Scenic- not

 1/27- Merced CA

  We finally left Northern California and Chico behind. Hopefully we didn’t wear our welcome out too bad. Our plan was to travel to Merced which is the beginning of one of the roads into Yosemite. Alayne has never been so we thought what the heck we’re right here but it wasn’t meant to be. The road is open but they require you to carry chains in case of snow and ice. Apparently they are quite strict about it but it doesn’t matter as I have no interest in driving this thing in the snow. They did get some snow yesterday so we changed our route once again. 

   The ride down from Chico was the exact opposite of what you would call scenic. The ride down 99 was filled with industrial and commercial views. Almost the whole way was plants, warehouses, storage yards etc on one side. The other side was one continuous mall. In the 50 miles between Stockton and Merced there over 7 Walmarts. Thats not counting the 3 in Merced alone. If you couldn’t buy it on this stretch of road then it couldn’t be bought. 

    This is a rough 4 lane road that has a great deal of traffic pouring over it. Most of the traffic is big semis. It wasn’t until near Merced that the traffic let up a little. 

   We stopped for the night at an Elks Club. Usually you have to be members but this is an rv park that is run by the club. It is a very nice place. They told us to walk out into the orchard and pick a bunch of oranges. That is just so cool to be able to have oranges fresh off the tree. 

   We are working our way south now though the coolness seems to be chasing us. Hopefully we will not need the heaters fairly soon. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Boom

 1/8- Cedar Point Campground     We woke up this morning to the sound of thunder in the distance. Then it started getting closer and closer but never really got here. Turns out it was artillery practice at Camp LeJeune which is just down the road. I hope they hit what they were aiming at! We had jets flashing overhead all day long also.      We walked down to this trail which was called a saltwater tidal trail. It is supposed to be the only one like it in the US. It was a nice walk with a lot of it on boardwalks over a large estuary. We didn’t see many critters but we did see a number of snowy egrets. The best time to walk here is when the tide is out as there is a lot more to see which was the case for us this morning.     After lunch we broke out the bikes and went to ride down to the beach. Once we got out of the campground the traffic got very intense. Turns out the route I thought to get to shore was a private gated community. We ju...
Read more

Break

 11/19- Onanoncock VA    We left the farm early in the hopes of getting a jump on traffic. Siri had us bouncing around on a bunch of side roads as I was just hoping she wouldn’t lead me off the edge of some cliff. The closer we got to Norfolk the busier the traffic was. Now we were on the expressway and trying to follow the winding path that was being drawn for us. We actually had to stop and get inspected before entering one of the tunnels under bay. This proved to be the woman asking if our propane was off, which it was. Back we went into the rat maze. We finally popped out and drove onto the Chesapeake Bridge and tunnel.     This is a 16 mile long bridge tunnel that crosses the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Fortunately the wind was not an issue and we drove along peacefully. We watched pelicans soaring and diving out in the bay. At the end we stopped at the welcome center and took a short walk out to an old gun emplacement. They had this huge gun that was use...
Read more

Escaping

 1/6- Kiptopeke VA    We blasted down the Eastern shore of Maryland today to get our rental car back in time. We stopped along the way and picked up Ms Allspice. She had been sitting in our friends Joe and Nancy’s yard for the past month or so. I was a little worried about her starting and I was hoping for no mouse invasions. She started right up like she was raring to go and so far we haven’t seen or found any sign of mouse habitation.      We did solve the great mystery of the disappearing mouth guard. Alayne had not been able to find her brand new very expensive retainer when we were here in the fall. We tore the camper apart and just couldn’t find it. It was truly a mystery. Turns out it was in a shower bag she had hung on a hook in the bathroom. While we searched the bathroom repeatedly we never thought to look in that bag. Mystery solved!!     We then stopped at Walmart to fill up the larder. We need to get every system fired up again. Some ...
Read more