Sedona

50 years ago my mother and daddy visited Sedona and mother came home and declared Sedona the most beautiful place she had ever seen.  I concur. We rolled into Dead Horse State Park late on Monday evening and then spent the next 2 days exploring this fascinating place.  Not only is the setting gorgeous, they have art, mystical/energy vortices, elegant clothing shops, and interesting people.  They also have some of the highest price restaurants that neither of us wanted to try but might if we ever return.

We LOVED Sedona

 

You can pick this little house up for about $22 Million
 

These iron statues dot the town

The red rock and the green trees make for beautiful mountains

On the right, see Snoopy? He is lying on his dog house and on his nose is the leaning rock of Woodstock
 and up on top on the flat is Lucy with her squared head
The red rock is sand stone (not red clay like east TN) so it doesn't stain your clothes.
Explained to us that there was so much iron in the mountains that this color is iron that has rusted.

Montezuma Castle is a National Monument-- these are actual cliff houses and caves
Pueblo village that has been preserved from the 14th Century

The Montezuma Well was really interesting and beautiful

Boondocking then on to the Spectacular Grand Canyon

After we watched the Vols (men--we won't talk about the ladies) win in the NCAA and advance to the final 16  we left out for the Grand Canyon, Sedona and Dead Horse Ranch RV.  We found a beautiful prairie near I-40 to boondock.  This is camping with no services but no cost.  It is reminiscent of the quiet coves on the waterways we used to love on the boat.  There has already been a small dust storm with tumbling tumbleweeds--cool.  Tomorrow we will go to the Grand Canyon and the RV Park and then visit Sedona. 

Boondocking was great fun--
fixed a T-bone and drank one of the bottles of wine from California

Welcome to the Grand Canyon, yes it was chilly but by the afternoon the coat came off

The muddy Colorado River cut through the canyon

No words

This is one of the seven wonders of the world!

Good size crowd but pretty easy to see such a BIG place.

Elk like we have never seen

March Madness in Las Vegas

We pull into Sam's Town KOA RV Thursday in time to do a couple loads of laundry and catch the shuttle to the Las Vegas Strip for an afternoon to scope out the territory.  The first thing you notice is that everyone is wearing their college school colors--this is the first full day of March Madness and Tennessee is well represented. The slots and the blackjack are not as attractive to us as in years past but the fabulous hotels and the sports bars can pleasantly fill up our time here.  Nick gave us a Las Vegas discount booklet for Christmas and we have already used it to our advantage to get a 2 for 1 dinner at Paris.  I won't be cooking much in Las Vegas.  Tennessee plays Friday morning we will be watching.


This Chihuly roof in the Bellagio was magnificent

 

All in petals, the Japanese artwork



The Eiffel Tower at the Paris Resort and Casino


 

Orange rainbows greeted us at many of the sports bars--good sign?

 

Had to place a bet for Nick

We had fun watching basketball in the sports bars
(the Miller Lite was $9 a piece though).
 

Sequoia National Park

Redwood vs Sequoia Trees: these tall, straight, beautiful trees are in the same family but are different species.  The Redwoods grow mainly on the California coast, get their moisture from the fog and air, have a shallow root system, they are slimmer than Sequoia.  The Sequoia only grow on the western bluffs of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, get their water from the snow pack on the forest floor and have a tap root that grows deep to collect this water and keep them from falling as easily.  Sequoia's are bigger in diameter but just as tall.  Their bark is spongy and thus they are poor conductors of fire, so fire doesn't kill them off--that would be wind, insects and getting so tall they topple over. As a matter of fact fire management for these forests is important because this helps the pine cones whose seeds burst open and provide nutrients for new growth.  Before 2000, fires were banned for almost a century so we almost lost these trees.  We traveled to Visalia, Ca. to overnight in the local Walmart parking lot, detached the car and drove up to Sequoia National Park.  Because a small percent of the park was open, we saw all that was open in an afternoon.  We started out in shorts and t-shirts and ended up in sweats as we climbed in elevation. 

In the canyon ran a rapid creek that looked like you could get a raft going and have fun



Elevations in this park climb to 14,000 ft.--Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the lower
48 states.  We could not even get a picture because of impassable roads but this gives an example 

The Museum was informative and gave a good contrast to the trees

Sequoia Grove

This along with the pounding stone below served as a kitchen for the Indians

Silver Lupines and an orange wildflower were abundant. I guess we were just enough
south of Yosemite (3 hours) that the warmer temps brought them out in the lower elevations.
 Another tree we found here and at Yosemite was the Manzanita Tree--google it, very unique. 



This is the biggest of the Giant Sequoia --world's largest tree

This great afternoon brought us back to the RV in time to walk over to KFC where I found a box of chicken there now costs $26! I refused to spend this much so we walked to the grocery and bought some fried chicken for our dinner--we decided once a year we could eat this unhealthy!  But we did have a funny occurrence--when the teen working in the deli saw my Apple Sweatshirt he said--OMG is that a vintage Apple Shirt and when I explained to him that it was indeed a relic of selling the Apple Computers back in the early 90's.  He said that it was a collectors item and would I consider selling it to him.   I turned him down and came home and googled it! Kids watch your dad, I am the owner of a collectors item!

 

Yosemite National Park

It is still the winter season in the Sierra Nevada Mountains so a lot of Yosemite National Park was closed but the main visitors center and everything in Yosemite Village was open. The waterfalls were spectacular and the Ranger walk took you through the Native American life--added bonus was that there was no crowd.  As a matter of fact, there were very few people in our RV Park (the people watching was fine--there was a couple tent camping in front of us with their teenage granddaughter--they were so cute and the teenager was terrorized because there was ZERO cell reception--she kept looking at her phone, standing on picnic tables etc. --ZERO). We decided to make a long day of it on Monday.  This worked.

