The Southam Family Road Trip: High Sierra’s

Transferring from the hotel to the RV was relatively simple process we used BART (not Simpson) but San Francisco’s tube system took us from a few yards outside the hotel under the bay (a bit scary if you start to think about earthquakes!) to within a couple of miles of the Cruise America rental site the last bit done in a taxi shared a “vet” (forces veteran, not animal doctor) who had an opinion on many things British and a Sheik driver.

On arrival at the depot we found that our vehicle would not be ready until 3pm so this put our journey plans back a couple of hours this coupled with a total lack of directions from ReserveAmerica.com meant that we did not find our intended camp site and ended pulling in to one we came across by accident at 11:30 at night but it was somewhere to sleep.

In the morning it was apparent that we had found a good site, but we were on our way again after breakfast the plan was to follow the shore of Lake Tahoe and then on to our camp ground for Yosemite. The maps show the road closely following the shore line, there is a catch however, that is maps are two dimensional and do not show that at times the road is up to 2500 feet above the lake! There was one point that made everyone have a very sharp intake of breath we came round a corner after a very long climb to find on the passenger’s side a drop of a mere few hundred feet in to a ravine with no crash barrier and on the driver’s side also with no crash barrier a sheer drop of 2500 feet down in to Emerald bay!!!!!!

It has totally impressed me how Alison is coping with driving the RV this vehicle is 25 feet long 12 feet high and 11 feet wide and as such does not handle anything like the anything she has driven before, she certainly lets me know that she is feeling a “little uncomfortable” with driving on the switch back roads in the mountains but she handles them with a great deal of skill, although she does not think so.

The road also took us through some places that we know by name from the wine shelves in ASDA Sutter Creek for example and passed numerous other vineyards.

Again we suffered from a lack of directions from ReserveAmerica.com and ended up at the wrong campsite but we coped.

Today (Sunday) we visited Yosemite National park to see the Giant Redwoods they certainly are impressive and how they can survive with holes through the trunks is one of nature’s wonders. We then went paddling in one of the many streams that run through the park, what a lovely way to cool down, before returning to our RV Park for a much more relaxed evening than the last two nights.

Tomorrow Whale watching!