Groveland, CA to Yosemite to Buckmeadow

We stayed in the fantastic little town it was Groveland, CA there was one motel in the the city and the park ranger did not suggest we stay there and then there was Americas best value inn at Westgate which had 1 room available.  It was a great town the people were so nice they were very laid back we asked where to go and eat at the the visitor center/nursery/generalstore/rangerstation, I know but it was all in one building, It was a small town.  They suggested we go to Two guys pizza pies.  We left to go in and check in at our hotel and met this little hippie girl. I don't know if that is "PC" or not but she was really sweet .  She also suggested the same resteraunt.

It was fantastic it was a mom and pop place the owner and her son came out and chatted with us.  The food was great!!!!

Here is where we went for breakfast the next morning. they know they gotcha. They are the only breakfast gig for 13 miles. If you would like a side of toast with that it will be $2.50.  You would like two scrambled eggs? That will be $6.00.  At least the food was good and the people were nice.

This is the Buckmeadows General store the only guy not trying to rip everyone off he had the cheapest gas in the area! Gas increased by 30 cents a gallon the closer you got to the Yosemite park the highest we seen $5.19 it was insane.

This is one of the tunnels you go thru in the park.

This is the view of the half dome from the valley floor in the meadow.

This is a picture of the tallest falls in North America this is the upper fall.

This is the same fall as above but you can see the upper and lower fall.

Yes we are the family that sucks up that prime photo realty to take every photo combination we can think of without consideration of anyone else.

We have been very vigilant in our search for black bears but we have yet to see one on our walk to the lower falls we did see this deer.

Oh yeah remember the warm weather we said hi to, it was very brief mom getting cold on our way to the lower falls.

These little rock formations were everywhere then we came round the corner and saw little children making the towers and not to be out done by 5 and 6 year olds we made our own sculptures.

This was the view once we got back there it was awesome!

California Day 4 Goodbye San Francisco Hello Yosemeite and warm weather

We had a few loose ends to tie up this morning before we left out of San Francisco last but not least riding the cable car. We rode the Powell and Masan cable car down to the Fishermans Wharf.

Rice-a-roni the San Francisco treat!

The guy that took this picture definitely met all the rules for taking a group photo!

We went back down to Pier 39 to make some last minute purchases.

Just some cool sculptures down on Pier 39.

Cracked out scary bear!!! We really do not think he should be doing any advertising!

We came here to eat this is a really cool place.  Everyone but Brenda and I had eaten at one of these.  I took a gazillion pictures in here but will only post a few.

We now are finished in Sanfrancisco and are on our way to Yosemite the following are just a few picks while driving to Yosemite.

Mom climbed over a fence to go and get her a walking stick.

The Lake behind the trees is the Don Pedro Lake.

These windmills are all over the place

California Day 3 Napa Valley and North of San Francisco

We finally got our best view today of the Golden Gate bridge.

Woot woot we also got to drive on it for the first time.  Everyone was so excited until Heath our Australian GPS decided not to adjust to pacific time and made us all panic because we thought we were not going to make it to Napa for the wine tour until 1:30. The really bad part about this is our train leaves at 11:30.  To add just a smidge more confusion Heath also thought he was in the Military and gave us everything in 24 time so we were all subtracting 12 adding 2 and plussing 3 to try and figure the time. Ultimately Heath got a labotomy he is longer in the military and he is now on Pacific time with us.

We arrived at the wine train at 10:30 it was an absolutely wonderful drive. The scenery was beautiful.

These are the two wines we got to taste prior to departure. One of them was a white wine which was fantastic. The other was a red wine which mom described to us as tasting like "cat tongue" don't worry we made fun of her the rest of the day for the comment.

Here is mine and Kenzies attempt at an artsy fartsy picture of our train ticket.

Here is the conductor. We were a little disappointed he did not keep clicking our ticket until it said believe.

This is our train!

This is the group photo they took before we boarded the train. I am a sucker for the pictures.

 Here are a few pictures from the train the vineyards are awesome.  We have a couple hundred more pictures we can all look at later.

He we are at Armstrong State park home of Colonel parker a 308 ft tall redwood.

We were looking for 4 leaf clovers no luck.

Here are just a bunch of pics from the park.