California on $200/day

Day 5 began with the biggest 2-man apple fritter I've ever seen! That was one seriously unhealthy breakfast. Will we do it again? Probably.

Down thru wine country and Napa's wonderful old estates; too early in the day for tasting, though opportunities abound. We picked the sugar crumbs off ourselves at a level crossing as the Wine Tour train sailed past with its self-indulgent load. Bastards! Another time, perhaps.

Though we swung well wide of the Bay area, traffic was gridlocked everywhere; even the remote country lanes were bumper-to-bumper for miles on end.... Friday afternoon of a long weekend, we realized a little too late. What a place! Still, it's quite beautiful, with houses on some of the remotest hilltops.

In Modesto we were programming our TomTom curbside when a well-dressed black dude stopped to offer directions, and then shook us down for $10 "bus fare" to visit his sick dad...what rubes! We decided then and there to head straight on to Yosemite, unwittingly leaving the best motels behind us, but we were rewarded with the most incredible sunset, showing off the distant hills in their rosiest glory.

As darkness closed in, our 'choices' narrowed to one lonely roadside pub/motel with Girls! Girls! Girls! on the marquee, thumping music and booze galore, but neither food nor coffee for 30 miles. Lots of tatooed men (and not the fashionable kind), and women who appear to have been hobbled at birth, no doubt to aid recapture. But it was clean, with a bed so big we slept in separate time zones, plus Dish Network! Yep, what a day: coffee and donuts for breakfast, Jack in the Box for lunch, trail mix and crackers for dinner, and Deliverance at bedtime; life doesn't get any better than this!

Day 6: Woke up starving. Didn't sleep much anyway as the highway traffic seemed to pass right through our room. Where can people possibly be going at 3 AM in this part of the world?? We made it all the way to Yosemite Park only to be told at the gate that the pass to Nevada was closed for our inconvenience, and we'd have to turn back and detour WAY around to the south. You'd think they'd have a sign up or something! Robbi wouldn't let me retrace the way in, which was a short but breath-taking switchback up through the fog and mist. What a coward! The alternate route was even better, though, the first 15 miles taking almost 1 1/2 hours. A driver's road.

Everywhere is green and lush; spring is THE time to see California. Boy, the landscape here can change suddenly, too. Coming down out of Mariposa, I stopped to take pics of some mountainous rock farms, and not one mile later we were suddenly in open prairie that stretched to the horizon. From Bakersfield east, you pass through vast orange groves, the wind adding at least 20mph to your ground speed, and as you crest the propeller-driven hills, the scene turns abruptly to sage and cactus as far as the eye can see. We're bedded down now in Barstow, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, in the best room yet, off the road and dead quiet. Nice!