Even though it was quiet overnight, I didn’t sleep well thanks to Mr Fidget-Legs, so I didn’t exactly want to get up in the morning. Müfit wanted to get up and leave fairly early as he needed to be somewhere where his phone worked so he could use data and have a work call. It’s much quicker to pack up when you’re not hooked up, as you don’t have lots of things to disconnect, so we had breakfast and got on the road at a reasonable time.

Although we were high already, we climbed yet higher, eventually peaking out at about 2,400 metres (8000 ft). I was thinking that many people would find the air noticeably thinner up at these elevations, but having lived in a ski resort for a few years we’re very used to it. Even so, we were far higher up than Sun Peaks elevations – even above the highest chairs.

After the climbs came some drops. We passed a lake that still had a fair amount of ice on it, then eventually dropped some more in to the Lake Tahoe area. We stopped at a little place called Meyers just before 11am and parked for just over an hour. Sarah and I went and bought a few more groceries from a very nice family-run grocery store which was well priced, surprisingly, while Müfit had a quick work call and Leland did some school work.

We left there and continued towards Lake Tahoe, finally crossing out of California for the first time in weeks, and going into Nevada. The state line was literally in the middle of a street, which was quite weird to see, and on the Nevada side of that street, guess what was there?…. casinos!

A few miles past this ‘town’ called Stateline, we reached Zephyr Cove where we’re staying for the night at the Zephyr Cove RV Resort. It’s very nice, set among pine trees and with the lake just across the road, but it’s the most expensive place we’re staying in at $85US – yes, that’s $85 to park your RV and get power, water and sewer hook-up! There is a beach by the lake, but dogs aren’t allowed. I had a short walk in that direction to take a look with the kids and dogs while Müfit did some more work.

It is very nice around here – Lake Tahoe. Müfit and I have been thinking / trying to plan a trip here for years using our timeshare, but never managed to match up the dates or the right kind of place to stay. Having seen it briefly, we definitely think we will come back some time and spend more time here. We would have stayed longer this time if it wasn’t so expensive!

We left Yosemite Pines RV Resort at 11am as we weren’t in any hurry today. We had about 179 kms / 110 miles to drive so it wasn’t an especially long way, but no major highways and still lots of ups and downs as we travel across the mountains, and winding roads to contend with, so those 179 kilometers did end up taking most of the day.

As well as still enjoying some nice scenery, we drove through a few a few old gold rush towns. Assuming they were original, there were plenty of ‘Western’ style buildings that would have all been saloons back in the days of the gold rush. Unfortunately, as the towns were so small we didn’t really think to stop, but it would have been nice to take some photos.

We stopped for lunch in a slightly larger town, were we eventually found a park with parking that we could fit into. Since we came inland, the temperatures haven’t let up much, and when we stopped for lunch the dashboard thermometer said it was over 100F (38C) so Al heated up very fast.

After this it was yet more mountain roads, several wrong turns because Müfit hadn’t had any data on his phone for a while and hadn’t checked the route, and slow inclines as we made our way up hills trying not to strain Al’s engine too much.

Eventually we made it to our overnight stop. It was a place we had cased out on Google maps and streetview just off the highway, called Iron Mountain Sno Park. There is a parking area here which said that permits are required from November to May 30th for people using the slopes for sledding etc, but we hadn’t realised that it was actually an abandoned ski area. So, we parked up – it’s a lay-by/turnout, not an actual parking lot – then went for a walk and explored the area. It had three ski lifts and several abandoned and falling down buildings, and there was still quite a lot of snow here!

Charlie, in particular, seemed to love being on the snow again! He was running around and rolling in it like a little puppy!

