Day 34 - Golden Nuggets
Trip Start
May 19, 2008
1
36
161
Trip End
Nov 08, 2008
Where I stayed
Yosemite National Park,
California,
United States
Saturday, June 21, 2008
A few miles down the road we reached Placerville, an old gold mining town. We did our shopping, got fuel then had breakfast in the car park of the bank while we waited for them to open. You may remember we mentioned before that Americans expect you to know where things are. Well, when we asked in the supermarket (in a distinctly English accent) where there was a bank that opened on Saturdays, the reply came back "next to the post office". How on earth would we know where the post office is?
The town proudly makes the most of its history and in the bank there were several gold nuggets displayed, a couple of which were rather large
Placerville
. Heading further south on the 49 we passed through Drytown (obviously didn't stop there!) before arriving in Angels Camp, and whilst we knew that it was hot again, we were very surprised when the temperature display told us that it was 101'F and it was only 12.15pm. Heaven only knows what it was as we passed through Sacramento yesterday, but it was certainly hotter than 101'F. A little further south still, we passed through Jamestown where High Noon and Little House On The Prairie were filmed.
Just a few miles further we turned east and began the climb up to Yosemite National Park. The woodland got denser and denser until we arrived at the Big Oak Flat entrance gate. The entrance fee for a car and it's occupants is $20 or an annual pass for all of the National parks is $80. We decided on the latter as we reckon we'll be visiting at least four parks. A few miles into the park we pulled into Crane Flat Campground where the nice ranger on the gate picked us out a really good site. We're right next to a trail into the forest and have a lovely fairly quiet spot.
The only concern now, is that on top of Black Widows etc, etc, we have bears to worry about
An Interesting Past
. Black bears to be exact. In fact we have a very large metal box at the end of our pitch known as a "bear box". We have to put all of our food, including canned goods and our toiletries into this box so that we don't get any unwelcome visitors trying to get in during the night!Distance travelled: 151 miles
Total distance travelled: 1124 miles
Days on road: 14
States visited: 1
National Parks visited: 1
