This is our road trip around the central part of California in a motor home! See if you can spot our van in the pics! Here’s a clue – look for Lynn!

We had no accommodation booked and generally just either turned up or booked it via the internet in the case of Yosemite. Things were made more complicated as forest fires had shut some of the roads in Yosemite.  We also had to contend with snow in the High Sierras, flash floods in both Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks, sand storms in the Mojave Desert, then to top it all the USA technically go bankrupt, the federal government shuts down, resulting in the closure of all National Parks!  It’d take more than that to stop us enjoying ourselves…..

Everyone knows that distances are greater in the USA than we are used to but it was brought home to us very quickly when we went across the bridge over the Bay to where we collected the RV- the bridge was 10 miles long!

Starting from San Francisco we decided on a trip to the Napa Valley to get over the jet lag, get used to the RV and to get into the wine tasting. We then headed east into the Sierras to Lake Tahoe for a few days relaxing and a bit of hiking. After this we  turned south-west  towards Jackson (made famous by Jonny Cash), then through the area they call Gold Country to Yosemite.

We were pretty lucky as they opened the highway 120 into Yosemite and a couple of days later the eastern side of the 120 across to the eastern side of the High Sierras . We did not realise how lucky we were getting out of Yosemite as the route we took out shut down that evening due to heavy snowfall.

On the eastern side we visited Bodie State Park then headed down to Death Valley – one of the most inhospitable places on earth!

Again we were very fortunate as death Valley had flash floods just before we arrived which washed away some roads but they managed to keep the main routes open, but, unfortunately our way out was closed so we took another way only to be met by a sand storm that took driving down to 20mph.   In fact it was so bad that we bypassed our intended destination and drove straight down to the Joshua Tree National Park , taking a brief trip to Pioneer Village on the way.

We decided to miss out LA and joined the Pacific Coast Highway at Malibu, had a relaxing drive up the PCH seeing Big Sur and then we went off to Big Basin Redwood State Park.

The day before we arrived in San Fran the USA federal government shut down, so after coping with fire, snow, flash floods and sand storms we then had this to deal with. The major problem was going to be how to see Alcatraz as it was shut down and also how to navigate with no sat nav as the satellites had also been shut down.

We then finished off with a few days sight seeing in San Francisco.


View California Road Trip 2013 in a larger map