Although we were pretty high up the mountain by now, the temperature was still warm, it was mid-20’s when we arrived. We sat outside for a bit, then had dinner and got a relatively early night. It was a very quiet spot – just the odd truck going past on the highway, and nobody else joined us. We didn’t have any hook-ups or wifi, but it was nice to be up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere! Felt like home 🙂

We had quite a good night at Yosemite Pines as it’s peaceful here. There’s just a little bit of highway noise at times, but not enough to really disturb you. We have a really nice spot. There is a cabin on either side of us – the resort has space for RVs, trailers and tents, plus they have decent sized cabins you can stay in, as well as yurts and even some old fashioned wagons that you see in the Western movies! But we’re up a bit with some RVs opposite us but nothing behind us. It’s a nice spot as there’s actually a trail behind us that nobody can see from the road, so it’s kind of a private space that we can let the dogs off in!

We had a lie-in today as we were all a bit pooped after the last few days, and started work and school work eventually. It’s quite hot again – not like desert hot, but still hot enough to have the AC on in Al otherwise it would have got too hot and stuffy in here. I took the dogs out for a morning walk, and then another little stroll after lunch.

There is a swimming pool here but the kids don’t seem interested. So we just stayed in Al all day, apart from the walks, and had a quiet evening.

Yet again we had hoped for an early start, but it seems it’s not possible. I heard the people next door to us leaving sometime around 6am, and it turns out that’s when we should have left if we wanted to enjoy Yosemite properly!

We were only about 72 kms / 45 miles from Yosemite Valley, but it’s a drive along quite narrow and winding roads with steep hills both up and down. But, I have to say that I wasn’t having any problems at all driving Al, and managed very well. Leland actually asked at one point today or yesterday whether I was a truck driver back in the UK and hadn’t told them about it!! I just enjoy driving bigger vehicles 🙂

Anyway, as we approached the entrance gate we hit our first queue of the day. After showing our pass we continued on our way. Traffic was flowing past here as some cars were going to Mariposa Grove – a road that we can’t take Al on, but that Müfit and I went to last time we visited Yosemite in 2008. We did drive past the Wawona Hotel which is where I stayed with mum, dad, Mark, nan and grandad in 1989 on our California trip – it now seems to be called Big Trees Lodge which is strange as it’s a historic building that you would have thought they’d keep the name of.

The next obstacle was Wawona Tunnel. It’s a long tunnel that you have to go through. We had been worrying about this last night as I had looked up a few things and seen that there are restrictions for height, but they only give the ‘curb’ height of the tunnel which is just over 10 feet. Al is 12’5″ with the air conditioning unit, but it seems that if you drive next to the centre line, you should be just fine, and we were.

Finally you wind your way down towards Yosemite Valley which is where the main campgrounds, visitor centre, and main scenic attractions are, and this is also where we stopped and joined a very long line of traffic. We spent the next hour driving through, being shepherded in only the direction they wanted everyone to go, and then trying it all over again around the one way system, only to find that it would be near impossible to get a space for a car, and beyond impossible to find anywhere that we could park Al. In the end, we stopped in a pull-out / lay-by which was several miles from the main village area. It was hot – hotter than we had expected it to be – so we couldn’t walk that far with the dogs, but we couldn’t leave the dogs in Al as they would bake. If we didn’t have the dogs with us, we could have got on the village shuttle bus right near where we had parked, but they don’t allow dogs so we couldn’t do that either.

We had to settle for having seen the best scenery from Al. After all, with such a massive windscreen you do get a pretty good view from inside, and this was one of the main buying points for us when we bought Al. So we had lunch, then walked across the road to an area where we could just wander around a bit and let the dogs off leash without anyone seeing 😉, then went back to the RV. We decided, as it was coming up for 3pm, that we’d give it another try, and drove back in towards the village to see if there was any hope of finding a space, but no, there wasn’t.

So, we ended up leaving Yosemite far earlier than we had planned to, and quite annoyed and frustrated. They encourage you to use their shuttle bus, but you can only us their shuttle bus if you can first park your vehicle. We really should have got there about 7am and then maybe, just maybe we could have found a space. But if it’s difficult for cars, think how difficult it is to park a 32′ RV – basically there’s nowhere. And isn’t this kind of stupid? If we’d been able to camp in Yosemite we would have been ok, but we hadn’t realised that you have a timeframe of about 10 seconds in which to book from when your date is released to when it fills up – I’m not joking!

