Wandering around the West Coast - Day 10 – Goodbye Monterey, hello Yosemite.

[jocat]

Index is here.

Day 10 – Thursday 3rd August 2017

We both slept in until 8:45 am and then lazed about for an hour, looking at places we would stop today. We were off to Yosemite but wanted to call at the Gilroy outlets on the way for some gifts for home. We also didn't want to arrive at Yosemite too early as we'd heard it can be a struggle to park there before 5pm.

We checked out of the hotel at 11am then headed straight for the Paris Bakery Café again, as I noticed yesterday that they still had breakfast options left at that time of day. We picked up a cinnamon raisin danish, a cherry croissant and a fruit cup for breakfast, plus 2 jambon beurres for lunch on the journey. There was loads of food and all for a bargain $21. There was even a bread roll and butter in the bag with the fruit cup. There would be no feeling hungry today! We tucked into our breakfast before we started our drive. Can highly recommend the food from here for anyone staying in the Monterey area.

The satnav was programmed for three stops - the Gilroy Premium Outlets, Target and Yosemite Valley Lodge.

The road was fairly quiet, so it took just about 45 minutes to reach the outlets. Once there, we visited Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, the Cosmetic Company store and the Disney outlet (could have bought loads in here but it was all bulky or heavy).

The layout of the outlets was a bit of a nightmare - all split by busy roads, and you couldn't actually see the other shops, except for the ones immediately by you. There was only one store directory in each section too and as we'd parked past it when we first arrived, it was only when we walked back past the car to some other shops that we saw it.

With our purchases made, we set off for Target. It was only a couple of miles away but the satnav had other ideas unfortunately and sent us on a magical mystery tour, down unnamed roads and by farmers’ fields in the middle of nowhere. Goodness knows why, because we spotted the main road when we eventually pulled in.

We picked up some water, cereal, Diet Pepsi and a few other little bits from the travel section that I'd got my eye on for my next travels - always thinking ahead! We were hoping to pick up a box of Danish pastries and some fruit for breakfasts in the room for the next few days, but were disappointed to find neither available. We couldn't find any fresh fruit or vegetables there at all, which was a real surprise. I think we've been spoilt by the choice in Florida supermarkets.

We were back on the road by 2pm, with 160 miles to go and an expected arrival time of 5:30 pm.

We opened one of the jambon buerres to share - it was huge. We might be eating the other one for dinner tonight, as there was no way we'd have managed one each!

We passed San Luis reservoir. It was lovely to see water in the middle of the landscape. There was a lot of it too - it went on for miles! It was still quite cloudy here but the temperature had risen to 97 degrees and continued to 107 degrees at its peak.

We hit the first built up area for a while, Los Banos, so stopped for fuel. $25 filled the tank, totalling $80 spent on fuel so far this trip.

On we went and the satnav sent us another random way, down the bumpiest road ever, to join Hwy 140. One stretch of it had more potholes than road!

The scenery started to change and became more mountainous again, along with lots of trees. We could tell we were nearing Yosemite.

We went through Mariposa, which looked like we'd stepped back in time, if you excluded the Subway and Burger King spoiling the view.

We started to drive along the Merced River, then after a while had to detour across it via a temporary bridge due to a landslide.

We paid our $30 entrance to the park, then within a mile of the entrance, the rain started. I'm looking at it as a positive thing - it should reduce the temperature a little so we can sleep tonight!

Traffic was very busy exiting the park, but we pulled up outside Yosemite Valley Lodge at 5:30 pm and checked in. We'd originally had to book an accessible room back in October, as that was all that was available, but we'd noted on the reservation that we didn't require an accessible room if someone else could make better use of it. We were given room 4108, which was upstairs in the Aspen area. Perfect! I'd pictured us sitting on the balcony with a glass of wine in the evening, but didn't think that would happen if we had an accessible room. Just outside of our building was the fabulous Yosemite Falls. I was loving it here already.

We double checked that our car had no food items or wrappers left in it, and then wandered over to check out the pool area for tomorrow. We stopped at the food court to check out our options and purchased a Caesar salad for me and a chef’s salad and a beer for Martin to take back to the room. We also bought some items for breakfast tomorrow - milk to go with the cereal pots we'd bought earlier, cartons of orange juice, a fruit salad and a banana. Total cost was around $37.

We were back in the room for about 7:15 pm, eating our salads, and nibbling on the other jambon beurre left over from lunch. I had a soak in the bath, then we relaxed for the evening. We'd got an 8:30 am tour in the morning so wanted an early night.