Roll film. Action! And... cut. That’s a wrap.

Good evening, Campers! It’s Silver Cliche’ with you again tonight and again tonight we are at the San Luis Reservoir State Recreation Area near Santa Nella and Los Banos, California.

Whattttt? No Yosemite? I can’t share the high school prank I had planned to recreate Ansel Adams’ famous “Moon over Half Dome” using a different sort of moon. I’m sorry to disappoint. Anyway, Mrs. C’ and I talked over two options with our morning coffee. Head to Yosemite (three hours away) to spend a single night in Yosemite Valley (the heart of the most congested and visited park in the system) then drive 3 hours tomorrow or stay in place and relax. We decided to relax. Why? Well, it goes back to the purpose of this trip. It’s easy to confuse “purpose” with “focus”. The focus of the trip is the route, the completion of our lower 48 map and the many stops along the way (including Yosemite). However, the “purpose” of this trip is to spend time together doing something that we found enjoyable early in our retirement... being together on the road. Going to Yosemite for a day contributed to the focus but not so much to the purpose. Staying here was the opposite. Purpose won.

After three days of struggle I think I have a way to share the videos that have been accumulating for about 10 days.

Here are two that Mrs. C’ took on the way to see the General Sherman tree back at Yosemite:

And two I took of the big guy himself. It’s hard to comprehend the scale from the pics I posted previously. These videos help:

And one I took on the way down from 7,000’ back to Three Rivers at 1,000’ above sea level:

Assuming these work, I’ll post another video update hopefully tomorrow night when we’ll be dry camping at J&M farms, a grape and cherry farm in Lodi, California just outside Sacramento. That will be our first camping experience through Harvest Hosts which connects RVers with farms, vineyards and other folks who have interesting properties they are willing to open for overnight stays.

I hope you’ll roll along with us!

Later...