Road trip 3. 4 states in 1 morning.

On Wednesday the troops arrived back in the evening tired but happy after walking through the river up a canyon for a long way.  For some of the return they apparently floated down the river.

On Thur we breakfasted ( I use the term ' breakfast ' loosely. It seems impossible in Holiday Inns to get anything real that has no gluten or sugar. There are lots of pastry things,  sometimes some scrambled egg stuff  that tastes funny. Wendy says it's made from powdered eggs. There is sometimes little omelette things with a few bits of what maybe vegetables. Filling enough for me. For a change from their normal healthy regime  the kids are allowed free rein , so they are happy.)  Back to where I was, in SW Utah in a little corner of the USA where several states meet. We drove through the NW corner of Arizona into the SW corner of Nevada and then into California.  In the car we had salad stuff for lunch ( a normal practise, bought from Walmart at a reasonable price) but the 2 roadside rest areas we passed were both closed so we stopped at a funny little town. We could not find a park for thE kids to run in. Outside the temperature was a searing 116 degrees F, 45 C. So we had to resort to a peculiar Greek restaurant.  Salad for dinner in Visalia.

On Friday we drove into the Sequoia  National Park to see the giant sequoias. We went on several short walks, wandered through pine forests with these huge trees, and through lovely meadows.  We saw the tree which is reputed to be the biggest tree in the world by volume.

We drove from there to Fresno where we had a very late lunch / early dinner. It was Tahli's 7th birthday . She chose a Japanese Tepanyaki place which was very good. The chef put on an excellent show . One of Tahlis sisters told him it was Tahlis birthday and he made a big fuss of her.  The food was excellent.  We spent the night in Marioposa,  one of the gateway towns to Yosemite.  We decided on the way to give Yosemite a miss- too crowded and we had seen some wonderful places and didnot want to rush, wait in a long queue to get in etc etc. The drive to Mariposa was quiet, rural, very pleasant landforms similar to Australia, but with different trees. Mariposa was a nice little town, busy when we arrived in the evening, but completely dead at 9.30 when wendy and I went for a look in a few shops. Only 1 was open. EveryOne else was in the queues in Yosemite.

Saturday we drove to Sacramento and had lunch in an interetsing old warehouse area which looks like it is regenerating.  Wendy and Co dropped me at a hotel near the airport and drove onto Lake Tahoe where they were meeting Lachs sister and her family for another 2 weeks of road trip.