Santa Cruz

I made it the coast during sunset, and I'm not gonna lie, I had another emotional moment. I have finally reach the other side. 3000 miles I've driven. I called Amber and tried to meet up with her and as I lapped the downtown area three times, these guys that gave me directions earlier, just made me stop. They were like, where in world are you trying to get to? Well, Mike, Chad, Joe and Munchkin :D, ended up taking me in for a beer at the El Palomar Restaurant, and Amber found me. They were the greatest group of fellas. Mike let us stay on his futon and the next day we all went to Brighton Beach. My friend Abby and John just so happen to be here from Knoxville, so that made it even better. We will be meeting in San Francisco in a couple days. Mike has been surfing his whole life and had a great set up for himself. He even had two goats, Luke and Layla. Layla had a cute little pink collar. So after a few hours at the beach, I took off on hwy 1 to go to San Francisco where Amber met me a few hours later. Thank you so much Santa Cruz fellas for taking care of us. 

Death Valley/ Yosemite Park

Well I knew we would be renting a trailer, because adding the Southwest added almost 1000 extra miles, so 400 miles thru Death Valley was not something I cared to do. Its usually 103 degrees and gas is pretty rare, but as our luck would have it, it was 89 degrees and some summer showers. Which was nice on Amber's car (Toyota Matrix), pulling a trailer up a mountain. We didn't arrive to the east side of Yosemite National Park until 10 o'clock at night and decided to drive thru Tioga pass (rt 120) so in the morning we could get rid of the trailer. Well, at 13000 ft elevation pulling a trailer had us doing the top speed of 30mph so it was 1:00 am before we got to this little town of Mariposa.  Amber and I decided to stay in the only hotel room within a 75 mile radius, and the campsites were all full. Pure exhaustion, Amber smashed her finger so bad under the trailer and blacked out twice. We finally got her to the room and we both  just died in are sleep.  The next day we tossed a coin trying to decide if we wanted to backtrack 65 miles back into Yosemite to go to Glacier Point or head to the California coast, it landed on heads, so we went to Glacier Point. Thats why we came here in the first place. Warriors.  Yosemite Falls is 2400 ft elevation and Half Dome is a 17 mile hike that was pretty intense. I met a women that tried to hike it last year and only made it halfway. She said that she would like to make it to the top before she turned 40 next year and was going to try it the following day. I hope you made it and I'm glad we went back in, even if it was only for a few hours.