Tuesday, April 19, 2011

From Groveland to Fresno

Monday started with good weather again (which was really important since this was the day of the long, narrow, low tunnels and very curvy road and many changes in elevation).  As mentioned before, we unhooked the CRV from the Moho and began our journey into and out of Yosemite.  This was our only option to get to Fresno from our RV park--so we had to travel back into the park, past Wawona Lodge, the falls, etc.  We failed to take into account the fact that this week is National Park Week---everyone gets in for free, so rather than having a relatively low traffic Monday, it was pretty darn busy with all those cheapskates ;-)....

We noted both days in the park that it must have been an extremely unusual winter, since we saw so many trees down, snapped off, mud slides, rock slides and still lots of snow in the higher elevations.  

Traveling back through the park we knew exactly where the trouble spots would be:  low tunnels, steep grades, etc.   But nevertheless the first tunnel got to us before we were ready and the moho went in first with me behind in the CRV...that was a terror watching!  We had walkie-talkies and I'm telling Jeff, "shade left, shade left!" as I'm having visions of the top right half of the moho being ripped off by the low hanging rock inside this long tunnel!  Luckily he did an expert job of running down the middle and still allowing cars to pass in the other lane....I married well.

There were 4 tunnels of varying lengths, some with 10'5" curb side clearance (and by curb they mean the rock tunnel edge) and our moho is about 12'...hence the worry!  The pullouts are not plentiful but we still managed to only get the finger from a couple of cars, made our way to the end of the park, passed through thinking we were "out of the woods", but the curving and bad roads continued to just outside of Fresno...what's up with that?  

We continued to Tulare, where we had reserved a spot at the "Sun and Fun RV Park."  I haven't mentioned much about the parks we've stayed at yet, but we both noted how different each RV park is from one another.  This one was a bastion of cats, all well cared for, but VERY clean showers, restrooms and laundry facility.  I did 3 loads of laundry (we brought our own detergent and softener) and was finished quickly.  In every RV Park there are always a few long-term folks there for whatever reason...here there were probably half the spots long-term.  It's an interesting lifestyle, and probably perfect for folks with construction jobs, or travel-intense jobs.  Some of these folks are really set up in high-end, big $ fashion...and some are not...

We watched a wonderful story about John Muir on PBS after dinner.  Really was perfect given his affinity for Yosemite and his efforts to have it recognized as a national park.  Interesting story on this life and writings.




 

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