Then it's Goodbye to SF, and on to Yosemite.

It's about a 5-6hr journey. Although the displacement is not far, but the road quickly became a two-way road, with only 1 lane per direction. If there were big trucks hogging the lane, then it would be rather difficult to move quickly.

Very often, the highway passes through cities and speed limits will drop to 25mph. And then later on there were steep and winding roads too, which lengthened the journey.

We passed by many farms with horses, cows and sheep, and also fruit orchards. We stopped at this one to buy some produce, because everything was sold at $2 per pound. Besides almonds, various other nuts, corn and cherries shown here, they also had strawberries, peaches etc etc. They also sold dried fruit.

My most memorable, or rather stomach-wrenching highway is Hwy49. I thought it would be the night-time drive through Hwy 101 at the Oregon-Redwood stretch, but no, this was far worse. It was so lurching and so scary I had to get dh to stop once, just to catch my breath and relax all my tense muscles a bit. Once again, it was fortunate the kids were napping.

We had the now-regrettable predicament of staying in a motel 1 hr away from Yosemite NP, due to (a) its lower cost and (b) lack of vacancies at Yosemite itself as it was Memorial Day Weekend. I told dh next time we return to Yosemite, we will save enough money and book lodging 1 yr ahead to stay within the NP, else I will not fancy going through this harrowing portion again.

Take a look at this pic:

Very beautiful scenery, right?

Well, this represents the best part of the journey already. Many times it was so steep and narrow, there were signs forbidding anyone to even stop at the side of the road. This pic was taken when we already drove up much of the hill and stopped at a point where the road was wide enough for 3 cars.

Most of this hwy consists of such winding roads, and we are on the right side. I sat on the right side, behind, with ds2. From my window, when I looked down, I can see the river and rocks way way below, very very far and deep down. There are no barriers or trees whatsoever to block my view, or the car, should it teeter to the right....

Even with dh driving at 20-35mph (depending on situation), I felt that every left swerve he made seemed to propel me (at the back of the car) towards the edge (on the right). With the sandy gravel, the tires seemed to slide and skid a bit too. What's worse, cars travelling in the opposite direction that are negotiating the sharp bends like to drive near to our lane to avoid hitting the mountain rocks on their side. Thus, every once in a while, when we rounded a bend, we would be rudely shocked by the sudden appearance of an oncoming car that barely scraped past ours. Many times it would be a much larger car or vehicle than ours, so I always felt I would be pushed over the edge all over again.

Coupled with my inclination for air sickness, sea sickness, altitude sickness and general travel sickness, I began to feel queasy and nauseous. I tried to close my eyes, but still felt very giddy. I tried to endure this for about 45min, then asked dh to stop somewhere. That's when he got out and took this pic.

After that, it felt somewhat better, cos the picture looks much less scary than what I went through, and I survived the remaining 30min or so. Phew!

After checking in the motel, we unloaded and unpacked our stuff, then repacked something lighter and set off for Yosemite. Actually it was already 5pm, but we just had to go into the park to take a look first.

From Mariposa (the city where our motel is), we now had 3 choices of highways to enter Yosemite, so naturally we avoided hwy 49. We took Hwy 41 cos it would bring us to the Arch Rock entrance of the Park, which was nearest the Yosemite Valley, and which also meanders along with the Merced River, and was thus a very scenic highway.

Oh, to my utmost relief, it was a very nice drive. It also twists and turns but not so sharply, and mostly along between the riverside and mountainside, so it wasn't that scary. It also doesn't climb up or down steeply too.

And the Merced river raged past us, the majesty of which I still can't forget. So, although everyday we spend about 3-4 hours travelling to and fro to the Park, it was very enjoyable. (3-4 hours cos it took 1hr to reach the Park's entrance, and another hour or so to reach the trailhead or scenic spot we wanted to explore. Then the same amount of time to go back to the motel.)

Some pics of the Merced River:

Along the Hwy, a portion of the road had to be closed due to a rock slide that happened sometime ago.

Above right: shows the rocks that totally covered the road. The rocks fell right down into the river.

Above left: shows the detour which we had to take. It consists of a bridge across the Merced river. It has only 1 lane, so we always had to stop here for at least 20min for our turn to cross the bridge.

Yosemite is truly beautiful. We must return again before going back to Singapore!

Anyway we had a glimpse of the waterfalls and domes, had a quick dinner at the Yosemite Lodge Food Court, then headed back, around 9pm. Not a good idea, cos it was pitch dark, and again we couldn't see much of the road, so it was a slow slow drive back (if we drove too fast, we may end up bobbing up and down in the Merced River).