Napa and Sonoma

Stephen did not want to see San Francisco, a city we had seen before, and so we drove north of the city into wine country. The Napa valley is very expensive. One pays at least $35 for a wine tasting and often over $100 for a bottle of wine. We did stop at Chateaux Montalena featured in the movie Bottle Shock. Be sure to watch it if you haven't seen it before; it is very cute.

The next day we ventured a little farther to the Sonoma Valley. There, wine tastings are cheaper so we indulged several times and bought more wine to store under our RV bed!

With over 400 wineries in Napa and over 200 in Sonoma we could have stayed there all year!

Monterey, Carmel, 17 mile drive, Big Sur, The Pinnacles National Park

I was really looking forward to see this area south of San Francisco. We spent one week camping in the Salinas Valley and driving to the coast to see these famous landmarks. They didn't disappoint.

The Salinas Valley is called the Salad Bowl of the US. Miles and miles of the valley are cultivated with vegetables and strawberries. We saw all types of lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, and among many others, artichokes. The artichokes are the most fascinating. From the road they look like thistles with large pods in the center. The pods become the artichokes. If they are not harvested they blossom into purple flowers. The fields surround homes, buildings and climb up the slopes of the nearby mountains. The town we stayed in was primarily Mexican. I was told that they are the farm workers who work these huge farms. When we went into town all the stores and restaurants signs were first in Spanish, and then English.

About an hours drive into the mountains we visited Pinnacles National Park. It is the newest National Park in the US. We climbed through some Talis Caves formed by volcanic rocks.

When you drive to the coast you are in another world. The climate drops about 20 degrees. Often the rocky coast is covered in fog. The 17 mile drive which connects Monterey with Carmel has magnificent mansions owned by the millionaires that Bernie Sanders refers to. We are the other 90% staring and gawking at these homes. Us and them. Of course, the amazing gulf courses, including Pebble Beach are right along the ocean along with the mansions and beautiful cypress trees.

The drive from Carmel to Big Sur is built right into the ocean cliffs. It can  unnerve you when you look down at the rocks, beaches and ocean below. Big Sur is not a town, but a place. There is not much there except for a lighthouse and a few stores.

Carmel is also quite impressive. I loved the gorgeous, but small bungalows. Each one is different and beautifully landscaped. The little town has some nice restaurants and expensive tourist shops. I think that I could easily live there for a while if I had the money.

While visiting Monterey we saw Fisherman's Wharf, made famous by John Steinbeck. The canneries are gone and in their place are more tourist shops. We stopped at Ghirahdelli's for ice cream and then visited the Monterey Aquarium which is built into the wharf along the water's edge.

Salinas Valley

Monterey Aquarium

Big Sur

17 mile drive

Cannery Row, Monterey

Big Sur Beach

17 mile drive

Restaurant in Carmel where we celebrated our anniversary

Adorable Sea Otter in Aquarium

Yosemite

We took a one day trip to Yosemite National Park. The weather this summer (and for several years previous) has been very dry and as a result, many of the waterfalls in Yosemite were dried up and non-functional. I think that this affected our appreciation of the park. There were many tourists, the park bathrooms were filthy, and there were only several sights where we could drive.

There are many hiking trails but we are unable to experience them unless they are easy. Stephen has two knee transplants and is unable to handle a strenuous hike. On top of that, we are both not very fit. I'm sure that a few good hikes would get us in better shape, but we are not willing to take the stress on our bodies to get there!

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls

Half Dome

Yosemite Valley

Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks

While staying in Visalia, CA we drove an hour to these two parks. Although they have separate names, they are actually one park and one can drive from one to the other. Located in the Sierra Nevada mountains in central CA, they are home to the giant Sequoia trees. Two of them, General Sherman and General Grant, are the two largest trees on earth. It is estimated that they are dispersisng seeds. These trees, in addition to being fire tolerant are also impervious to insects and disease. In fact,  most of them die from falling over due to a relatively shallow root system.

2 large sequoias

Stephen inside a dead sequoia

King's Canyon

2,200 years old! What makes them so majestic is their incredible width. While they are quite tall, the CA Redwood is taller. Most of them have scars from fires years past. The fires help the tree by forcing the cones, many of which are attached to the trees for 20 years,  (the size of a chicken's egg) open and

When viewing them, I felt like I was on another planet, for I had never seen any other tree that compared to them. They are quite massive, even in their upper structure. They grow amongst other conifers such as the redwood and the sugar maple, but they do exist in groves. They are easily identified by their red bark and size.

