100 Days Later

Hi everyone!

Well, after 100 days on the road we are back at home.  Here's how the end of our trip unfolded.

The rest of our time in Santa Barbara was great.  We hiked up to Inspiration Point (an old Gina hiking favorite), which had great views of Santa Barbara and all the way out to the Channel Islands.  We walked around downtown and had an amazing dinner at Zaytoon (an old Gina eating favorite).  When we got back to our campsite and noticed that our camp chairs were missing, which we found kind of strange.  We talked to our camping neighbors and the people working at the entrance and no one had seen anything.  We gave up on finding our chairs that night and went to the store to get some ice.  When we we're driving out of the campground Gina noticed some people in campsite near ours sitting in chairs that looked strangely like ours.  When we got back from the store we took an extra lap around the campground and noticed that they almost definitely were our chairs.  We walked over to their campsite and saw that they were definitely our chairs.  We tried to be as nice as possible and just tell them that we noticed our camp chairs were missing.  Once we said this they quickly gave them back telling us that they thought we had left and we're worried that the maintenance people at the campground were going to throw them away (an unlikely story).

View from Inspiration Point

We left Santa Barbara the next day and headed all the way back across California to Death Valley.  We really liked exploring Death Valley and there is a lot to explore.  With 3.4 million acres in the park it is larger than the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Crater Lake, The Badlands, Bryce Canyon, Zion and Joshua Tree all combined.  We found ourselves driving over an hour sometimes just to get from point to point.  Our favorite parts were hiking through Golden Canyon, walking on the Mesquite Sand Dunes, seeing Badwater Salt Flats (lowest point in the US) and the views from Zabriske Point and Dante's View.  There was also a very nice free campsite to stay at, which was a relief after the very expensive camping along the California coast.

Mesquite Sand Dunes

The burban in Death Valley

Badwater Basin

Golden Canyon

Dante's View

Our next planned stop after Death Valley was Yosemite.  Looking at the map options the quickest route took us back down south and then up around through Bakersfield and Fresno.  As excited as we were about seeing the endless beauty of Fresno, we decided on an alternate route that would take us along the eastern part of the Sierras through Lone Pine, Bishop and Mammoth.  We spent the first day in Lone Pine, and hiked up the Whitney Portal trail to Lone Pine Lake, which is just over 10,000 feet and about 4,000 feet below the top of Mount Whitney.  We couldn't go any farther without a permit, but we hope to return next summer to do the whole thing.

Eastern Sierras

Whitney here we come!

Lone Pine Lake

View of Mt Whitney from our campsite

The next day we continued north up the 395 through Bishop and up to Mammoth.  We did a nice hike up to Sherwin Lakes and then went to the Mammoth Brewery, which we had heard a lot of good things about.  Mammoth Brewery definitely lived up to the hype.  All 13 beers that we tasted were all excellent and our favorites were the Double Nut Brown Porter, 395 IPA, the Wet Harvest Black IPA and the Fire and Eisbock (10%!).  We also got talk a lot with the Bartenders about the beers, befriended another traveling couple, Ryan and Shayla, from Bend and finished the night with a four person Shotski.  Overall a great brewery experience.  We finished the night off with nachos and camped along the side of a dirt road.  We're not quite sure how cold it got that night, but when we went to sleep at 10 it was 19 degrees and when we woke up at 7 the next morning it was 17 degrees, so it was a pretty cold night, but we stayed nice and warm in the Suburban.

Sherwin Lake

Bryce pouring some of that tasty Mammoth Brew Co beer
 

Shotski! (with Fire and Eisbock)

We had been optimistically hoping that Tioga Pass would open up so that we could take the shorter way to Yosemite, but with no such luck we had to take the long way up over Sonora Pass.  The trip up over Sonora Pass and then back up into Yosemite was definitely the windiest of the trip and one of us (who shall be unnamed to protect her identity) was already not feeling that great from her previous night's beer consumption.  We arrived in Yosemite with just enough daylight to get our campsite and walk around the valley a little bit. Late fall in Yosemite is very different than other times in the year as the waterfall don't quite have as much water in them, but the colors of the changing leaves are beautiful and there were way less people than in the busier months.

Fall in Yosemite

We did a really awesome hike up to Eagle Peak, which is up the Yosemite Falls trail and then over to the west a few miles.  Eagle Peak is at about 7,800 feet and provides the best views of the valley on the northern side.  We spent another cold night in camp and went to bed early.  At this point in the trip, with the sunsetting around five and the cold mountain weather we're in the Suburban from about 7PM until 8AM.  We spent the next day hiking to Vernal and Nevada Fall, and even got a little bit of snow while we were hiking.

Vernal Falls

Nevada Falls

View from Eagle Peak

We debated staying one more night in Yosemite, but decided to head to lower elevations so we could thaw out.  We decided to head towards Monterey where we spent one day hiking in Point Lobos.  Point Lobos is a state preserve just south of Monterey and is one of the prettiest coastal hiking spots around.  We got a good close up view of a sea otter and saw a bunch of seals as well.  We stopped at a Safeway in Carmel where, on a Thursday afternoon at 1PM, the average age of the other shoppers was probably north of 90.  We just needed a couple of things, but it took a while trying to navigate around all the motorized shopping carts that were blocking every single aisle.

Point Lobos

Sea otter chilling in the kelp

We left Safeway and headed up to Santa Cruz to visit our friends Hillary ( aka College) and Ryan (aka Hogan).  We went to a really good barbecue place and they took us to a brewery (I think they must read our blog and know what we like).  We stayed with College, who has earned that nickname as her status as an actual real life college kid at UCSC.  The next day we walked along West Cliff in Santa Cruz and went to Natural Birdges with College and then went hiking in the Pogonip area with Hogan and went to one last brewery (Discretion).  We finished up our United States tour by having dinner in San Jose with Scott and Mel and their son Ja'Daveon (who I got to name as part of a fantasy football trade).  

It was a strange feeling as we got back in our car and drove the last hour and a half, past all familiar places towards home.  It was just so crazy to us to think that after 100 days our road trip was coming to an end.  It was such an amazing trip and we're definitely sad that it is over, but we are very thankful for all the memories and pictures that we'll have forever.  We'll be back in the Bay Area for the next three weeks, both in Marin and Antioch, before heading to Mexico for a couple of weeks in December and then eventually starting the international portion of our trip in Japan on January 6th.

Thank you so much to all of you who have read the blog, left us comments, sent us messages and liked our pictures on Facebook and Instagram.  It's nice to know that people got to enjoy watching our trip as it unfolded.

We'll probably post a few more tidbits from our domestic travels over the next week or so and hope to continue the blog in some format while we're abroad.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Much love,

B and G