Great Basin National Park

We visited the Great Basin National Park today.  It was established as a national park in 1986.  The park derives its name from the "Great Basin", the dry and mountainous region between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Mountains.  The park protects 77,180 acres.  Mount Wheeler is the central symbol of the park.  It is a 13,063-foot mountain and is also the home of the Wheeler Peak Glacier.  We drove the "Wheeler Peak Scenic Road", which is a 12 mile road up the mountain.  It stops at the 10,000-ft mark.  From there, hikers can take trails clear to the top of Wheeler Peak.  Another part of the park is the Lehman Caves.  It is a small cave, but has many unique formations, such as stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies and soda straws.  The bad news is that you can only enter the cave through a park ranger led tour.  All the tours were booked today, so we weren't able to visit the caves.

Wheeler Peak Scenic Road

Wheeler Peak

A picture of Wheeler Peak between two Aspen trees.  The aspens are starting to change to their fall color.

A windmill farm in the Nevada valley

The Loneliest Road

We drove 216 miles across the state of Nevada on US-50, commonly known as the "Loneliest Road".  It received its notoriety from a July 1987 story in Life magazine that dubbed US‑50 “The Loneliest Road in America.”  I can see how it received its nickname.  There was very little traffic, just a few small towns and the scenery was boring.  We did drive past the Naval Air Station Fallon, which is home to the Naval Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN), and the surrounding area contains 240,000 acres of bombing and electronic warfare ranges.  We saw some fighter jets flying around, but we didn't see them bombing anything.  The road was fairly level, but we did go over some mountain passes that exceeded 7500 ft.  The road was also the path of the Pony Express.  Artifacts from the Pony Express era, as well as plaques from various historical societies marked the sites.  We have successfully made it to Ely, NV and are staying the weekend at the Ely KOA campground.

Driving down the "Loneliest Road"

Hello Nevada

We left Plymouth, CA and drove across the Sierra Nevada mountains, via State Route 88, also known as the Carson Pass Highway.  The highway summits at Carson Pass, which reaches 8574 ft.  We saw some snow covered peaks, and although the road was clear, some of the ditches beside the road did have snow in them.  It was a pleasure driving SR88.  The mountains were pretty and all the pine trees smelled so good.

Bear Lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains

The Sierra Nevada mountains

Caples Lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains

RoxAnne made me stop along the road so she could pick up some pine cones

State Route 88

Movie and Diner

This is our last day in California.  It was in the low 90's and sunny today with clear skies.  Spent most of the day at the pool.  We then took in a matinee show at the movies and saw "The Kingsman: The Golden Circle".  It had a lot of funny parts, but most normal people would say that it was a stupid movie.  At one point in the movie, the character Merlin, starts singing "Country Roads".  I couldn't help myself and started singing along.  After the movie we went out to eat at Mel's Diner.  That pretty much summed up our day.  Getting ready to leave in the morning and driving east.

Amador County

We didn't do much today.  We took a nice drive through Amador County.  It is home to over 40 different wineries. Amador County is renowned for its Zinfandel, but many other varieties of wine are produced as well. The County has a high percentage of old Zinfandel vines. Some of the Zinfandel vineyards in this county are more than 125 years old and are believed to be the oldest Zinfandel vineyard in America.  We also visited the Amador Flower Farm.  They had many varieties of flowers, but their specialty is daylilies.  They offer nearly 1200 daylily varieties in pots all year at the Flower Farm.  While we were driving, we drove toward Sacramento and stopped at the Davis Ranch.  The ranch is a big working farm that has a nice produce stand.  Their motto is "As Fresh as It Gets".

The countryside in Amador County

Flowers at the Amador Flower Farm

At the Davis Ranch they pick fresh corn and deliver it by cart directly to the produce stand.  The staff then pack the corn in bags and sell it to the customer.  That is how they got their motto "As Fresh as It Gets".

RoxAnne Feeding the Ducks

No Hot Water

We have not had any hot water for the last few days.  Every faucet had cold water, but when you tried to get hot water, there was no flow at all.  Our previous camper had the same issue, so I knew that it was a bad check valve on the back of the hot water tank.  It should be an easy fix if I could get the part.  As I looked at the issue closer, the hot water tank was located in an area in a storage compartment under the bedroom and behind some panels.  I took off the panels and soon realized that I wasn't going to be able to fix the problem.  I called a mobile RV repairman.  He was able to reach the bad component, but could not find a replacement part.  After some discussion, we decided that the check valve wasn't all that important, so we just eliminated the valve.  Now we have hot water.  Not knowing if we were going to get the camper fixed today, we decided to go ahead and stay at our current campground till Thursday morning.  We have a really nice site and during the week the campground is almost empty.  We went swimming this afternoon and we were the only ones in the pool.

How can I ever get to the hot water tank?  I know, call a mobile RV technician 😀

The bad check valve was basically a plunger with a spring inside this black plastic fitting.  We never did find the spring.  It is probably still in the hot water tank.

