We left quite early and got out of San Francisco before the masses decided to hit the highway, crossing the San Francisco Bay.
Now there's a morning experience we haven't had in a month. The sun was in our eyes. It's a red letter day...we've turned the corner and are traveling east! Last time I checked, we were something like 4300 miles of traveling north and west.
After crossing the bay, the landscape quickly turned into the parched California scenery.
And I have to say, California's problem isn't plastic straws. There is litter everywhere in this state. It looks like a dump. I've never been anywhere that has so much loose trash blowing around. Even in areas that the trash had been picked up and bagged along the road, it was still a mess.
We eventually got into the fruit growing area near Manteca. Thousands of acres of fruit trees and packing plants.
We stopped in Manteca and got some provisions and picked up a rental car I had reserved at Hertz for our California excursions. Kathy followed me in the rental car the 60 miles to our RV park in Groveland, CA.
It was the "long and winding road" to Groveland.
The road to the right, I've already been on, ahead and higher is the road untraveled. It was like that for maybe 10 miles. The good part was there was a "Nervous Nellie" leading the pack up the hill at about 20 mph so there was no feeling of obstructing others. I was in the middle of the line.
We arrived at the Yosemite Pines RV Resort and set up.
It's a nice enough place for the next four nights. That's the KIA Soul we rented. It's a nice ride and we have satellite radio in it. The facilities are clean and the sites spaced nicely for a commercial park.
After a quick lunch, we headed into Yosemite National Park at the Hetch Hetchy entrance. Hetch Hetchy is a reservoir and waterfall area that we thought might be a quick thing to do our first day here.
We climbed more mountain roads and arrived. The valley below stretches for miles.
There's even a little bit of water down there. We haven't seen much of that outside of the ocean.
We parked the car and walked down to the reservoir dam.
In this view from the top of the dam, there are two waterfalls visible during periods where there is water flowing.
One flows over the flat top area in the center of the frame and the other a little to the right of that where the whiter stone appears.
The whiter stone is rubble from the falls. It toward the left of the above frame. We've been told to not expect too many waterfall experiences here. They're all dried up this time of year. This visit is going to have to focus of trees and rocks.
So we decided to walk along the shore anyway for a little ways to see what we could find.
The path starts along the top of the dam. Looking downstream, you can see the water being released from the reservoir.
That might be the only waterfall we see.
There's no boating, swimming, touching, or any other human contact with the reservoir water according to all the signs. This water system supplies most of the San Francisco water so I guess they don't want some camper peeing in their drinking water. Good luck with that.
The path leads from the dam walkway into a tunnel that passes through the mountain side.
We walked up the path for a distance until the grade started to steepen. Since there was no waterfalls, we had no purpose going a bunch farther. I stopped and snapped a photo at "our" trail summit.
On the way back, I noticed a stairway on the face of the dam that leads down to a big motor that probably opens a gate. I figured that was probably the initiation for the park service rookie to go down there and service the motor. I estimate about 300 steps...on the face of the dam. That would be a little spooky.
So that was our day today. Tomorrow we plan to head to the southern reaches of the park where some of the giant redwoods are. We're staying away from the popular Yosemite Valley until after the weekend. Maybe we can avoid a little of the crowd.
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