John Muir and Teddy (my second favorite president) did more to create the National Parks than anyone

El Capitan, 3300 ft. in elevation, was amazing, they said to look for little specks on the
side of the mountain to see those brave (?!?) souls who vertically climb him.

Yes, it was cold.  Bridal Veil Falls was one of three that were falling freely from the snow melt

Terry was showing that he really could climb the rock, he just didn't feel like doing it

Half Dome Mountain--granite mountains caused by earthquakes and tectonic plates with crystalized magma
 

This is called Tunnel View because you can see the falls, El Capitan and Half Dome

San Francisco

Saturday we took Sue to LAX, watched as the Vols lost to Auburn in their last SEC regular season game, and did a little housekeeping to get ready to head north. We also sprung ahead on our clock--Daylight Savings time--not sure what clock to believe now. Via I-5, Los Banos Walmart, and the Golden Gate Bridge, we are due in Marin RV on Monday. This RV park is located 10 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, beside the Larkspur Ferry that will take us into San Francisco so we won't have to drive and park. It also is right at the gateway to Sonoma and Napa Valley to we just head north on HWY 101 and in less than an hour we are in wine country.

San Francisco here we come.  Golden Gate Bridge is neat.

 Monday we went to the Presidio Park and Golden Gate Park, ending up on the beach with a fabulous sunset and cocktails at The Cliff House. Tuesday we rode the ferry across SF Bay (again we happened to see whales playing), where we got on a Hop On Hop Off bus and took a tour of the highlights of the city. It was really cold (but sunny) and so we headed inside at the wharf for a warming lunch of shrimp and crab chowder and clam chowder. We went to the wharf looking for the men that threw the fish at the market. Imagine my embarrassment when I was told we had the wrong city--that is Seattle. Oh well, we will be there this summer. Nob Hill and Russian Hill were cool, the Tenderloin Section was sad with the homeless lining the sidewalks, and the Embarcadero that housed my first employer -Levi Straus-- was good to see, we want to go back to Chinatown, and still have to get a sundae at Ghirardelli Chocolates. 

Cocktails at Cliff House with a beautiful sunset over the Pacific--they said it
usually is fogged over and we were really lucky it was clear.

Beach at the Golden Gate Park

View from Cliff House

Chocolate!

In the middle is the tallest bldg. in SF
--it is empty  because there is inadequate foundation and it is leaning--law suits abound

View of SF from the Larkspur Ferry



Hop on Hop off tour showed us some great bldgs.

Haight - Ashbury (famous for Vietnam era riots)
Ashbury was Haight's nephew way back



Lots of weird and neat museums

Wine country was soooo fun. We had been told that Sonoma was a little more down to earth than Napa so that is where we went Thursday. After stopping in at the Visitors' Center we went to the farthest north in Sonoma County and came back along Hwy 12 and had our choice of Wineries (and Olive groves). We first stopped at St. Francis Winery, took a walking tour of the fields and then settled in for wine tasting. YUM! Then we went to Bruce Cohen's Winery and Olive Grove. Bruce has been the manager for the Doobie Brothers for 46 years and in the 70's bought this farm. Really good Cabernet Sauvignon and Olive Oils. We then had to go get food and went into Sonoma for some Mexican food and headed home. It was a wonderful (sunny and warm) day. We went to bed early!

Sausalito is a super village just down the street from our RV home

Seals are supposed to be abundant here but all we saw was this cute statue in Sausalito
 

Sonoma Visitors Center is where we started on our wine tour

Tastings were fun
 



The farms were wall to wall in Sonoma County

 
Friday we rode the ferry back to SF (met an older lady aboard and she was fun--had a lot of tips on where to eat, talked about raising her 5 children in the area, and asked if we were from one of those "red states"  --we assured her we were.  I think she shivered like she was delightfully scandalized). San Francisco is 49 square miles and has 43 major hills so it is very hard to walk the city. So a must do task in San Francisco is to ride a cable car because they are relics of old rather than the most efficient way to get around, they are rather expensive to ride so we wanted to pick our ride carefully--we rode up to Nob Hill and walked down to Chinatown.  Russian Hill with the crookedest road, and our hot fudge sundae led to:  check, check, check, plus my Fitbit reports 20,000 steps and 2 happy dances.  We left early to get back to watch the Vols play in the SEC Tournament but the town was winding up to be quite the party.  Apparently St. Patrick's Day is big here. 

Muir Woods--National Park within a half hour of the RV is a redwood tree forest. We made  reservations (long, involved process) to park?!? there between 1-1:30 on Saturday before we knew  that would be during the second half of the Tennessee/Kentucky semi-final in the tournament.  Oh well, we gave it up to the Lord and went to the forest. The Vols pulled out the win without us, Florida lost to Auburn in the other semi, and the forest was lovely.  A good day all the way around.  Tomorrow we leave for Yosemite and see if the Vols can beat Auburn for the SEC Tournament Championship. 

Back in the early 1900's Theodore Roosevelt decreed this a National Park.
John Muir was the first president of the Sierra Club dedicated to conservation.

 

Totally mind-blowing--they were beautiful

 

They seemed to be burned in the middle (for a neat fort?!?)

 


These burls can be a root of another tree.  Trees can be 40 yds. in diameter.

This tree was bud-planted? in 909 A.D