We did do laundry today.  They had a nice big laundry room.

The campground has two pools and a hot tub. Nobody is swimming.

We can't have an empty pool.  RoxAnne enjoying this heated pool.  The outside temp was in the high 80's.

Barbecue and Wine

We met up with my cousin Karina and my aunt Marge today.  We started with eating lunch at a restaurant in El Dorado, CA called Poor Red's BBQ.  It had great food with good service and a great atmosphere.  I had a half rack of ribs with onion rings.  RoxAnne and Karina had a pulled pork sandwich and fries.  Marge had a healthy salad, and added an unhealthy serving (but good tasting) serving of fries.  After lunch we drove to the Shenandoah Valley Wine Country.  It was very picturesque seeing all of the vineyards.  We stopped at the Wilderotter Winery and the girls participated in some "wine tasting".  The winery had a nice lanai and we sat at a table most of the afternoon taking in the sights and just talking.  It was a great day :)

Folsom

We visited my aunt Marge today that lives in Folsom, California.  Folsom is in Sacramento County and is commonly known for Folsom Prison.  It was a great visit and we went out to lunch at a local restaurant called Pete's.  My aunt is a master at sewing quilts.  As we walked into the house, she had many of them folded on a set of shelves.  After eating lunch, we toured the city and even stopped in at the Folsom Prison.  Folsom is probably best known in for concerts performed at the facility by Johnny Cash, particularly in 1968, when the two shows of January 13 were made into a live album.

The entrance to Folsom Prison

They have a museum outside of the prison

Ducks hang out at the creek beside our campground

A few of the many quilts that Aunt Marge has made

Visitors beside the Folsom Prison gate

Plymouth, California

We left Willits, CA this morning and drove to Plymouth, CA.  It was a scenic drive as we drove over the Klamath Mountains.  After making it over the mountains, we entered the Sacramento Valley and drove south till we hit the capitol of California, the city of Sacramento.  Google maps wasn't kind to us today.  We got lost in downtown Sacramento and it kept wanting us to make a U-turn.  A U-turn is fine in a car, but pulling a 35 ft camper makes it much more difficult.  Thankfully, RoxAnne was able to get us back on track and we made it to the campground.  We like the site we were assigned (see below).

(Interesting News:  We just missed a 5.7 earthquake)

Highway 101

We left the Redwood National Park this morning and traveled south on Highway 101 to Willits, California.  Highway 101 is nearly a 1,550 mile long highway that starts in Port Angeles, Washington.  We traveled highway 101 when we were visiting Olympic National Park.  The southern terminus of highway 101 is in Los Angeles at the East Los Angeles Interchange, the world's busiest freeway interchange.  While we were traveling south on Highway 101, we bordered the Pacific Ocean in many places.  We also went through some more Redwood Groves.  Two sightseeing tourist spots that we passed was the "One Log House" and the world famous "Tree House".  When we arrived at our campground, there was a Grand Design "Reflection" camper next to us.  The couple was from Georgia and we spent several hours exchanging stories of our adventures.

The two "Reflection" campers side by side.

Redwoods and the Pacific Ocean

The two most impressive attractions in this area are the Redwood trees and the Pacific Ocean.  This is our last full day near the Redwood National Park, so I thought I would just share some more pictures of the area.

(Interesting note: Three days ago we toured Crater National Park.  Today it is closed.  They received about 10 inches of snow)

A bridge on "River Trail" on my way hiking to the "Stout Grove"

Trees in the "Stout Grove"

Stout Grove isn't all that large, and it doesn't have the biggest trees, but nothing beats this extraordinary grove on a sunny afternoon.

A perfect, plush, lawn-like layer of ferns and redwood chips carpets the ground.

Seals and Sea Lions at the Crescent City harbor

Surfers at "South Beach"

Black sandy beach at the Pacific Ocean

Waves crashing into the rocks

Overlooking the Pacific Ocean

They are Really Big

The redwood trees along the California Pacific coast are really big.  In fact, they are the world's tallest trees.  They grow well along the Pacific coast because rain and fog from the Pacific ocean keeps the trees constantly damp, even during summer droughts.  They have been known to grow to more than 375 ft high and with a diameter of up to 26 ft.  Some are more than 2000 years old and show no signs of dying out.  Their bark can be as thick as 12 inches and they can resist insects, fire, and rot to a remarkable degree.  Ironically, their cone is about the size of a large olive.

We drove and hiked throughout the redwood forests today.  We saw many different groves of redwood trees.  Everyone seemed to be in awe when walking through the redwoods.  RoxAnne even made the comment that everybody was whispering when talking.  We also took a 10 mile ride on a windy, dirt road through a redwood forest.  At the end of the road was a trail that led to "Fern Canyon".  It is a narrow canyon where the walls are completely covered by ferns and mosses and are dripping with moisture.  It was such a unique place. Steven Spielberg chose it as a location for his Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World.  During our travels we also saw a herd of elk.

The Redwoods

Fern Canyon

The Elk