July Road Trip, Part I

My husband and I both share a love of the open road, and few things make us happier than to just throw a bag or two in the car on the spur of the moment and take off with little more than a vague idea of where we might want to go. We are wanderers and explorers at heart. And so when he suddenly found himself with an open week the beginning of July, what else would we do but hit the road?

We have only been living in California for four years, so there are still so many things in the northern half of the state that we hadn't had a chance to see yet. There were three places he had his heart set on for this trip; Napa, San Francisco and Sequoia National Park. If he had to choose only one, it would be Sequoia National Park. I'm not sure where he got this fascination with big trees, but if he wants to see big trees, we're going to see big trees.

What little planning is done, is done by me. So I play around in GoogleEarth to sketch out a rough route, and realize how close Yosemite is to Sequoia NP. Okay, I've been talking about getting to Yosemite forever, so I decide that we absolutely couldn't be that close and not take the time for Yosemite. Then I realized that if we took the Tioga Pass through Yosemite we'd end up at Mono Lake, and I've always wanted to photograph the tufa towers. Hmmm...from there we can head over to Napa, and Bodie SHP is just a short side-trip along the way. I've always wanted to photograph Bodie ghost town! From Napa we'd go to San Francisco, then take the coast all the way back home. That's an ambitious itinerary for one week, but I bounce it off the big guy and he's good with it so I download the routes into my gps.

Realizing that last minute travel during a holiday week could very well mean that there are no available hotels or campsites, I sneak off to my office to check on availability. Everything in Yosemite was booked (no surprise), so as a fail-safe I book a hotel room on the west side of the park for our first night and the east side of the park for our second night. I know, I'm getting older and sleeping in the car just isn't what it used to be. After the first two nights we'd just see what happens (I still have some sense of adventure!).

And so it was that I loaded up my gear, threw some clothes in a backpack and agreed to hit the road at 3am on Sunday, July 1 so we could be "somewhere" by sunrise. Okay, we actually didn't leave until 3:30am due to some discussion about the best way to pack the jeep when he decided that we should bring the tent and sleeping bags just in case. That led to a discussion as to whether or not we were camping, and if we were camping shouldn't we bring at least the campstove so we can cook, or at least boil water for coffee? And then of course, that means that I'll need to go pack some coffee because I have to have my coffee...

If you're married you'll understand.