes for a beautiful place. Flagstaff was the 2100 mile mark of the trip and left us about 70 miles from the Grand Canyon. Its a beautiful drive up to the Canyon and it consist of some really high summits, the highest we have seen so far is 8046 feet, but we hit a 8000 footer and a lot of summits in the 7000s, old Charlie just poked along up every single one of them. Good for us some states out here took the notion to put a sign at the summit of most of the highest points letting you know the elevation and that you have reached the summit, its actually become a very pleasant sight to round the corner on some steep climb and see that beautiful green sign sitting there letting you know that its going to be downhill for awhile. I'm sure Charlie and the traffic behind us are just as glad that we've finally reached the top. I've decided to make two post out of Arizona, so that way the Grand Canyon will have its own post, because its going to take a whole post, Tina went a little crazy with the camera.

Just north of Flagstaff

Tina

Charlie