We decided that Thursday would be a short day in anticipation of a full day on Friday. We travelled from San Simeon to Visalia, which is a pretty short day. We found a hotel with a pool and the kids are finally getting to experience the southern California weather. It's over 90 degrees here and the locals tell us it's cool for this time of year. They are finally getting to swim in an outdoor pool and enjoy it!
Tomorrow will be a full day as we are planning on rising early and visiting Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, after which we will be heading to Los Angeles for a visit with with Pastor Paul and his wife Ellen. Pastor Paul was leading our church (North Blendon Christian Reformed) when Katie went through her experience with leukemia and we're glad to have the opportunity to see him again. We're looking forward to a good visit and we're hoping that we'll be able to see some of the famous sights in L.A. A weekend in the big city should be about enough for us, though - there's quite a difference between Borculo and L.A.!!
It's likely that I'll not be posting tomorrow - I doubt that we'll get settled in at Pastor Pauls early enough to send anything to the blog.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Can't go any farther West!
Wednesday morning found us prepping to get underway after our visit with Brian & Kim. We had a great visit and our kids really didn't want to leave because they were having so much fun playing with their cousins. Thanks again, B&K, for an outstanding visit! Bev and I are hoping to make it back sometime, but next time will be on the motorcycle so we can enjoy some of the great roads out here.
We picked up our car from Performance Automotive in Modesto and all is well again. I highly recommend them to anyone who happens to need auto service while in the area!
We didn't actually hit the road until after lunch, but we were still able to make it out to the coast and ride Highway 1 from Monterey to San Simeon. Unfortunately the car repair put us a bit behind schedule, so we couldn't devote as much time this stretch of road as it deserves. We stopped at plenty of overlooks and such, but we were really hoping to have some more time to get down next to the ocean and maybe walk a bit of the beach somewhere. Even with a compressed timeline we were able to see plenty of views that make this road famous. Here's a few - visit my Flickr page for a bunch more:
We picked up our car from Performance Automotive in Modesto and all is well again. I highly recommend them to anyone who happens to need auto service while in the area!
We didn't actually hit the road until after lunch, but we were still able to make it out to the coast and ride Highway 1 from Monterey to San Simeon. Unfortunately the car repair put us a bit behind schedule, so we couldn't devote as much time this stretch of road as it deserves. We stopped at plenty of overlooks and such, but we were really hoping to have some more time to get down next to the ocean and maybe walk a bit of the beach somewhere. Even with a compressed timeline we were able to see plenty of views that make this road famous. Here's a few - visit my Flickr page for a bunch more:
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Yosemite, 2nd visit
Monday brought another beautiful day and we decided to head back to Yosemite to try and see some of the things we missed on our first visit. We got a bit of a late start because we needed to bring our car to the shop before we could leave. Fortunately Kim was nice enough to let us use her van for the day. Our girls have really been enjoying visiting with Abby, so we took her along for the day.
We packed a lunch and the first thing we did when we got to the park was to find a picnic spot near the base of El Capitan and had ourselves a nice little picnic.
From our picnic spot the next goal was to make the run to Glacier Point. This area provides spectacular vistas overlooking the river valley area. It was cool at the upper elevations, but overall it was a gorgeous day.
The final spot we wanted to visit was the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. The size of those trees continues to amaze me!
We exited the park at the South Entrance and headed back towards Brian and Kim's house. We were running a bit later than we wanted to and ended up making half the trip after dark. Unfortunately we didn't make the smartest decisions on what route to take and had to do way too many miles of mountain twisty's in the dark. It did make me want to come back here someday on the motorcycle, though!
We packed a lunch and the first thing we did when we got to the park was to find a picnic spot near the base of El Capitan and had ourselves a nice little picnic.
From our picnic spot the next goal was to make the run to Glacier Point. This area provides spectacular vistas overlooking the river valley area. It was cool at the upper elevations, but overall it was a gorgeous day.
The final spot we wanted to visit was the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. The size of those trees continues to amaze me!
We exited the park at the South Entrance and headed back towards Brian and Kim's house. We were running a bit later than we wanted to and ended up making half the trip after dark. Unfortunately we didn't make the smartest decisions on what route to take and had to do way too many miles of mountain twisty's in the dark. It did make me want to come back here someday on the motorcycle, though!
Bein' mellow in CA
After our Saturday road trip to San Francisco, we decided that Sunday would be a mellow day. We attended church with our Brian and Kim and the kids and then spent the afternoon enjoying a beautiful California day. The kids set up a sprinkler under the trampoline and enjoyed bouncing around in the cool water.
They also set up a slip'n'slide and had fun with that for a while.
On Sunday evening Bev and I visited with my uncle Cal and aunt Mary Aukeman. They live about ten miles from where we are staying. It's was nice to be able to actually get to see where they live after years of having to build a mental picture.
They also set up a slip'n'slide and had fun with that for a while.
On Sunday evening Bev and I visited with my uncle Cal and aunt Mary Aukeman. They live about ten miles from where we are staying. It's was nice to be able to actually get to see where they live after years of having to build a mental picture.
Road trip in an American made car
Early on I posted about trying to make sure our Buick Rendezvous was properly prepped for this road trip. We had it checked over to try and find anything that should be fixed prior to leaving so that we wouldn't have to deal with it while on the road. Well, it turns out there were a couple of items we didn't handle properly.
