North to Alaska: Day 49

Welcome! Day 49/50/51/52 (Sept 26/27/28/29) of North to Alaska

Quote: "I'm not lost, I've just temporarily lost sight of my destination."

I must apologize since I have been sort of lazy in posting. No valid reason but we have not done much except drive. While driving is great to do, sometimes I feel there is not much to say about it. Today I plan on getting closer to being caught up. So here goes.

Day 49: Tonight we are in San Rafael. This is just north of San Francisco. We are staying at an Embassy Suites. It is very nice. We left Crescent City heading south on US 101. This took us right into the Redwood forest. The road was good, paved with lines down the middle, but without shoulders since the trees came all the way to the pavement. There was no place to pull over so I could take pictures. The trees were beautiful and very tall. Some were very red. After a bit we were able to drive through a park area where we did see a tree where normal cars could drive through. I was able to get the front end of my car in but the mirrors would not let me drive completely through. If the word for Alaska was mountains then the word for today was trees. Not many pictures here but don’t fret on Day 52 I got some from another park. We did try a few other side trips but none lived up to their advertisements. One did put us on a dirt road about 2000 feet above the ocean making the road to Pikes Peak look like a piece of pie. I could see the white knuckles on Cassie’s hands. There was no way to turn around, we just hoped this was a one way road. But it all worked out as we made our way back to a hard surface road that descended normally. The rest of the day was very routine.

Day 50: Being at an Embassy Suites we started the day with a great breakfast. We did not want to leave too early since 101 would take us directly into San Francisco. We left about 10. Knowing that US 101 would take us directly through downtown I decided to give our GPS a try without altering its output. I normally put in enough info to make it point the way I really want to go. So the GPS took over and we did cross some large bridges but we took an Interstate and bypassed downtown. Most all the way around town we were travelling in opposite direction to the traffic flow. We made good time. We left the Interstate and heading back over to US 101 at San Jose. We travelled south for a few miles and then cut over to Highway 1 to follow the coast all the way down to Morro Bay our destination for the day. The part of Highway 1 between Carmel and San Simeon is commonly referred to as Big Sur. This consists of a very curvy, winding road with a lot of traffic and not many places for rest rooms or gas purchases. This road makes me consider that driving the “Road to Hana” may not have been the worst road I have driven. As we neared San Simeon I noticed my gas gage indicated I was very low on fuel. We finally found a place called Ragged Point. I decided I should fill up to be sure I could make Morro Bay another 40 miles. I pulled up to the pumps and quickly changed my mind. I decided to just put in $20 worth which gave me about 3.4 gallons. The place was very busy with its café and convenience store. Another example of location, location, when you are the only place in town not much else matters.

As we passed thru San Simeon we stopped at Hearst Castle. It was only 3:20 but the last tour had just left. So we reserve on for 10:40 the next morning, the earliest we could get. We then headed into Morro Bay about 20 miles, the hotels at San Simeon were all booked.

While this was not a long day it was a tiring drive.

Day 51: Was Hearst Castle day. We visited “The Biltmore” several years back and I thought it was awesome with a great history. I now think the same for Hearst Castle although they are very different in my mind. Hearst is more of a museum actually it is mostly a museum housed in a great building. I took many pictures some you can see below. It took 28 years to build mostly because of the architecture changing many times. Still the end results are amazing. There are several tours. We went on the Grand Tour which is basic and the one with the least stairs to climb, still had 106, all outside of the house. Then we were on our own to visit the grounds outside the main house. I thought it was interesting that Hearst had accumulated so many works of art and many silver castings he was not so refined as to not use ketchup and mustard from the bottle.

After our time at the castle we headed for Porterville, more toward the middle of the state near the Sequoia National parks. We decided to take some shortcuts. i.e. more backcountry roads. This was a combination of GPS and Cassie’s maps. It turned out we did not take the most direct routes but it was a fun afternoon.

Day 52: Today was a contrast between mountains, trees, and desert land. We travelled from Porterville, CA to Henderson, NV just outside of Las Vegas. For the early part of the day I could not fool the GPS enough to direct our route and we soon found that most of the roads we took were not on Cassie’s maps, but from looking at the AAA internet maps I had a feeling of where I wanted to go so off we went, Cassie was not as excited as me but she hung on. Leaving Porterville we started heading up along curvy roads much like our normal days travel. Soon we were in the Sequoia National Monument. Trees we did see I was able to stop a few times and took pictures. As we entered the park elevation was at 1000 feet. Within about 16 miles we quickly rose to over 6000 feet while doing sharp turns and many switchbacks. Traffic was very lite but we did see some other fools driving this road. Somewhere around the 6000 feet mark Cassie said “I wonder where we are” my reply “I don’t know but I do know we are not turning around” so onward we went. After a few more hours our GPS did pick us up and Cassie was able to locate us on the map. Note the GPS knew where we were but just couldn’t tell us were to head to reach our destination. After following many roads we found I15 just north of Barstow. We then headed toward Las Vegas through the Mojave Desert. This was Sunday afternoon and I believe within about 100 miles we saw more cars travelling toward Los Angeles than we had seen previously on our entire trip, this included our 20 odd miles around San Francisco. At points the cars appeared to be bumper to bumper.

As you expected we did make it to Vegas. We did drive down “the strip” but did not stop until we arrived at our hotel in Henderson. I figured I had gambled enough just taking those mountain roads I did not need any more temptation.

So today was truly trees, mountains and desert. Tomorrow we start with a Hoover Dam tour then on to Utah.