Oh well, at least we got to see it, and the kids got to see it. We headed to our RV park, outside of Yosemite and via some more steep, winding roads, and got there at a sensible time. We’re staying here, Yosemite Pines RV Resort, just outside of Groveland, for 2 nights.

So, we’re more than half way through our trip now and there have been no murders – at least not in our RV! We have had some shouting matches, usually over the same old things that we shout about at home, but generally I guess it’s gone pretty smoothly!

Despite the late night last night, we did have to get up at a reasonable time as we have a long drive today – about 630kms / 393 miles. Sarah, in particular, never wants to get up! She thinks that somewhere around 8:15 to 8:30 is criminally early and that she deserves to stay in bed longer than everyone else. Needless to say, because of kids who need rockets attached to them to do anything faster than snail-speed, we never manage to get out early.

We packed up after our night in Joshua Tree, thinking that we may come back for another visit some time in the future as it’s a nice place, and cheap too because there are no hook-ups here, and got on the road.

We were already quite near the northern end of the park, so it wasn’t a long drive to get us out and onto the highways, and then a few miles down the road we came to the town of Twentynine Palms. Müfit seemed quite excited to go here as there’s a song by Robert Plant about the town, so he made sure we listened to it as we drove in!

We saw some reasonably priced gas and decided to stop as we knew we’d need some relatively soon, but, we ran into the age-old Planet America problem in that we don’t have a US zip code that we can enter for the credit card. Usually when you go inside and use your card there, it’s ok, but not at this place. The card just wouldn’t work without a US zip code. So, having already wasted 10 minutes as we had to wait for someone to finish and get out of our way first, we got back on the road. It’s so annoying to have these issues. I mean, here we are, just outside a national park where visitors from all over the world come to visit, and this is literally the first gas station you get to, but you can’t buy gas there unless you have a US zip code – ridiculous Planet America!

After this we just stopped twice as I knew we had a long way to go and I just wanted to get there. My body has got used to driving Al by now, but when I have a longer day I do start to feel it in the shoulders, and by the time we got to tonight’s destination, High Sierra RV Park in Oakhurst, I was definitely ready to get out of the driver’s seat. We booked this place only recently when we finalised our plans for getting to Yosemite. It’s just a short distance outside of the park, and has full hook-up. It’s quite a nice setting, with a river, but as we’re only staying one night we didn’t really mind what it looked like!

We’ve been offline for a few days as haven’t had wifi coverage and have been in national parks, so I got a bit behind with the posts again.

As mentioned in a post a few days before, we had to change our plans for getting to Yosemite. So we had our third and final night at Indian Waters RV Resort in Indio, and had decided we would go out for breakfast in Indio and get some milk and rolls that we needed before heading to Joshua Tree National Park. This is a park I’ve never been to although I, and Müfit, have driven past it many times. It’s more of a spring, autumn and winter destination because it gets so hot there in the summer. We found that temperatures had already warmed up but it wasn’t as hot as it had been in Indio, even so, they were planning to shut a number of the campgrounds at the end of the weekend because of the heat and reduction in visitor numbers.

It wasn’t a long drive to Joshua Tree, which was good, so we got into the park at a sensible time. We were going to buy single entry passes for here and Yosemite, but it worked out to only be an extra $15 to get the annual pass, so we figured we might as well do that and if we didn’t use it we could sell it on in Sun Peaks as people do this all the time!

We got some useful information from the ranger who sold us the pass. We had read on the website that reservations weren’t necessary after May, but the campground we had planned to go to was still taking reservations on the day. It was a bit stupid really, because they couldn’t reserve it for you, so you had to call a number, but there was no phone coverage so you’d have to drive back out to the edge of the park in order to do this. But he mentioned a few other campgrounds that were first come, where you could buy your camping permit and leave it on the post at the site you choose so that you’re essentially reserving it without the hassle of phoning someone.

