From Sequoia to Yosemite: Saturday, May 1st

May, already?! Agh, our time on this journey is going too quickly, we’re savoring every minute.

We left Three Rivers and began our drive to Groveland. Google maps and the GPS had the journey at just under 4 hours, we left at 9am and didn’t arrive until almost 4pm – a tad longer of a drive than we had anticipated! The last section of the road, climbing the mountain up towards the village was painfully slow and incredibly windy – all the kids were instructed to stop reading, writing or playing DS, we had no desire to have a repeat of Becca’s performance! At one point, they were doing roadworks and had to ‘escort’ us up that particular stretch, we’re still not exactly sure why, possibly because there was a lot of gravel on the road, protecting the new tar, so it was a bit slippery and they were limiting our speed – that certainly wasn’t necessary, our speed was very limited regardless!

We had made a quick stop for groceries about an hour earlier, as we’d heard that there was nothing close by for groceries or cheap gas. Really, after passing through Fresno, all the towns were pretty small so we took our chance and stopped at the local store about 70 miles from Yosemite. There wasn’t a whole lot in there that we recognized as everything was in Spanish, the kids were thrilled to find all sorts of new things that looked good and wondered if we’d entered an area of the US that didn’t speak English….maybe!

It is pretty funny that we now have Spanish cereals, cookies and juice in the camper, among other things. It also had a great meat selection and Dave was excited to get good deals on chicken and steak – now to find room in the freezer! We bought some delicious bread and an enormous cookie for lunch. Becca loved the bread but didn’t eat the cookie – she has very specific tastes in sweet things and if she’s not keen, she won’t eat it. She’s the hardest to please in breakfast cereal bars; we try a new one every week, sometimes she just ends up with a baggie of Cheerios!

We did eventually arrive at Yosemite Pines RV Resort and set everything up as quickly as we could. Our plan had been to meet up with Mona and her children at 4, so that schedule was put back an hour. They were staying nearby for a long weekend and this would probably be the last time our paths would cross. The kids were eager to get over to their campground and play, which we eventually did. We had dinner with them and made plans to get together the next day for some hiking in the National Park. Some of ours had a tough time being persuaded to leave.