King's Canyon, in addition to Sequoia, also has sequoia groves. It is also one of the steepest canyons in the US. You can travel from the top of the canyon to the bottom, where you find the rapidly flowing South fork of the King's river. It is quite beautiful. It is also remarkable given the drought that is obvious throughout the countryside.

One other thing to mention--in this arid climate, you see miles of citrus, olive, and nut trees in the valleys below the Sierra Madres. I wonder how the farmers are able to pay to irrigate these fields given the current draught status?

Prescott, Phoenix and Tucson, AZ

As most of you know, we spent @ 2 months in AZ. When camping in Prescott we went RV shopping. Our RV was 7 years old and experiencing some problems. We had already replaced 2 axles, all tires, and now our convection oven broke. We found a lovely, new RV which we decided to purchase. Without going over the trials and tribulations experienced in getting our new loan, I will say that it took @7 weeks longer than we expected, but by the end of June, we left Prescott with our new 2016 42 foot Solitude fifth wheel.

While in AZ, we took several trips. We went to Phoenix to see two Frank Lloyd Wright homes and visited Tucson to see the Suguaro National Park, and my friend and colleague, Kathy Huebner. We also took a side trip to Tombstone to see the famous OK Coral and went to the Desert Museum as well.

Wright's home and school at Taliessen West

Wright's son's home

Tombstone

Tombstone cemetery--grave of man killed at OK Coral

Suguaro National Park

Page, Arizona

Page, a relatively small town in Northern AZ has some beautiful sights. While there we saw Lower Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and took a raft trip on the Colorado River.

Lower Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon located on Navajo land. While the Upper Canyon is above ground, the lower canyon is visited by descending a crevice in the bleak Arizona landscape. It is longer than the upper canyon and provides some amazing views.

Horseshoe bend can be viewed by hiking 3/4 mile from a road stop about 1/2 mile from town. One looks down on the Colorado as it makes almost a 360 degree turn. We had the opportunity to see it the next day from a different vantage point. We took a rafting trip on the river and actually navigated around the bend.

Check out the pictures.

Horseshoe Bend

Antelope Canyon

Light shaft in Antelope Canyon

Rafting on the Colorado (1000 ft canyon walls)

Monument Valley and Natural Bridges National Monument

Monument Valley was my favorite location when I toured the west 11 years ago with Bradley. I wasn't disappointed this time. We stayed at Gouldings, the same campground across the road from MV that we stayed in last time. The campground is surrounded by red rock cliffs, has a gift shop, dining room, grocery store, and a lodge. It also has the movie site of a cabin used by John Wayne while filming Stagecoach.

Monument Valley is on Navajo Tribal Lands. When you visit it, you must either drive an assigned dirt road or hire a Navajo guide who will take you to sites that cannot be seen when driving the planned loop road. Over 135 movies have been filmed here. The story is that the original Mr. Goulding went to Hollywood during the depression (1930's) with $60 in his pocket. He met director, John Ford, showed him some black/white photos of the valley and talked him into making movies in what became the "iconic west."

We chose to hire a Navajo guide who spent 1/2 day driving us around the valley, telling us about his native culture, showing us natural arches and monoliths, and taking us to a traditional Navajo home, the hogan, where we observed a woman spinning wool into yarn. At the end of the tour he sang us several Navajo songs in a beautiful setting.

The Navajo society is matrilineal. When a man marries, he moves in with the wife and pays her family a dowry. If she is a skilled weaver, potter, etc., the dowry is increased accordingly. The Navajo, or Dine, value the sky, mother earth, water, women and then veterans in that order. Elders are highly respected. The female hogan is round to symbolize the woman's pregnant belly, and has nine wooden supports which represent the 9 months of pregnancy. The door always faces the East. The family awakens at least one hour before dawn to welcome the sun. Movement around the hogan is always clockwise. The traditional hogan is made of cedar wood and is covered by a mixture of sand and water (mud). Some Navajo still live in hogans, especially elders. We were informed that the reservation is @the size of West Virginia and @75% of the Navajo live on the reservation.

The next day we decided to visit National Bridges Ntl Park which is about 2 hours away. We had to drive about 1500 feet on a dirt road that scaled a mesa. There were no guardrails and at least 10 switchbacks. The park itself had 3 natural bridges formed within the same sandstone canyon. Quite interesting.

Hogan

Me on horse at John Ford's Point