So we decided, as we were going past a different campground that we would check that one out, and we’re glad we did. It’s called Belle, and it’s set among the big rocks much like the Jumbo Rocks campground is that we were originally planning to stay in. And we found a nice spot that we could fit Al into – as that’s the biggest challenge with these places – paid our $15 and stuck our piece of paper on the post, hoping that nobody would go and move it or anything!

After that, we continued on and decided to look at Jumbo Rocks campground anyway – we came to the conclusion that Belle was far nicer as it was smaller and we’d found a really nice spot.

We continued around the main park road, stopping at various places and having little walks. It was hot – it got up to about 34C we think, so it wasn’t unbearable but we still had to keep the AC on when driving, and make sure the dogs didn’t get too hot. Because of the dogs, we probably didn’t stop quite as much as we might have done, but we covered the main areas of the park and took lots of photos!

We returned to the campground and found our space was still there! Had some dinner, and then waited for darkness. We were looking forward to seeing the stars as it’s supposed to be really spectacular with little in the way of light pollution. But, the moon was a little bigger than a crescent and we’d been told by the ranger that it would disappear by midnight. We stayed up until midnight but there was still light from it, so unfortunately the views didn’t get as good as we had hoped. I got some good moon shots anyway though, and the kids enjoyed hanging out on a big rock for a while!

Sleeping when it’s this hot is difficult! The AC is on most of the night, shutting off a few times when the thermostat drops enough, but when it’s on it’s very loud – so either get hot and have some peace, or stay a more comfortable temperature and be deafened – either way, sleeping wasn’t easy!

It’s also not easy when you’re woken up at 5am but a voice on a loud speaker. I couldn’t work out what it was saying, but Leland said he heard “This is the Sheriff’s department. Come out with your hands up!” 😮 We looked out of the windows, but couldn’t see anything, figuring it was all happening in the houses that back onto the RV park. The next worrying thing was that we thought we heard a gunshot. Just one single bang that we didn’t think could be anything else, but then after that all was quiet so we eventually managed to get back to sleep!

As we weren’t leaving today it gave us another day of sweating in the heat, but also another day of work and school work. We alternated between us, spending some time in the clubhouse to work as it’s a nice temperature in there, and some time in Al. The RV is maintaining around 30C during the day, and with computers adding to the heat, it’s pretty uncomfortable. Müfit had some early meetings, from 8am so he went over there while the kids and I had a bit of a lie-in, unintentionally! I went there and got one article written before lunch, then after lunch Müfit and the kids went over to work, while I stayed and worked in the RV with the dogs.

We had another ‘work’ day planned for today, so stayed inside Al most of the day as it’s just so hot outside. We have the AC on the entire time but it struggles to maintain a comfortable temperature. Within a few hours the sun is directly over us, cooking the RV and its inhabitants! The dogs are doing ok – Jasper, obviously, is suffering more than Charlie, and although he wants to go outside we’re keeping them in most of the time. I took them for a walk over to the dog run at one point – the dog run is grassy and mostly shaded – but their poor paws were burning on the tarmac within no time 😦

By the afternoon, the kids wanted to go swimming. We let them go but Müfit and I felt it was too hot for us so we continued working. By this time, we had decided that it was probably a good idea to stay here another night and change our onward plans slightly. We have been keeping an eye on whether the Tioga Pass into Yosemite from the east would be open, as we wanted to go north from here and then use the Tioga Pass. But, this year seems to be an anomaly as the snowpack is way thicker than it usually is so we can’t see any way that it will be open within the next few days. This means that the way we had planned to go is not going to work and we’re going to have to cut out an overnight stop we had planned at Lone Pine in the Alabama Hills – I was really looking forward to staying there, but maybe another year.

We’d already figured we probably wouldn’t be doing the Tioga Pass before leaving home, so we booked another RV park, but we still planned to go up to Lone Pine. But, having found that this RV resort we’re in now is pretty nice, and a good rate for what we’re getting, we’ll leave Lone Pine, and save ourselves a 200 mile unnecessary drive. So, we have booked another night here and will continue to Joshua Tree as planned, but a day later.

