Honeymoon Day 7

Today we left the B&B behind and drove to Yosemite National Park. We started out with our last breakfast. The quiche-of-the-day was Black Forest Ham and Cheddar, and was quite tasty. I broke my no-pig-but-bacon rule for this quiche. Unfortunately, Alison was only able to eat one of the quiches on our stay there. If anybody vegetarian happens across this and is going to stay at Sea Rock (which we would definitely recommend), I might recommend that you let Barbara know that you need vegetarian-only quiches. There were so few people staying there with us (off-season) that I'm sure they would be happy to sort of modify the menu a little. In any case, all the quiches we ate were very tasty.
After taking off from Mendocino we headed down (South) the road (Highway 1) to Van Damme State Park again so I could see the Pygmy Forest. This area is a sequence of wave-cut ocean terraces that have been uplifted over time. They have stayed very flat, and are therefore poorly drained. Over time, some of them develop an iron hardpan, which further limits drainage and is often pretty shallow in the soil. What this all leads to is that the trees are unable to grow very tall, so they are pygmy. It wasn't terribly interesting, but it was a nice short hike and about all we did outside the car all day.
After leaving there we drove a few more miles south before hopping on highway 128 and heading east, leaving the ocean behind. Sad, but oh well. We drove through Navarro Redwoods State Park, which was super-beautiful. We then cruised through a bit of wine country in Mendocino County before passing into Sonoma County. There wasn't much to the countryside in this area and eventually we got to highway 101, one of the main thoroughfares linking the Bay Area with NoCal. This was pretty much all cities after awhile almost all the way to the Bay Area. We passed over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, which was the first time we went through a double-decker bridge and were on the bottom level. Still, pretty views. We passed through Berkeley and waved hello to Jenny, then passed out to the east.
We finally stopped for lunch and gas around 1:30pm in a place called Pleasanton, although the only reason we know that is that it was printed on our gas receipt. No signs or anything. We had In-n-Out there, because it was almost the first one we had seen on the whole trip. We miss ours back in the Phx area. Once we finally figured out how to get back onto the 580, we passed two more In-n-Outs in the first several miles. Oh well. We also passed through Livermore, where LLNL and SNL/CA are. There, they had a Baja Fresh, where I plan on having every meal on Sunday.
After we got through Livermore we started descending into the Central Valley, and passed from Liberal country to Pombo country. Pretty different place. It took us another 3 hours to get to Yosemite after lunch, making about 6.5 hours total of driving on the day. Very long drive. And at the end of it, we still had to pay an entrance fee, even though we are staying at a hotel within the park. At least the entrance thing is good for up to 7 days.
It took us another half hour to finally get into the valley, where we stood in line and started to get the real Yosemite experience when we checked into the Yosemite Lodge at the Falls. At least the scenery was beautiful, because the car alarms and honking were not. After checking in we hauled our stuff over to our room and sat out on the porch before heading down to the Food Court for a late dinner. Alison had organic penne with vegan marinara sauce, and I had chili con carne and a side of mashed potatoes. It wasn't crazy expensive, but it wasn't all that good either. Basically cafeteria food at restaurant prices.
After dinner we headed over to the gift store to browse and found all sorts of neat things we didn't want or need, and, unlike when we were in Chinatown, we didn't buy anything. After that we headed back to the room and went to bed pretty early.