Problem one is related to the fact that global warming is experiencing implementation issues. We hadn't experienced any weather warm enough to want to use the air conditioning until we reached California. When we turned it on, nothing happened. RATS! Fortunately it hasn't yet been warm enough for that to be a problem, but we're headed to the southwest and we know that we'll need A/C for that. Fortunately we were planning to stay with our nephew for a few days so he made an appointment at a local shop to get it checked out. Of course, being a GM vehicle, it turns out that the repair is going to be expensive (Is there any other kind of repair for an american made car?). The shop found that the A/C evaporator sprung a leak. This is going to be the third evaporator for this car - the first one was replaced under warranty when the car was two years old.
Problem two is suspension related. For the last month or two it seemed like the car didn't ride as nice as it did when newer, but an inspection didn't reveal anything obvious. I suspected that the rear shocks were going bad, but they didn't exhibit any of the classic signs like oil leaking out. After checking into some prices for shocks and finding that they must be made from precious metals, we decided that they were good enough for now. After riding to California with a fully loaded vehicle, we realized that something had to get fixed or we would go crazy, so while the car was in the shop getting the A/C fixed, we decided to have shocks put on as well. We're hoping that improves the ride just a bit.
If any american car company execs happen to be reading this, please burn it into your brains that ultimate success comes from quality products, not slick marketing campaigns...
I really do want to support American car companies, but it's getting increasingly harder to do when I compare the long term reliability of my Japanese vehicles to that of my American vehicles. There's nothing more irritating to me than to be doing major repairs (for a second time) on a car with with less than 100K miles. grrrrrr....
Problem one is related to the fact that global warming is experiencing implementation issues. We hadn't experienced any weather warm enough to want to use the air conditioning until we reached California. When we turned it on, nothing happened. RATS! Fortunately it hasn't yet been warm enough for that to be a problem, but we're headed to the southwest and we know that we'll need A/C for that. Fortunately we were planning to stay with our nephew for a few days so he made an appointment at a local shop to get it checked out. Of course, being a GM vehicle, it turns out that the repair is going to be expensive (Is there any other kind of repair for an american made car?). The shop found that the A/C evaporator sprung a leak. This is going to be the third evaporator for this car - the first one was replaced under warranty when the car was two years old.
Problem two is suspension related. For the last month or two it seemed like the car didn't ride as nice as it did when newer, but an inspection didn't reveal anything obvious. I suspected that the rear shocks were going bad, but they didn't exhibit any of the classic signs like oil leaking out. After checking into some prices for shocks and finding that they must be made from precious metals, we decided that they were good enough for now. After riding to California with a fully loaded vehicle, we realized that something had to get fixed or we would go crazy, so while the car was in the shop getting the A/C fixed, we decided to have shocks put on as well. We're hoping that improves the ride just a bit.
If any american car company execs happen to be reading this, please burn it into your brains that ultimate success comes from quality products, not slick marketing campaigns...
I really do want to support American car companies, but it's getting increasingly harder to do when I compare the long term reliability of my Japanese vehicles to that of my American vehicles. There's nothing more irritating to me than to be doing major repairs (for a second time) on a car with with less than 100K miles. grrrrrr....
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Picture outage...
Update: I upgraded to a pro Flickr account so no more upload limits... Now I can really bury y'all with pics! heheheheh
I goofed uploading pictures to my Flickr account and toasted my upload limit. I'll be trying to figure out the best way to get more pictures available, but until then, what you see is what you get...
Sorry!
I goofed uploading pictures to my Flickr account and toasted my upload limit. I'll be trying to figure out the best way to get more pictures available, but until then, what you see is what you get...
Sorry!
San Francisco in a day
On Friday night we reached our nephew's house in Riverbank, CA and the girls were so happy to FINALLY get to their cousins' house! We settled in and made plans to visit San Francisco on Saturday. The weather was perfect for a visit to the bay (is our luck with the weather finally changing?). We didn't make any major plans other than to visit Fishermans' Wharf and a quick visit to the Golden Gate Bridge area. On the way there we decided it would be fun to ride the cable cars so we set about finding parking somewhere near the cable car starting point. NOTE: If you are planning on finding parking in SF on a beautiful Saturday in June, it's better not to have a tall vehicle that has a cargo pod on top - most parking garages have a clearance of 7 or maybe 8 feet.
We managed to find parking and worked our way to the cable cars. On the way we spotted these funky little machines that you can rent to tour the town:
After a considerable wait to get on the cable cars we had a fun ride down to the waterfront. I am fascinated by the engineering that went in to making the cable cars work.
Fishermans' Wharf was very busy and Katie ended up not liking the crowds a whole lot, but it certainly was a change of pace from the national parks that we've been visiting.
Of course, we had to make the obligatory trip down Lombard Street:
Good views of the city abound while driving around:
We made a quick visit to the Presario and then headed back. There was certainly a llot more that can be done in the city, but we decided to save most of them for another visit.
We managed to find parking and worked our way to the cable cars. On the way we spotted these funky little machines that you can rent to tour the town:
After a considerable wait to get on the cable cars we had a fun ride down to the waterfront. I am fascinated by the engineering that went in to making the cable cars work.
Fishermans' Wharf was very busy and Katie ended up not liking the crowds a whole lot, but it certainly was a change of pace from the national parks that we've been visiting.
Of course, we had to make the obligatory trip down Lombard Street:
Good views of the city abound while driving around:
We made a quick visit to the Presario and then headed back. There was certainly a llot more that can be done in the city, but we decided to save most of them for another visit.
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