In the evening, Müfit, me and Leland went swimming after dark when it was a far more pleasant temperature!

Today we leave the coast – and the cloud and cooler temperatures – behind, and head inland to get cooked in the desert!

We don’t have a particularly long drive today – about 214km (133 miles) so we didn’t have an immediate rush to get out in the morning. Still, packing everything up and un-hooking ourselves from power, water and sewer all takes a bit of time, then getting the slide-outs in and retracting the levelling jacks – making sure the dogs aren’t in Al when we do that as they get freaked out otherwise!

We got on the road and joined the usual LA area traffic. The condition of the highways and freeways around here still amazes us. The other day coming into Long Beach we drove on a stretch where the freeway was really bumpy; well today we had the same issue but it went on for miles. It’s funny at first because we likened it to the Tigger ride at Disney – bouncy, bouncy, bouncy – but when it keeps going, and the suspension is going up and down like crazy, it really gets to be too much. What staggers me is how can you build a road that’s this bouncy?! Surely you’d go out of your way to get these bouncy waves on the surface? 🤔

Anyway, after a while, once we were free of the worst of the LA area traffic, we came off the Interstate to a town called Chino so we could grab some gas and groceries for the next few days. Leland stayed in the RV while me, Müfit and Sarah went into the grocery store. We honestly felt like we’d mistakenly crossed the border into Mexico. Everyone in the shop (customers and employees) looked Mexican and spoke Spanish, there was a Mexican radio station playing, and even the signs in the store above the food and the aisles had English on one side, and Spanish on the other. It was really quite bizarre!

Back on the road, we had a phone call from the RV resort we were headed to. It seems that their office is only open from 1 to 4pm every day so she wondered if we were going to arrive by 4pm. We thought it unlikely, especially considering we’d spent so long in Chino getting gas and groceries, but I put my foot down a little more.

By this time the temperature had already risen quite considerably. We’d had the AC on since Chino but we were still getting hot – it was getting into the 30’s and rising. We phoned the lady back when we knew roughly how long we would be – our ETA was about 4:20.

We’re not actually in Palm Springs; instead we’re beyond that in a city called Indio. It’s smaller than Palm Springs but no less hot! It was 40C when we got here. It’s funny to come from the relatively small RV park in Long Beach, which was just about full every day, to this one. There are 274 spaces in this place, so it’s pretty massive, and we reckon only about 5% of them are taken. Most of it is like an abandoned shopping mall car park, as the space are concrete pads with grass or gravel between them. But, it’s actually really nice as it’s quiet, the pool is open and barely ever has anyone in it, and there’s a clubhouse which is air conditioned, plus private showers which are newly renovated by the looks of it so they’re just as good as you’d find in a 4 star hotel. Now we understand why this office is only open for a few hours a day, because there’s nobody here! In the winter it would likely be packed though.

We booked one of the grassy sites and are glad that we did as there’s a few trees here to give us some, but not much, shade. Many of the other sites have no shade at all and get full sun all day. There’s a pond behind us, and we’re just a couple of minutes walk from the clubhouse and pool etc so it’s a convenient spot too. And there’s some resident ducks and chicks in the pond who came out to see us!

After a day of activities yesterday, today was planned as a day of work. The day started the same as usual… cloudy, and cooler than it should have been. Müfit and I took the dogs for a walk in the morning, taking the path around the edge of the wildlife preserve/lake.

A little further around we got quite a good view of the Queen Mary. We had at first thought we’d go to the Queen Mary and do a tour or something. I did this on the last day of our trip in 1989 so my thought was to stay with the dogs while Müfit and the kids went, but, with renting a car yesterday we got a lot more done and I don’t think anyone was too interested in visiting the Queen Mary anyway!

So, after the kids did far less work than they should have done – a common occurrence on this trip – they went for a swim in the afternoon as the sun had come out for a bit.