Santa Cruz to Yosemite
July 26 – 27, 2016
Our drive is going to take us back to the center of CA and north. We’ve decided to skip Monterey and Laguna Seca Raceway (sadly) due to time constraints and the fire.
This is the farm land/area that Steinbeck wrote about in East of Eden and similarly-placed books. Very pretty – the grass is pretty damn tall, even if it is yellow.
Hitting I-5, we finally hit actual farmland. Lots of vineyards and orchards.
We stopped in the middle of nowhere (as far as I could tell) to get gas and ice. Behind the gas station was a fenced in lot with a lot of old cars in decent shape if anyone ever wanted to restore them. JA was entranced.
I was more impressed with this vehicle. Not sure on the make (Chevelle or El Camino, not sure which and I’m sure some car folks can tell me definitively) that’s been modified to push cars off race tracks.
Both the front and back bumpers have multiple hitches to place a bar (presumably) to push cars. I’d probably enjoy that job on a track.
So…the stupid gas station had signs inside saying ‘please don’t throw bags of ice on floor’ for good reason…the plastic bags are all shit. We broke the ice on the pavement outside and the top end opened, which was on big deal, but as soon as JA picked it up to put in the cooler, the bottom end ripped open and spilled all our ice. The weather was pretty damn hot, so it all started melting rather quickly.
Back in the car and driving through some of the most boring part of America.
JA is not impressed with I-5’s scenery or traffic.
A feed lot. Where they send cattle to be fattened up until they get slaughtered. I’ve been on a few, never one this big, and I didn’t know they could smell this terrible. I thought it was a poultry producer at first, the smell was so bad…there are definitely no happy cows in this part of California.
More rolling yellow hills.
So. There’s a place called ‘Casa de Fruta’ on the way to Santa Cruz. I imagine it was just a fruit stand at one point that grew and become a tourist trap. We stopped here for gas. And for ice cream. Everyone was ‘Casa de whatever’ here. Apparently you could buy an annual pass, though I’m not sure what for.
We got the best horchata malt shake here. Definitely wasn’t expecting that.
This isn’t smoke like further south – this is legitimate fog upon entering Santa Cruz.
This part of the trip was something JA was especially excited for. DeLaveaga has a pretty great disc golf course that he wanted to try out. Unfortunately, it was a little late at night, so we only go to hit 6 of the holes, but had plans to come back the next morning.
The sun’s a little off in color due to smoke in the atmosphere.
This is the hole that DeLaveaga is known for – you’re pretty high up and if you suck at disc golf (like me) you’re not going to hit anywhere near the hole.
So that night, we figured we’d be fine grabbing a hotel room. We didn’t count on everyone and their grandmas being in Santa Cruz that night. We managed to snag what was probably the last hotel room in the city by sheer luck (and not badly priced either). We thought about camping, but the beach we wanted to camp on was full…and it was cold and wet outside, so a hotel was right up our alley. Got a shower, slept pretty well, and got up to hit DeLaveaga before we traveled to Yosemite.
This disc golf course was beautiful. Tall trees all over. Lots of Eucalyptus and pine and who knows what else. I think it was 29 holes total to play. While I enjoyed myself thoroughly, I was more interested in exploring and taking pictures, but did play at least 18 holes.
Around hole 20, we met a guy who was playing by himself and naturally joined him. My arm was sore by this point, so I let the guys play. It ended up being a great morning.
A disc-golfer from the area recommended we try Charlie Hong Kong for lunch after It looked and smelled promising…but the food was mediocre at best.
Before we left Santa Cruz, I wanted to drive down a lane of eucalyptus trees and catch a glimpse of the ocean.
That done, we headed out…and ended up back at Casa de Fruta for another horchata malt. I was thoroughly amused by this sign.
And then we saw signs like this everywhere. Even one that was 10 for $1 or a whole basket for $3. I love avocados! We’re stopping!
…well. I guess a handful of avocados is worth $1? Except they’re mostly hard and not ripe and at least now we know.
The rest of the drive was through farm land. Just endless horizons of crops. I love me some agriculture, but that was probably the most boring part of the drive…and I’m used to driving between Austin and El Paso.
Eventually we started to hit rolling hills that led into bigger hills that led into mountains. The terrain before Yosemite was pretty awesome but also kind of eerie. Definitely better than the farmland.
Eventually we got into clear mountain territory and followed the river (Yosemite River) to the park entrance.
JA likes to take pictures through windshields. BUT! You can look up the rock entrance at Yosemite on google if you want to see it better. Basically, you drive through an arch carved into some boulders to head into the park.
We headed into the park with the intention of finding a camping spot in the morning. For the night, we rented a (very) overpriced ‘tent’ in the village area with two cots that was close to other tents. They had a policy that stated quiet hours were from 10pm to 6am, so we thought we were safe. And for awhile, everyone followed that rule.
Then a family arrived at 11pm and made all the noise you could imagine – yelling at each other, talking loudly, dragging things around outside to put into the bear lockers…after about 20 minutes of it, I got up and went to their tent to ask them, politely, to please keep it down. For about a minute they did…and then just went right back to making noise. After another 15 minutes, I called the front office asking them to do something about this (they had a policy saying they’d take care of it). Keep in mind, these are cloth tents and they don’t stop sound coming in at all. After another 20 minutes, no one showed up to tell these folks to knock it off, so JA called the front office. It’s now around midnight. Again, no one comes out to tell them anything.
About 12:30, I call again and tell them what’s been going on, that the tent to the other side of us has called to complain, and that nothing has been done, that the other tent is still making tons of noise. Turns out, whoever was relaying this information was giving the wrong tent number (both JA and I gave them the correct tent number).
Yet nothing was still done. About 1am, I gave up, and put a pillow over my head. Didn’t sleep well. We complained to the front office in the morning and got a percentage off the night, but we didn’t leave because it takes an hour or so to get out of the park and we didn’t have better sleeping conditions until the next morning. Thankfully, we found a campsite that morning and things looked up from there.